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.

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. You could see it in our final device.

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 team has defended the idea of opening the design to everyone, regardless their economic capacity. As iGEM is getting bigger, incorporating teams from every part of the world, it is mandatory to design projects able to be implemented worldwide, in a simple and affordable way.

We have designed our product thinking about simple ways of manufacturing, as laser cutting and 3D printing. Due to this, reproducibility is almost ensured. We conceived a design for an universal user.

As the design is open to the whole community, another need that popped up was the modularity of our design. The design has been modular in the following aspects:

1. Microfluidic workbench: we have generated a workbench to provide the user with a versatile workbench for microfluidics experimentation. Any chip might be tested.

2. The hardware design enables the user to test any aptasensor, regardless its composition. We have incorporated room for a potentiostat.

3. The mobile app gathers data from many measuring stations. Therefore the app might be more organic, or complex once a number of stations are enabled to share data with the app.

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