Synthetic Biology Takes on Zika.

By the time public health officials implement infrastructure to deal with an outbreak, the threat has often passed. This could change with innovation on a new diagnostic work flow and platform designed by Jim Collins, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Many innovators develop a novel assay and stop there. When Collins, a design thinker, explores a new novel assay, he likes to think about how the whole process could improve. Collins’ technology uses synthetic biology to design sequence-specific sensors and develop an environmentproof protein expression platform that can rapidly deployed to the field. The journal spoke with Collins about his application toward a field-ready Zika diagnostic.