Team:UCopenhagen/Design
Project description
& inspiration
Defining the problem
interleukin detection (general)
Aje is writing this, it is about how these receptors look, why diid we choose them for our project, how can we express the humasn ones in yeast, what has been complete before in regard to sucess of expression etc.
this paragraph will be about how the IL1 IL6 and IL10 receptors work, pictures of their structure and how we huijacked it to only be some of it ánd why this will work for us. How do we expect teh interaction to go etc. Any literature on this.
Monitoring the disease is crucial for treatment, yet still 1 out of 3 patients with CID’s receives non-effective treatment (REF). CID’s can behave extremely different from patient to patient, so individual adjustment of treatments is needed, however data on treatment variations are not available for all patient groups?? Thus continuous monitoring of inflammation levels specific for the individual can provide immense benefit for the patient in periods of treatment adjustments or disease relapse.
Current methods for disease tracking are almost exclusively invasive and includes blood-sampling and on occasion more comprehensive procedures such as endoscopies. Invasive methods of testing not only expensive and requiring well trained personal, but they are also unpleasant and could in worst case lead to complications for the patients. In addition they do not allow the patient to self-monitor, hence the need for extensive hospital visits.
Conclusively, suffering from a chronic inflammatory disease can be extremely exhausting both physically and mentally. Although much research is being conducted in regards to the treatment of all types of inflammatory diseases, not many monitoring devices exists to make it easier for the individual living with a CID. In order to improve the quality of life for patients worldwide, we have created CIDosis.
Our Solution
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Scientific approach
We are engineering the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae to sense presence of inflammation biomarkers (interleukins/cytokines) in human sweat. The yeast is located inside a sweat patch specifically designed for this purpose. Our SPY (Sweat Patch with Yeast) device is placed on the skin, where it continually collects sweat from the patient. The yeast expresses a colored pigment to reflect the level of a certain interleukin of choice. The vision is a modular design, allowing for easy swap of the interleukin receptor in the yeast, so the patch can be tailored to the need of the individual patient group. The yeast is powered by designed receptors that boast very high sensitivity and selectivity, coupled with an efficient pheromone pathway for signal amplification. The SPY can be photographed with a specialized app to analyze the exact level of coloration regardless of light conditions.
The detailed step of the scientific development includes:
- Interleukin receptor modification Human interleukin receptors are cloned into yeast, via a fusion between the extracellular receptor domain and an endogenous yeast transmembrane protein. Successful ligand-receptor binding is tested via a common split-ubiquitin signal assay.
- Hijacking the yeast pheromone pathway The interleukin signal is amplified for more precise measurement by hijacking the signal amplification steps of the pheromone pathway in yeast. Endogenous G-alpha proteins are modified to induce the pathway upon ligand-receptor binding.
- Signal transduction via color expression The signal pathway will, post amplification, induce the transcription of a colorful pigment that will then be expressed in the yeast cell, resulting in a clear, visual color change of the yeast colony.
Design
Design is the first step in the design-build-test cycle in engineering and synthetic biology. Use this page to describe the process that you used in the design of your project. You should clearly explain the engineering principles used to design your project.
What should this page contain?
- Explanation of the engineering principles your team used in your design
- Discussion of the design iterations your team went through
- Experimental plan to test your designs