SEG electronics marketplace:
As our project is to contrive a way to build a biological relay analogous to the relay in electronic circuit, we paid a visit to an expert on electronic relays in order to get a more comprehensive understanding of the fundamental principles about electronic relay. From our interview with the expert, we knew some parameters as well as the construction and the service condition of the relay, which helped us improve our system according to the function and the parameters of the electronic relay. And thus determine the parameters to be characterized by the biological relay. We improved our circuit design and made the parts in our biological pathway resemble the electronic elements better.
In the process of continuous communication with experts and in-depth discussion with our adviser, we found that we had neglected an important fact that different relays have different nominal operating voltage. Similarly, different “biological relays” should have different “nominal operating voltage”– the amount of the inducer needed in order to trigger the recombinase sites. Then we came up with the idea that we may put various recombinases into the same biological pathway, so that a single biological pathway would be able to respond to different amounts of input and give out separate and independent output.
We visited the expert once again to seek suggestion for our project demonstration. After we briefly presented him with the idea and the current design of our project, he suggested that our biological pathway could be possibly made into an analog-digital converter, which is a device that converts analog signals to digital signals. Inspired, we developed the existing pathway into a biological ADC that can be expanded infinitely by adding the recombine-based relays to the main circuit, and we will eventually yield discrete data through modeling.
CCiC:
Where can our parts be used was a problem which perplex us for a long time. Thus, we went to the Sixth Conference of China iGEMer Community (CCiC) to look for answers, the professionals in the CCiC didn’t let us down, they actually provided us with a lot of accessible suggestions. Based on their inquiry of the significance of our project application, we shifted our focus from a detection display platform to a constitutive biological component. They also doubted the result’s effectiveness of our multichromoprotein circuit as they pointed out that different colored protein will mingle. Thus, we decided to use a tetracycline-induced promoter to separate operation and reading.
Shenzhen Children's Hospital:
We knew a little about the possible application area but nothing could stop us from learning. We wanted to know about the accessible areas sufficiently. Thus, we carried this problem to a medical expert from Shenzhen Children's Hospital and learned that our design could be used to monitor people’s health condition, especially reporting the existence of certain diseases. The clinical laboratory doctor, who thought highly of our project and gave some guidance for our future direction suggested that we could test for ions or proteins like lead or insulin. According to him, lead is a chronic poison that is difficult to degrade naturally and thus will accumulate in the body through dietary and environmental contact. A typical symptom of high lead concentration is ADHD. So that parents of attention deficit children could measure their trace elements using diagnosis equipment basically consisting of our biological ADC. If reporting data is found to exceed the standard range/threshold value of lead, necessary drugs are needed. Another possible occasion is to use our project on diabetes patient. Diabetes is the result of exorbitant sugar concentration. Insulin is the regulator of glucose in our body and there are two possible type of diabetes—the insufficiency of insulin or the rejection of insulin recognition. So, it is important to detect the insulin in our body and give specific treatment accordingly.
We also discussed with the experts in environmental science, they pointed out that we could monitor certain environmental indicators with our biological analog-digital converter. Our design is able to generate relevant data of water, soil and air quality for The Environmental Protection Agency, promoting better maintenance.
