Biomembrane Sensors—Merging Synthetic Biology with Electronic Transducers

The development of medical devices that comply with the soft mechanics of biological systems at different length and complexity levels is highly desirable. With the goal of fully integrated devices, bioinspired bioelectronic technologies have been heavily explored the past decade resulting in novel materials/device configurations. Multiplexing capability, ability to adopt to complex performance requirements in biological fluids, sensitivity, stability, literal flexibility and compatibility with large-area processes are only some of the merits of this technology for biomedical applications. A recent example of a bio-integrated electronic device, the BiOET, is based on polymeric semiconductor technology and is fabricated using nano/micro-fabrication methods in conjunction with synthetic biology approaches to incorporate hierarchically organized biological models of the cell membrane. Cell-free commercially available technologies for cell membrane studies have been limited to synthetic membranes that lack the inherent complexity found in the membrane of the cell. In this talk I will describe a method to create native cell membranes, using vesicles derived from live cells, on top of electronic transducers. The resulting platforms find widespread applications ranging from drug discovery, to sensing to infection diagnostics combining materials development and processing with new biofunctionalization strategies.