Team:Ionis Paris/Description

Context

For our projet, we focused on air pollution. We had an in-depth reflexion about the existing measurement techniques, and found out that, among all the existing devices, none of them was satisfying. During our benchmark, we also realized that most of these devices were placed on fixed measurement station, and that they were by consequent unable to give precise results on a smaller scale, which are more and more needed du 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 here

Our Core Project

We started to work on a biosensor, a modified cell able to respond to a given signal. The goal of our cell would be to respond to the detection of a specific pollutant by emitting bioluminescence. We used the XylR protein, known to bind to molecules such as the toluene and benzene (two important pollutants), and once bound to activate the Pu promoter. Activation of this promoter would then trigger luciferase synthesis, allowing bioluminescence. Once our biosensor plasmid assembled, we used E. coli bacteria as a chassis organism. Click here to learn more aboutthe Biology behind Quantifly.

Measurement

As we wanted to precisely quantify air pollution, we started working with CelloCad, a software used for plasmid optimization. Thus, we tried to improve the characterization of the two promoters of our biosensor, in order to build an optimized version of our plasmid. Learn more about our work with CelloCad.

BioBricks

We developed a large number of BioBricks during our project, and tried to characterize them as best as we could, through several processes (e.g sequencing). We also worked on improving the characterization of the XylR Coding Sequence BioBrick (BBa_K1834844) through addition of a His-tag to it, and the sequence of the Gluc protein (BBa_K1732027). Please follow the link to access all informations about our Parts & Characterization. We also managed to make our biosensor work, therefore realizing a first Proof of Concept.

Hardware

Our project aimed to solve the small-scale measurement problem and to valorize the qualities of a biosensor. We therefore developed a drone that could perform all the measurements and mappings we needed, along with an airlock tube able to sample the air while containing our biosensor bacteria. Learn more about our Hardware.

Entrepreneurship

We investigated deeply what was the air pollution measurement market in our area, in order to establish a first Business Model for what we could make out of Quantifly. We also looked for informations concerning Intellectual Property, in order to know what to do if our results were good enough to make a startup out of Quantifly. Learn more about the Entrepreunarial aspects of our project.