Criteria

We summarize our achievements fulfilling the criteria of the medals as follows:

Bronze

Wiki: Visit our Wiki pages to see a complete description of what we have done this year.
Poster: Check our Poster page to see the interactive poster.
Presentation Video: Enjoy our Presentation video to see a summary of our project.
Project Promotion Video: Our Project promotion video explains the importance of our project.
Judging Form: We have filed this judging form properly before the deadline.

We chose dengue fever as our topic because it is listed as a top 10 health threat by WHO, and Taiwan is in the region under the threat of dengue fever.
Since there is no effective medicine for dengue fever, our main goal is to detect the dengue virus early to keep patients from developing severe symptoms.
We found that the interaction between C-type lectin domain, family 5, member A (CLEC5A) and E protein is the key leading to severe dengue. We developed a detection kit based on this interaction.
We produced peptides using a PCR technique, LAE, which could massively produce peptides as the detection agents in the detection kit.
We used Rosetta to simulate the interactions between the peptides of tandem-repeated sequence (PTRSs) with E protein to confirm our proposed design.
We consulted with professional experts and governmental agencies to make the design of our detection kit more effective.

Check our Attributions page to see who helped us. We appreciate the all the support we have received.

We provide a novel PCR method, LAE, to produce TRS.

Our engineering achievements are summarized on Engineering and Results page.
We optimized concentrations of TR-PCR primers to produce the TRSs using LAE. We are summarized on the Results page.
We demonstrated that we can produce the peptides with conjugated AuNPs.
We modified glass fiber membranes, which serve as the substrate for the detection kit, to make them capable of conjugating with peptides or proteins.
We successfully expressed the extracellular domain of CLEC5A.

Check our Collaborations page to see who collaborated with us.
We mentored NYMU Taipei on using Rosetta for protein modeling and docking.
We helped Mingdao iGEM 2020 to examine the metabolites produced by oral bacteria while they provided us ( green fluorescent proteins) GFPs as mock E proteins to test the affinity between them and the test line.
We collaborated with Team iGEM IISER Berhampur, which is also working on dengue, to jointly carry out a global survey on dengue. They also helped us to translate our children’s storybook into Hindi.

Check our Human Practices page to see how we connected with society.
To ensure that our project is socially responsible and could have a substantial impact, we consulted with various government officials, experts and the public to consider how our project would fit into the communities and health care systems.

Check our Implementation page to see how we plan to implement our project.
We targeted our customers and planned a distribution network by establishing the supply chain of our product.
We considered how to realize the whole picture by setting goals, both short term and long term.
We considered various challenges we would meet when implementing it in society.

Check our Human Practices page to see how expert opinions shaped our project.
We consulted with Taiwan Food and Drug Administration (TFDA) and Dengue Prevention and Control Center to understand their needs and optimized our product accordingly.
We have obtained substantial advice from experts in scientific fields, who directed us how to improve the use of AuNPs in the detection kit.

Details are shown on our Model page.
We used Rosetta to generate the structures of the peptides and proteins and simulate their interactions.
We employed DLVO theory to calculate the repulsion between gold nanoparticles to confirm there is no chance that two AuNPs could attach to adjoining faces on the virions, which could have prevented binding to the test line.

Check our Science Communication page to see how we conducted our educational activities.
We created a children’s storybook talking about viruses in Chinese, then translated it into English and Hindi. Those languages are the first three most-spoken languages in the world.
We created a podcast program talking about synthetic biology for the younger generation.
We recorded a Taiwanese Hokkien audio to disseminate knowledge of dengue for senior citizens.

Check our Science Communication and Inclusivity pages to see how we invited traditionally underrepresented communities to participate in science.
We filmed a glove puppetry show to disseminate knowledge of dengue, in a unique collaboration with a professional troupe performing this traditional Chinese art form.
We provided science education opportunities to inmates in a juvenile correction school.