We had several ideas about how the sensor could work, and eventually, one rose up strongly. The first step when you have an idea, goes through think about it, understand it and rethink it as many times as it is required. Maybe seems an intuitive reflection, but constitutes the fundamental part of every development. Using mathematical models and computer simulations we have been able to understand the dynamics underlying our sensor, variety of parameters could be tuned, eventualities could be tested and tendencies could be predicted.

One of the strengths of our approach to detect patient-specific reactive gluten peptides in food is that it will only be necessary to obtain a DNA sample (saliva) from the patient. Patient’s HLA-DQ (the protein responsible of recognising and triggering the immune response) will be expressed using a PCR protocol developed in the WetLab. For this purpose, we use specific primers to amplify patient’s target genes and thus, it is necessary to evaluate if they are useful for all of the different celiac-associated genotypes.

Another aspect that we wanted to evaluate is how the HLA-DQ protein is able to effectively recognise and bind gluten-derived peptides. Specifically, which are the residues that are mediating this recognition and, if they are conserved among celiac haplotypes DQ2 and DQ8.

To do so, we focused the conservation study to those residues that have been suggested to be responsible of the peptide recognition. A multiple alignment on protein sequences was performed using all the annotated so far.