Congrats to Alex Javanpour for using OrthoRep to evolve a series of high-performance biosensors based on the BenM transcription factor! Alex’s biosensors for muconic acid and adipic acid outperform previously-engineered versions by achieving very high dynamic ranges (up to ~180-fold-induction) and very broad operational ranges. This lets us couple the biosensors to muconic acid production pathways in the sensitive concentration range. Since OrthoRep has been used to evolve enzymes in previous work, for example an enzyme in the muconic acid synthesis pathway, we imagine a closed-loop OrthoRep-driven metabolic engineering framework where we evolve custom biosensors that then act as selectors for custom pathway evolution. A preprint describing Alex’s work is found here.