A way of understanding our environment

The environment is made with millions of molecules. Many of them can be hazardous and many of them beneficial. Our lives are conditioned by our surrounding molecules, and they are too small to be observed.

The society is made with millions of persons and everyone is different from the other. Unlike molecules, no two people are alike. And this is why what is beneficial for someone could be risky or dangerous for another person.

Our vision

We foresee a future where people can track how molecules move through the environment in real-time, from their own mobile device. We could choose whether to give a walk around a field of blooming roses or avoid the undesirable virus that hides around the corner. We want to bring the user a new way of looking to the environment, and thus a new way of living.

Our vision is beginning to exist. It is emerging now. And it is manifested when anyone receives a personalized ad, or specific information about the traffic density, CO2 concentration, etc. It has received the name of “Internet of Things”, and this is happening with physical, chemical and social indicators. Unfortunately, there are no biological measurements. Why?

The problem of the Internet of Things

Why has not the Internet of Things (IoT) being enriched by the potentiality of Biology?. The answer is not straightforward.

Getting accurate biological measurements in a laboratory is feasible. But getting these results in an automated device, placed in the street, in an affordable way is more challenging.

It might be due to the difficulty in the replicability of lab conditions. And there is another key factor to consider: the complexity of automating the lab protocols.

And this is finally what we have considered being worth solving with our project. And we have called it “The Internet of BioThings”.

Our project

Once we have introduced the notions of IoT, IoBT and aptamers, we shall give a brief description of our project. It is based on two processes:

Aptamer development

We have optimised the SELEX process in order to reduce expenses. The final goal is to scale the SELEX process to many other aptamers, and therefore generate a way of automating the discovery of aptamers.

Device integration

Once aptamers are discovered and provided, we integrate them into the sensor, the main part of our device. The goal is to produce a biosensor able to detect a wide variety of molecules. By replacing the biochip, the same hardware will be capable of returning data related to the inserted chip. It will work as a versatile device that provides different data related to different molecules, that at the same time relates to their correspondent aptamers.