Abstract: Bile salts are steroid acids derived from cholesterol in the liver, are released into the gastrointestinal tract to aid in digestion and are thoroughly modified by the resident gut microbiota. Bile acids act as versatile signaling molecules with a variety In of endocrine functions and are linked to several diseases. In particular, serum and urinary bile salts represent biomarkers for early diagnostics of liver dysfunction, yet their current detection methods are impractical and hard to scale. Here the inventors engineered engineered synthetic bile salt receptors using VtrA as sensing domains connected to E. coli CadC system which activates transcription upon dimerization. The performance of the system was assayed for various selection of promoters and they can show that fine tunable response that may be reached by changing expression levels of the bile salt receptor.

Abstract: Bile salts are steroid acids derived from cholesterol in the liver, are released into the gastrointestinal tract to aid in digestion and are thoroughly modified by the resident gut microbiota. Bile acids act as versatile signaling molecules with a variety of endocrine functions and are linked to several diseases. In particular, serum and urinary bile salts represent biomarkers for early diagnostics of liver dysfunction, yet their current detection methods are impractical and hard to scale. Here the inventors engineered engineered synthetic bile salt receptors using TcpP as sensing domains connected to E. coli CadC system which activates transcription upon dimerization. The performance of the system was assayed for various selection of promoters and they can show that fine tunable response that may be reached by changing expression levels of the bile salt receptor.

Abstract: The present invention relates to chimeric receptors that can be used in whole-cell sensors for detecting analytes of interest. The inventors showed that the DNA binding domains and downstream gene expression can be activated via dimerization of an artificial dimerization composed of a single chain variable domain. They demonstrated for the first time that an artificial bacterial receptor using an antibody-like domain can be activated and produce a transcriptional output upon ligand-binding. In particular, the present invention relates to a chimeric receptor polypeptide comprising: i) a first DNA binding domain, ii) at least one binding domain selected from the group consisting of heavy chain variable domain, camelid VHHs, or antibody mimetics having specificity for an analyte, and iii) a linker between the DNA binding domain and the binding domain.

Abstract: A method for reducing self-interference between at least four data symbols that are modulated via a non-orthogonal matrix modulation and transmitted from at least four transmit antennas to at least one receive antenna comprises mapping the at least four data symbols onto the at least four transmit antennas and two orthogonal transmission resources via the non-orthogonal matrix modulation, multiplying data symbols mapped to one of the at least four transmit antennas with a factor ?, wherein ? is determined at least in dependence on the transmission channel characteristics from the at least four transmit antennas to the at least one receive antenna to reduce a self-interference between the at least four data symbols, and transmitting the mapped data symbols and the mapped and multiplied data symbols from the at least four transmit antennas to at least one receive antenna in the two orthogonal transmission resources.