{"id":235480,"date":"2026-04-17T22:14:05","date_gmt":"2026-04-18T03:14:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/04\/two-bacteria-join-forces-to-turn-chemical-signals-into-electricity-opening-up-low-cost-sensing-options"},"modified":"2026-04-17T22:14:05","modified_gmt":"2026-04-18T03:14:05","slug":"two-bacteria-join-forces-to-turn-chemical-signals-into-electricity-opening-up-low-cost-sensing-options","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/04\/two-bacteria-join-forces-to-turn-chemical-signals-into-electricity-opening-up-low-cost-sensing-options","title":{"rendered":"Two bacteria join forces to turn chemical signals into electricity, opening up low-cost sensing options"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/two-bacteria-join-forces-to-turn-chemical-signals-into-electricity-opening-up-low-cost-sensing-options2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Bacterial sensors usually rely on emitting light to transfer information about what they\u2019re sensing, but that method isn\u2019t practical in many settings. That\u2019s why most information transmission is done via electricity. And while electricity-emitting bacteria exist, manipulating them into useful sensors has been quite challenging. Rice University professor Caroline Ajo-Franklin\u2019s group, working in collaboration with researchers from Tufts University and Baylor College of Medicine, recently developed a flexible bioelectrical sensor system called electroactive co-culture sensing system (e-COSENS). The study is published in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41587-026-03075-7\" target=\"_blank\"><i>Nature Biotechnology<\/i><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBioelectrical sensing is by no means a new concept,\u201d said Ajo-Franklin, the Ralph and Dorothy Looney Professor of Biosciences and corresponding author on this paper. \u201cBut e-COSENS is the first system that allows us to easily engineer <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2024-11-nanosensor-platform-enables-flexible-biosensors.html?utm_source=embeddings&utm_medium=related&utm_campaign=internal\" rel=\"related\">bioelectronic sensors<\/a> in a modular manner, like assembling Legos, allowing us to potentially use them to monitor everything from human health to environmental contaminants.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Bioelectrical sensing requires bacteria that produce electricity and are easy for researchers to manipulate to respond to different substances. Ideally, the bacteria would be able to live in a variety of different places so that the system could be used in environments ranging from rivers to milk.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bacterial sensors usually rely on emitting light to transfer information about what they\u2019re sensing, but that method isn\u2019t practical in many settings. That\u2019s why most information transmission is done via electricity. And while electricity-emitting bacteria exist, manipulating them into useful sensors has been quite challenging. Rice University professor Caroline Ajo-Franklin\u2019s group, working in collaboration with [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,19,1495],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-235480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-chemistry","category-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=235480"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235480\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}