Team:Hong Kong-CUHK/Hardware

rapid

RNA Aptamer Probe Influenza Detector

Proudly Presented by Team CUHK

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Email:

igem18.cu@gmail.com

Address:

CUHK, Sha Tin, NT, Hong Kong

CUHK Igem 2018

Hardware

Best Hardware Special Prize

Since our wet lab developed a RNA aptamer which will give out fluorescent signal under the simulation of blue light after encountering influenza RNA, our hardware Tracer is designed to capture the signal. Different from previous iGem teams that develop hardware for synthetic biologists or doctors, Tracer is a mobile-phone based fluorometer targeting the general public, which is cheap, convenient and user-friendly. Tracer is not designed to be super complicated, but simple, elegant and perfectly meet the needs of the users, we hold the strong belief that the best hardware is not the biggest and most complicated ones, but the ones that can really solve the problem in an elegant way. Thus, we designed Tracer with the following traits:

  1. Firstly, we perform calibration on both hardware and software so that the differences in external conditions like camera type will not affect our final diagnostic results.
  2. Secondly, tracer can provide very accurate results, especially when combined with our software based on machine learning.
  3. Thirdly, working with mobile phone tracer doesn't require users to have any background in biology, in other words, it is user-friendly for the general public.
  4. Also, it is small and light (only around 250g) and easy to carry around.
  5. Last but not the least, with an estimated cost of only around 150 HKD (around 20 USD), tracer is super economical!
Details of Hardware