Metlock targets the environmental and energy burdens of conventional metal recovery by engineering E. coli to selectively capture Zn²⁺ from ores, industrial waste, and polluted waters. The project's central objective is a modular, fine-tunable zinc-import system that maximizes uptake while avoiding cytotoxicity and can be extended to other metals in future iterations. Our design detaches the native high-affinity ZnuABC transporter from Zur repression and places it under LuxR/pLuxR control (BBa_K1960004), enabling AHL-dose-dependent expression. Functionally, ZnuA binds Zn²⁺ in the periplasm, ZnuB translocates it across the inner membrane, and ZnuC powers transport via ATP hydrolysis, yielding a programmable uptake system for Zn²⁺ influx across an AHL gradient. In parallel, we deploy Plot2Curve (P2C) computational workflows: (i) an AHL induction model calibrated with sfGFP and (ii) an Anderson-promoter benchmark to set assay AHL set-points, select promoter strengths, and predict transcription rate, mRNA, and protein trajectories and steady states. These analyses produce pre-registered deliverables (AHL fit, promoter ladder, and per-condition CSVs) that tighten the design-build-test-learn loop for our synthetic ZnuABC platform.