Team:Purdue/Plan

Purdue iGEM Page

Phase 2 Plan

Purdue iGEM has decided to dedicate another year or research and development towards cArgo. For phase 2 of our project we have quite a bit planned.

Biological Parts

Purdue iGEM will be expressing and purifying the Argonaute protein Thermus Thermophilus or TtAgo in e.coli. Along with the expression and purification of TtAgo in e.coli, we plan on expressing and purifying a previous iGEM part that is also an Argonaute protein called h2Ago. A cleaving efficiency assay will be conducted on both proteins. For TtAgo a DNA cleaving assay will be conducted and for h2Ago a RNA cleaving assay will be conducted. Mutagenesis will also be done on TtAgo to attempt to improve the proteins cleaving efficiency.

Biologics of cArgo

In phase 2 we hope to test each of our biologic systems independently and test the whole detection system from the RT-RPA to fluorescent quantification of our sample. We also plan on conducting wet lab experimentation to validate our model for our chitosan capillary and will be developing a model for RT-RPA

Hardware

For our hardware design we are exploring the idea of combining microfluidics along with paper-based assays for autonomous fluid actuation. This integrated design will hopefully be fabricated and tested to confirm the integrity of the device. The portable electric heater will also be used to simultaneously test the biologics as well as the heating circuit design.

Education and Outreach

Purdue iGEM plans to continue working on the collaborative educational YouTube series “Breaking Down Synthetic Biology.” We hope to take into account the feedback received from our test curriculum implementation at Tipton Highschool and improve our old videos, create new videos, and reach out to more high schools across the US for implementation.