In recent years, scientists have developed many strains of engineered bacteria that can be used as sensors to detect environmental contaminants such as heavy metals. If deployed in the natural environment, these sensors could help scientists track how pollutant levels change over time, over a wide geographic area. MIT engineers have now devised a way to make this kind of deployment safer, by encasing bacterial sensors in a tough hydrogel shell that prevents them from escaping into the environment and potentially spreading modified genes to other organisms. “Right now there…
