AI plus yeast detects "forever chemicals": dip a test strip and measure PFAS in water instantly
(2026-10-05, reported by phys.org; Columbia University's Cornish lab and Ken Shepard lab)
Key points
- What: An AI design-build-test cycle was used to engineer yeast to sense "forever chemicals" (PFAS) such as PFOA and PFOS. These substances are hard to degrade, and conventional testing is expensive and slow.
- How: The yeast is fitted with a sensor and a fluorescent protein, freeze-dried and embedded in a material similar to pH paper. A CMOS sensor chip from Ken Shepard's lab, originally developed for wireless brain-computer interfaces, reads the fluorescence and converts it to a concentration.
- Used like a pregnancy test: Dip a disposable "test strip" in a water sample, read it wirelessly, and the concentration range is reported instantly.
- Cheap: The reader and test strips cost orders of magnitude less than existing methods, which could save each municipal water system hundreds of thousands of dollars.
- Concept: A "biohybrid system" combines engineered biological systems with semiconductor sensors and actuators to achieve functions that neither could achieve alone.
Source: read the original. This text is a summary for reference only.
