Team:MADRID UCM/Landing
We do cholera AptaSensors for developing countries
Our Three Goals
We will employ a revolutionary technology for biosensing, aptamers, to design a cholera sensor for low-resource areas.
We will create an automated aptamer discovery system which will provide us with the ability of progressing from cholera to other diseases.
We will work on the ground with Carmeroonian local communities for a true understanding of the problem, taking feedback on the current state of cholera treatment and detection.
The Core Of Our Project
Aptamers are a cutting-edge technology that is revolutionizing biotechnology, from biosensing to synthetic biology.
Aptamers are single-strand DNA molecules that hold nature’s most important information: our genetic code. But instead of using DNA for carrying information, our aptamers depend on DNA’s 3-dimensional shape. We genetically engineer this shape to take hold of and mesh with our target molecule. DNA’s unique role in nature gives aptamers amazing characteristics, making them robust, stable, and cheap to produce.
When Robots Make Aptamers
Our initial product will prevent contact with cholera, with the potential to avert thousands of
cases in local communities.
What could be better? How about robots that discover new aptamers every day, expanding the detection from cholera prevention to other diseases
And how? Using an affordable and widespread pipetting robot, the OpenTrons-2,
to automatize the entire aptamer-discovery protocol.
All this information will be published under the Creative Commons license, so this system will not be limited to our goals, but will be open to everyone who wants to take up the aptamer project.
When Deep Learning Meets Aptamers
To understand aptamers, we need to understand their 3D shapes.
Unfortunately, characterising them experimentally would be ruinous, and take more time than any of us have alive.
So we need another way. That way is AI. Our team will develop and train a deep-learning algorithm to predict and optimize the final 3D shapes of DNA at speeds
unthinkable to traditional processors, using only raw data, a program, and its artificial mind.
Help us to make it possible!
