Team:NYMU-Taipei/Hardware
Hardware
Overview
To block COVID-19 from our body, we design a kind of hydrogel which can be attached by our ACE2-rbd-his tag + protease or ACE2-rbd-his tag + rfp structure. The former is used to catch the virus and the protease will destroy spike protein, reducing the contagiousness, the latter is used to detect whether there is virus. When binding with virus, RFP can be as a signal which can tell by our eyes directly. then we apply the hydrogel on the surface of our three hardware prototypes.
Method
There is a -OH group on one end of HEMA monomer, which won’t be used to polymerized, and we used K2MnO4 as an oxidation reagent, making -OH become -OOH. After that, we soak the modified hydrogel in CuSO4(aq) to inform -OO-Cu+. R-COOCu is like Ni-NTA, which can offer metal ions(Copper) to let histidine chelate on.
Application
Contact lens
Intial idea
The infection route of COVID-19 includes eyes, mouth and nose. In terms of mouth and nose, we can wear masks to reduce the risk of infection. However, for eye protection, apart from medical staff who wear goggles for a long time, the general public lacks the concept of eye protection. Usually, wearing glasses "may "also resist the possibility of droplet infection, but people who don’t wear glasses usually have their eyes directly exposed. To this end, we designed contact lenses that can be used as the eye’s face masks, so that the public can have another product to protect themselves.
Hydrogel with Copper ion which would bind with his tag of ACE2 his tag construct.
The main material of contact lens backbone is polyHEMA
(Polyhydroxyethylmethacrylate), which is the hydrogel we’ve chosen to make our
hardware. We transformed HEMA’s function group into what we mentioned above, and
in order to protect the protein from falling off when putting on or blocking our
vision, we only made the non-central area proceed in function group
transformation.
*To aviod vision blur, area without proteins will be 6mm diamemter on the center
Mask
Intial idea
Face masks are very useful in reducing infection of virus through mouth and nose, but after the interview and discussion with Doctor Yu-Jiun Chan, we learned that the virus particles can stick to the surface of the face masks. Consequently, if the public or medical professionals take off their masks uncarefully, they might get infected by the virus particles that had fallen off of the mask. Other than frequent hand washing as a protective measure, we designed a second line of defense on face masks. When the virus touches the face mask, the virus will get captured and then inactivated, achieving the goal of adding another layer of defense.
Mask with hydrogel membrane coating with ACE2 and protease construct.
We put two pieces of hydrogel on our mask. Additionally, the gel is conjugated with ACE2+protease. When breathing, the air will pass through the gel on the mask. If the user’s breath contains the virus, the virus will be caught and wrecked.
Detecting device
Intial idea
Imported cases account for a high percentage of diagnosed people in Taiwan. in order to decline the risk of virus spreading, we designed our device to easily detect whether or not people are infected when entering the country.
A tiny box which can detect how much virus are in the passenger’s breathe
First, let a passenger breathe through the hose to the upper box covering the ACE2 membrane at the bottom. Then add ACE2 with rfp to the upper box. By doing so, if there is virus, it would bind with ACE2 rfp construct. Next, shake for three minutes. Afterwards, open the water box and wash the membrane twice to make sure unbound ACE2 with rfp construct are removed. The waste liquid would be collected in the lower box. Eventually, if the membrane turns red, that means the pessenger’s breath contains the virus. What sets our device apart from others’ is that “debux” is portable, costless, and can detect rapidly.
References
- Matos, Seidel & Malmonge, Sonia. (2000). Synthesis of PolyHEMA hydrogels for using as biomaterials. Bulk and solution radical-initiated polymerization techniques. Materials Research. 3. 10.1590/S1516-14392000000300006.
- Synthesis of magnetic nanoparticles with an IDA or TED modified surface for purification and immobilization of poly-histidine tagged proteins
- William H. Brown, Thomas Poon, Introduction to Organic Chemistry ,2012 5th edition,p. 364-375