Development and characterization of pNarsenic: a naringenin-inducible biosensor for arsenic in Escherichia coli

Whole-cell biosensors detecting the heavy metal arsenic have been widely studied for their potential in environmental monitoring. And while inducible biosensors have been shown to be an effective tool to tune the operational range, a thoroughly characterized inducible biosensor is currently lacking. Here, we present an Escherichia coli biosensor for arsenic in which the transcription factor (TF) gene arsR is inducible by naringenin, a plant-derived secondary metabolite. Increasing the naringenin concentration reduced the basal output while increasing both the dynamic range and sensing threshold of the biosensor dose-response curve, but the operational range appeared constrained by a fixed upper limit. Comparison with a previously published phenomenological model revealed good overall agreement between experimental data and model predictions, except for the behaviour of the maximum output and threshold. This work expands the biosensor toolbox with a profoundly characterized arsenic biosensor and raises a potential practical limit to dose-response curve engineering by tuning TF expression alone.