Demonstrate

Our initial idea has always been to implement a feasible way of getting to what we have called “the Internet of BioThings”.

LINK A OUR VISION. IoBT

To get there, we had to test four different and correlated sections:

1. Being able to obtain accurate protein concentration data from the environment.

2. Automating the protocol of analysis for ease of measurement replication and calibration.

3. Uploading the data obtained to the cloud in real time.

4. Designing a scalable process looking forward to integrating eventually new target molecules.

Last year, we have been working on how to solve these issues, and now, we are proud to share with you our final working solutions:

1. After trying different approaches, we have finally refined a method to quantify protein concentration in a sample using aptamers, bound to a gold electrode, and measured by an open source potentiostat. The measurements are reproducible and suit the requirements of our sensor (being an affordable, simple, and fast system of measurement).

Aptamers Binding to electrode

2. For our final device, we have made a complete microfluidics system, including a DIY manufactured pressure pump system and an affordable microfluidics system to automate the sample processing and its measurement.

Microfluidics

3. To be able to show the data obtained to our target community, we have integrated a WiFi module in our hardware which main job is to upload to a Firebase cloud server the data obtained by our sensor. We have also developed an iOS application providing our final user with a user-friendly way of visualizing the data obtained by our nodes in an iOS app.

Electronics

4. The points enumerated above illustrate only one of the two halves of the project. Our device would be meaningless without a way of scaling its system of measurement to other molecules. In parallel to the device development, we have established a complete new aptamer development process. It includes the very aptamer discovery, its characterization, a computational improvement and an optimal aptamer integration in our device.

Aptamer Discovery Aptamer Characterization

Computational Improvemnt

The success of the whole process has been demonstrated in each particular wiki page, which you could review clicking on the links provided above. You could also replicate all our experiments (to see if it works) following the detailed instructions that we have provided in our GitHub documentation.

If you want to check in person how our final prototype works, we would love to meet you in our stand at the giant jamboree. If you are too impatient to wait for this event we give you a little spoiler in the following video. Hope you will enjoy it!