Welcome to the University of Manchester’s iGEM 2016 Wiki page! We are a team of 10 undergraduate students all studying at the The University of Manchester and Manchester Metropolitan University. We are based in the Manchester Institute of Biotechnology under the supervision of Professor Rainer Breitling and Professor Eriko Takano.

Welcome to the University of Manchester’s iGEM 2016 Wiki page! We are a team of 10 undergraduate students all studying at the The University of Manchester and Manchester Metropolitan University. We are based in the Manchester Institute of Biotechnology under the supervision of Professor Rainer Breitling and Professor Eriko Takano.

Self-awareness of alcohol consumption and intoxication levels can be difficult for anyone to master. Through the exploration of trying to find a niche within our society that our project could be beneficial to, our project’s targeted audience has changed dramatically since the initial idea of the AlcoPatch. We have found that our AlcoPatch would have many applications to the people within our society whose aim is to not actually get drunk! Our patch would provide these people with a visible colour change according to their blood alcohol concentration thus giving them the ability to monitor their personal intoxication levels. Having an indicator to show how intoxicated a person is could help reduce the undesired consequences of being too drunk, the knock-on effects of these to the public services, drink-driving, as well as the prevention of serving alcohol to people who are over the limit and much more.

Self-awareness of alcohol consumption and intoxication levels can be difficult for anyone to master. Through the exploration of trying to find a niche within our society that our project could be beneficial to, our project’s targeted audience has changed dramatically since the initial idea of the AlcoPatch. We have found that our AlcoPatch would have many applications to the people within our society whose aim is to not actually get drunk! Our patch would provide these people with a visible colour change according to their blood alcohol concentration thus giving them the ability to monitor their personal intoxication levels. Having an indicator to show how intoxicated a person is could help reduce the undesired consequences of being too drunk, the knock-on effects of these to the public services, drink-driving, as well as the prevention of serving alcohol to people who are over the limit and much more.

Science Behind AlcoPatch

It is known that the ethanol concentration in sweat is linearly related to the blood alcohol concentration. Based on this, we aim to develop an ethanol biosensor by using synthetic biology with two separate methods to measure intoxication levels. The first mechanism involves the usage of alcohol oxidase (AOx) in a cell-free system to oxidise ethanol to acetaldehyde that produces hydrogen peroxide (H₂O₂) as a by-product. H₂O₂ is used as an oxidising agent by horseradish peroxidase (HRP) to convert ABTS (2,2'-azino-bis(3-ethylbenzothiazoline-6-sulphonic acid)) to produce luminescence. The second mechanism involves activation of ethanol sensitive alcR in engineered Escherichia Coli (E. coli). The activated transcription factor then activates the promoter alcA leading to the expression of chromoprotein.

It is known that the ethanol concentration in sweat is linearly related to the blood alcohol concentration. Based on this, we aim to develop an ethanol biosensor by using synthetic biology with two separate methods to measure intoxication levels. The first mechanism involves the usage of alcohol oxidase (AOx) in a cell-free system to oxidise ethanol to acetaldehyde that produces hydrogen peroxide (H₂O₂) as a by-product. H₂O₂ is used as an oxidising agent by horseradish peroxidase (HRP) to convert ABTS (2,2'-azino-bis(3-ethylbenzothiazoline-6-sulphonic acid)) to produce a colour change. The second mechanism involves activation of ethanol sensitive alcR in engineered Escherichia Coli (E.Coli). The activated transcription factor then activates the promoter alcA leading to the expression of chromoprotein.