Prof. Li Shanshan and her team at the Institute of Plant Protection of CAAS published a research article titled "Sensing diverse small molecules in vitro with new bacterial allosteric transcription factors" in Science Advances. They found a new capacity of bacterial allosteric transcription factors (aTFs) - these factors could interact with nicked DNA binding sites. With this new finding, Li's team designed and implemented a novel aTF-based nicked DNA template-assisted signal transduction system (aTF-NAST). The system could reliably and modularly transduce the signal of small molecules recognized by aTFs to the ligated DNA signal, thus enabling the small molecules to be measured via various mature and robust DNA detection methods.

Illustration of the aTF-NAST based biosensors. A, schematic for the interaction between an aTF and its TFBS with a nick. Intact and broken phosphodiester bonds are highlighted in blue and orange circles, respectively. B, schematic of the aTF-NAST. C, workflow for the development of small-molecule biosensors using aTF-NAST.