Applied design

The very process of designing begins when a brand new problematic is detected. Designing means visualizing. And applying a vision requires a feasible strategy.

When some of us joined our iGEM team, we had to introduce the project to our friends and families. Our message was simple enough to be explained in just a few words: “we want to design a way of measuring accurately any kind of molecule: viruses, bacterias, allergens”. We wanted to improve our society, and therefore build a better future for the upcoming generations.

Proyect Description

We have explained in our project description that the challenge that we assume is creating the “Internet of BioThings (IoBT)”. To bring the IoBT to life, we have designed the following:

1. An affordable system of designing new aptamers.

2. A piece of hardware able to measure the targeted protein concentration in a complex solution, and upload the results to the cloud in real-time.

3. A mobile app that gathers the obtained data, for the user to visualize the information requested, i.e: the amount of allergens in an area.

Our second device was born from a need. It was not preconceived, as the first prototype. We needed to solve many experimental inconveniences and many misconceptions that we had when we designed the first prototype.

First Prototype

The environment that motivated the birth of the final prototype was a different one. We would love to consider this device as a mature version of the initial one. We introduced the following improvements:

1. Electrochemical system of measurement: we required a potentiostat and some electrodes for testing the protein and aptamers binding.

2. Integrate an electrode into a microfluidic chip.

3. Correlate the protein concentration to the potentiostat readings.

4. Automated pressure pump control for the microfluidic chip.

5. Capability of real-time data uploading to the cloud.

6. Integrate this data in an iOS app.

7. Integrate every subsystem into a functional device.

Besides, we would love to consider that our final version of the device is versatile enough to be presented as a resilient biodevice workbench. It might be used by anyone that requires a device for experimenting with aptasensors based on an electrochemical system of measurement.

Although we are presenting a design that seems to be closed, we are proud to share with everyone our design in our Github. It is open to improvements. We would love to receive as much feedback as possible.

Microfluidics Electronics