Team:Pittsburgh/Human Practices

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Office of the Provost Department of Bioengineering Department of Biological Sciences Department of Chemistry Swanson School of Engineering
IDT NEB Experiment

How our project serves the public

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Public Engagement

Over the course of the summer, our team visited camps and museums to teach students about synthetic biology, iGEM, and our project.

Camp BioE

We visited each of the four cohorts of middle- and high-school campers at Camp BioE on DNA Day. After our presentation, we sang "The PCR Song" and danced to the Bio-Rad "GTCA Song." Then, we helped the campers amplify DNA made of beads using the PCR process to see which table had the fastest enzymes! Take a look at the presentation slides Maddie and Aife put together here.

TECBio and DiSCoBio

Claire, Maya, and Aife met with the students of TECBio and DiSCoBio. Take a look at our presentation here. Following the presentation, they had a great discussion with the students about what comes after research--papers, patents, and more.

Carnegie Science Center

Maya and Aife visited the Carnegie Science Center's H2Oh! exhibit to teach guests about lead and thallium contamination of water. They also covered synthetic biology and its application to environmental problems. The kids were able to extract their own DNA from a saliva sample following this protocol provided by North Carolina DNA Day. Take a look at the poster Claire and Maya made for the event here.

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Product Design

Claire, Maya, Aife, and Praneeth met with Dr. Daniel Bain, a professor in the Department of Geology and Environmental Science, to discuss practical considerations in developing a thallium sensor as an at-home screening test. Thallium levels in most water are minimal. Because thallium's water solubility is so low, it may be present in the water but not dissolved in the sample used to rehdrate the paper sensor. In addition, the EPA's MCL for thallium is only 50 parts per trillion, which is a low threshold. Thus, our sensor needs to be extremely accurate to detect thallium without producing false positives.

Thallium is not much of a problem in most areas of the world. Lead, on the other hand, is a huge concern for many people, especially for parents with small children. Lead levels are currently measured using ICP-MS, which costs ten to twenty-five dollars per test. In addition, water is not tested at the request of a single concerned resident. With our sensor, however, the cost of each test can be reduced to 35 to 65 cents (Pardee et al.). The simplicity of its usage will also make the device accessible to the general public. It can also be used to quickly screen water in water treatment facilities.

While our thallium sensor is an interesting project, its main practicality lies in its circuitry, which can be adapted to sense more abundant metal pollutants such as lead.

Thank you to Dr. Bain for talking to us. Read more about Dr. Bain on his profile here.

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Risk Assessment