Application

Our Product Prototype

We designed three different models to detect the gas patients' bodies give off.

Model 1

This is a piece of testing paper covered by a soft plastic bag which can be squeezed and then blown up later, on the top is the blow hole which we can blow our breath in, and a cap is also contained, to prevent the air from dispelling. When you get the model, the plastic bag is completely squeezed without any air inside, once you blow at the hole and make the plastic bag expand, just close up the cap and wait for the test paper to react with your breath, you can see the result straight through the transparent plastic cover.

Pros:

It costs much lower comparing to the other models due to its size, the test paper inside is also much smaller.
It needs less air to blow up, and therefore it is more friendly to those elderly or sick people who find it difficult to take a deep breath.

Cons:

It requires high sensitivity of the protein we design since it need to catch the target in such little volume of air
There is a risk that when people blow this model, it only contains the air that is in those tested people’s mouth instead of their lung, and that’s not what we want.

Model 2

This is in the shape of a column, and the cover is also soft and foldable plastic. Inside the model, there are several test papers that’s horizontally placed. On each piece of test paper is a hole that allows air to go through, on the top is the blow hole which we can blow our breath in, and a cap is also contained, to prevent the air from dispelling. When you get the model, the plastic bag is completely squeezed without any air inside, once you blow at the hole and make the plastic bag expand, just close up the cap and wait for the test paper to react with your breath, you can see the result straight through the transparent plastic cover.

Pros:

Its big enough to contain enough samples, and therefore it is easier for our protein to react with the target ingredient.

Cons:

It costs more to produce this kind of model since it needs more protein and more test papers
It is harder to allow this model to come true since it’s not easy to contact paper and plastic nicely.

Model 3

We design a variety of models to check out what we can use to contain testers' breathe as well as keeping the test paper visible. To reach both requirements, we need to keep our container transparent, and the first thing that comes into our mind may be plastic, this is quite a good idea, however, there are still some cons: it's not flexible and not even eco-friendly. And therefore, we finally come out an idea of using rubber baloons. These baloons are portable,eco-frienly, and can contain even much more air.

Protable Imager

After giving a puff to the biosensor, a user can put it in a portable fluorescence imager (Fig 1).

Fig 1. The 3D structure of the portable imager.

This portable imager is a battery-powered imager with an LED in the bottom and a colored acrylic plate to filter out the light of LED when observing the fluorescence¹. However, our portable imager will have some difference with the above one. First, it won’t have eight wells which are originally designed to hold microcentrifuge tubes. Second, it will have an opening on its side to put our biosensor in. With a portable imager and our biosensor, everyone can do an early disease screening for themselves anytime and anywhere.

References

Stark, J. C. et al. BioBits™ Bright: A fluorescent synthetic biology education kit. Science Advances 4, eaat5107, doi:10.1126/sciadv.aat5107 (2018).