Synthetic biology for the built environment: A pressure sensing and responsive Bacillus subtilis

Hydrostatic pressure is a stimulus which bacteria can sense and response to, but it remains unexploited in synthetic biology systems. The Thinking-Soils project aims to engineer bacteria to respond to a change in pressure by inducing bio-mineral crystal formation. The ability to control bio-mineralisation to only occur when an increase in pressure is sensed, presents a potentially useful bio-material for the prevention of subsidence, or the construction of large-scale structures which would otherwise be impossible.

In this talk, I will describe a transcriptomic and synthetic biology approach to identify Bacillus subtilis gene promoters which exclusively respond to pressure. I will show the results of gene expression analysis of B. subtilis grown in pressure chambers, and how we identified promoter regions that can be used to control the regulation of bio-mineralisation, to obtain a pressure sensing and responsive living material.