Contribution

During this competition, we have faced different kind of problems, but the principal ones were the lack of money and time. We have felt the absence of resources in both of the parts of our project, the aptamer development and the device manufacturing. For solving this issue we have learned by ourselves to make all the equipment that we needed during the project, getting the inspiration from the DIYBio movement. Now we are proud to contribute to the iGEM community with a new successful way of:

1. Making affordable PDMS chips with a new manufacturing workflow.

Microfluidics

2. Helping future teams to discover more and more aptamers through a new SELEX protocol based on 3D printed nitrocellulose columns

Selex Protocol

3. Developing a new quantitative method for aptamer characterization, improving the earlier semi-quantitative ways.

Aptamer Characterization

4. Establishing a simple and cost-effective method to make electrochemical measurements of protein concentration with aptamer

Binding to electrode

5. Integrating all the technologies in our final design, which is an automated device for aptasensing, easily replicable as long as it is made with digital fabrication techniques.

Final Prototype

With our work, we have tried to solve the problems that we have faced following the previous iGEM protocols. We hope that our documentation helps the future iGEM teams to work with these technologies, at the same time that inspires them to reinvent our own techniques, improving them.

It is the duty of the future iGEMmers to re-write the work made by us, the past generations.

“If I have seen further, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants”