Team:NYMU-Taipei/Criteria
Criteria
Bronze Medal
Competition Deliverables
According to the Deliverables page on iGEM’s website:
- We have created a wiki page, which includes an Attributions page.
- One of our wiki page includes the Safety21 part of our project design.
- We’ve uploaded a poster for the Giant Jamboree.
- We have prepared for the team presentation video for the Jamboree.
- We have submitted the Judging form and safety forms before the deadline.
Attributions
We have received generous help from teachers, professors and other teams during the prepation period of our project. For the professor, we visit Szu-Hao Kung Associate Professor, Szu-Hao Kung Associate Professor,and Ma, Che Alex. With differnet background, they gave us different suggestion and material. After consulting them, our team got the bacteria and fragment. With these material, we start constructing our own plasmids and produce the protein from Ecoli. In order to pay tribute to their kindness, we created an Attributions page(on wiki) for whom that has helped us. Thank for all their efforts!
Project Description
This year, NYMU-Taipei tries to capture and inactivate SARS-CoV-2. In daily life, we are often exposed to many viruses; however, passively prevent it with mask is not enough. Our goal is to actively destroy the virus, which more efficiently provide every-day protection against this outraging pandemic. As a result, we try to make protease by ourselves, which could detroy spikes, and make ACE2, which could capture spike protein. To sum up,“Catch and destroy SARS COV2” is our goal. Further information could be found in our description page on wiki.
Contribution
To capture and inactivate SARS-CoV-2, we focus on the destroy of the spike proteins on SARS-CoV-2. Thus, we’ve created a protease database searching software aiming to find the best protease for SARS COV2. As decribed, this database is not only for SARS-CoV-2, but could also be used on other viruses as well, when there is another virus outbreak, we could find the relative protease more efficiently. Besides, we invented a 3D printed detection box which is portable and can attain fast virus detection, instead of using PCR. This way, we could help the government to have the primary screening at the airport. For more info, please check out our dry lab and application page.
Silver Medal
Engineering Success
We’ve contructed fusion proteins for the capture and inactivation of COVID-19. First, we search for the protease which could interact with spike protein without detroy human body. Than we try to clone the sequence through PCR and GIBSON; however, it is hard to get the small fragment from the bacteria genomic DNA. We had tried to PCR several times from genomic DNA, but couldn’t get the result. After that, we rechoose our protease and buying the genomic DNA extraction kit. Eventually, we successfully clone the sequence and recobind it on our vector. See our engineering page for detailed information.
Collaboration
We were honored for the help from Taiwan’s National Chung Cheng University(CCU) to ensure the validity of our experiment result, including repeating our PCR experiment. We provided a plasmid containing hACE2 and a pair of primer to make linear hACE2 fragment, and CCU uses GoTaq polymerase in their PCR experiment. For more information, please visit our collaboration page.
Human Practices
Human practices play a big role in how we spread our ideas beyond the laboratory. To put synthetic biology in layman terms, we concluded that education will achieve the greatest effect. Hence, we launched a public education program in NCKU together. Students from NCKU were invited to join this exciting and interesting events. We aimed to raise their awareness toward recycling contact lens issues and sharing project ideas as well as what synthetic biology is. For more information, please visit our Human Practices and Public Engagement page.
Proposed Implementation
Contact lens, mask, and detection box are our main projects. For contact lens and mask, the public is our target. Our product served as the enhances protecton devices, which could not only block but destroy the virus in the environment. By cooperating with the manufatoring companys, we could making our products meet the reality application more. However, safty that we considered included the lens central position not to conjugated with protein in order not to cause vision blur, and we should make sure protein have bound hydrogel firmly in case of they falling off when blinking. As for the challenges, if we want promote our products, we should have them coorespond to the law about medical equipment. For more information, please visit our Implementation page.
Gold Medal
Integrated Human Practices
For our project, we have strong connections with human beings, including contacting with clinical doctor, professors, enterprises and, of course, public. Through our discussions with Doctor Chan and the people from the survey, our team decided on a final idea of using our product on protective equipment. In order for the masses to accept our product, we learned that our product should be convenient. Moreover, receiving advice from professors, our team was able to have more variety in the design. Last but not least, through our discussion with both companies, our team learned that it’s not easy for a product to go from production to the market. In conclusion, after approaching with them, we learned well on improving our project, which can benefit the whole worlds. For more information, please visit our Integrated Human Practices page.
Project Modeling
This year, our modeling focuses on finding the bnding site, we use protein docking and find the affinity. It is an extremely important part to our project because it helps us accurately check and predict the proein-protein interaction due to the limitation of wet. In our project, there are two essential parts, we try to use modeling to prove our hypothesis is correct. First, ACE2 would catch spike protein. Second, protease(pepP) can detroy the spike. For more information, please visit our Modeling page.
Improvement of an Existing Part
In our experiment, we made a construct which contains Red Fluorescent Protein with his tag on C terminal. we do this to test our gel covered with Cu2+ that can capture his tag. With rfp, we can immediately check whether it binds on the gel with naked eye.
Proof of Concept
Our detection box is a high possible device use in real world. Firstly, since it is small, it can be made through 3D printing, make it costless and convenient. From the wet lab experiment, we could conclude our gel with ACE2 can actually catch the spike of the virus and make it visualized. Sencondly, since it is a simple concept of capture and fluorescent, we are able to detect the virus in breath quickly.