Team:Ionis Paris/Description
For our projet, we tried to focus on air pollution monitoring. We investigate the existing measurement techniques and found out that, among all the existing devices, none of them enable precise and versatile air pollution monitoring. Most of those measurement devices are placed on fixed measurement station and consequently they are unable to give precise results at a smaller scale. Atmospheric pollution quantification at small scale are more and more important due to the ever-increasing health concerns. Learn all the details of why we believe our project can be a real breakthrough in terms of air pollution measurement. We worked on a biosensor, a modified cell able to integrate a given signal and respond to it. Our goal was to create E.coli cells able to detect a specific pollutant and respond to it by emitting bioluminescence. We used the XylR protein, known to bind to certain aromatic compounds such as the toluene and benzene (two important pollutants). Once bound to those molecules, the XylR protein will form a tetramer and bind the Pu promoter. Pu promoter activation would then trigger luciferase synthesis and therefore bioluminescence production. As we wanted to precisely quantify air pollution, we started working with CelloCad, a software used for plasmid optimization. We tried to improve the characterization of the two promoters of our biosensor, in order to build an optimized version of our plasmid. For our project, we developed a large number of BioBricks and characterized them though several processes (sequencing, luciferase assay). We improved two existing BioBricks: XylR Coding Sequence BioBrick (BBa_K1834844) by adding a His-tag allowing better characterization and Gluc protein (BBa_K1732027) though sequence optimization for use in E.coli and IDT synthesis. Please follow the link to access all informations about our: Our project aimed to solve the small-scale measurement problem and valorize the qualities of a biosensor for on-field measurement. Therefore, we built a drone able to perform on-field measurements and mappings, along with an airlock tube able to sample the air while preventing biosensor bacteria dissemination. We investigated the air pollution measurement market in order to establish a Business Model and find out application and future possible development of Quantifly. We also looked for informations about intellectual property to know what to do if our results were good enough to make a startup out of Quantifly. We organized and attended many events during this summer. Whether it was iGEMers Meetups, professional events, our team was very active! We enjoyed all of these events and definitely kept some very good memories of them.
We also participated in sports events that enabled us to raise some funds. As our team was created last year, we wanted to meet other iGEM Teams and collaborate with them as much as we could. We worked with several iGEM teams from Paris to organize meet-up and to help in the lab experience. Our biggest collaboration was the organization of the European Experience.Context
Our Core Project
Measurement
BioBricks
Hardware
Entrepreneurship
Events
Collaborations
