Team:Valencia UPV
Do you think that Synthetic Biology is just for scientists? How about doing it yourself?
Synthetic Biology can be very complex, both because of the necessary knowledge and because of the tools that are used on a daily basis in the laboratory.
This year, the Valencia UPV iGEM team has set a new goal: to democratize Synthetic Biology. To achieve this, we intend to create a fully-equipped bioengineering device: Printeria. It will be capable of modifying bacteria to obtain different products, but made as simple and easy to operate as a home printer. In short, a whole cloning process contained in a single device.
How does Printeria really work? It uses a digital microfluidic system that is able to create little droplets, which can be controlled and displaced through configurable paths. With this novel system we can mix and move the substrates of the reactions as droplets, and, definitively, control all biotechnological processes with high accuracy. Anyone who wants to use Printeria will be able to do so through a very intuitive interface that allow us to assemble the required DNA parts to create transcriptional units. Printeria includes an extensive collection of promoters, RBS, coding sequences and terminators, which our user can combine in a one-step reaction, using Golden Gate Technology.
And in order for society to understand that it is possible to democratize and give visibility to the world of Synthetic Biology, we are going to work so that Printeria will have in the near future a place in fields as diverse as education, laboratories, bio-art, etc. To sum up, we want to establish a new starting point in the expansion of Synthetic Biology.
This is our project. Do you want to join us?