Team:TUDelft/Project

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<p>The onset of spring brings with it the sweet fragrance of the tulips heralding a new year and new beginnings. For TU Delft iGEM, it meant the formation of a new team to compete in the 2012 version of the prestigious International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) synthetic biology competition to be held at the MIT in Boston, to build on the successes of the 2009 "Bacterial Relay Race" team which won the award for the best information processing project and the 2010 "Alkanivore" team which was one of the 6 finalists and which also won the best presentation award for providing a green solution for oil spills. <br>
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    <h2>Snifferomyces - A Tuberculosis Screening Automaton</h2>
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This year 9 students from TU Delft and 2 students from Leiden along with 7 advisors come together to form team "Snifferomyces" with a goal of providing sniffing capabilities to yeast to achieve rapid and a cost effective diagnosis system for Tuberculosis. <br>
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<p> What is the use of technology, if it cannot contribute to improving human life? With this thought in mind, the TU Delft 2012 iGEM team, composed of students from the life sciences, bioinformatics, applied physics, aerospace, mechanical and chemical engineering disciplines decided to use the Synthetic Biology platform to work on, addressing a real challenge affecting several lives.
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Synthetic biology is a new area of biological research and technology that encompasses a variety of different approaches, methodologies and disciplines, combining the areas of science and engineering with a common goal to design and construct new biological functions and systems not found in nature. <br>
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The iGEM which began in January of 2003 is the premiere undergraduate Synthetic Biology competition in which student teams are given a kit of biological parts at the beginning of the summer from the Registry of Standard Biological Parts, to work on it at their own schools over the summer. They use these parts and new parts of their own design, to build biological systems and operate them in living cells thus providing an exceptionally motivating and an effective teaching method. <br>
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Inspired by the sniffer rats trained to smell the presence of tuberculosis, the team decided to build an autonomous olfactory system to detect volatile compounds, by re-inventing man's oldest industrial microorganism, yeast, to provide for a non-invasive, rapid and cost-effective diagnosis system for tuberculosis.
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The 2012 project of the TU Delft iGEM team, draws inspiration from the sniffer rats which can be trained to sniff out unexploded landmines and tuberculosis. Tuberculosis infects around 8 million people a year and kills approximately 2 million. Drugs to treat tuberculosis have been around for a long time, so a rapid diagnosis system can help curb the spread of the disease.<br>
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The goal of this project is to develop a microbial based system for detection. Several systems have been characterized, e.g. the I7 receptors in rats which could be coupled to microbial systems like the GPRS system in S. cerevisiae. Using bioinformatics and molecular tools the team, plans to develop a library of receptor proteins to improve the sensitivity and selectivity of gaseous detection. A working detection system not only has applications for sensing, but also communication in non-aqueous environments between different species and kingdoms. <br>
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Using the system described above the proposal is to build a device that aids in the rapid and cost effective detection of tuberculosis. The team also plans to achieve a proof of principle for gaseous yeast / E.coli communication on plates. </p></html>
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<h3>The problem</h3>
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<p>Lack of diagnostic capacity has been a crucial barrier preventing an effective response to the challenges of Tuberculosis (TB). It is second only to HIV/AIDS as the greatest killer worldwide due to a single infectious agent. In 2010, 8.8 million people fell ill with TB and 1.4 million died from it and over 95% of TB deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries where, standard TB diagnostic tools that need to be used in a lab setting pose major barriers for screening due to the costs and time involved in the process.
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<h3>The Approach</h3>
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<p>We approach this challenge by designing an olfactory device that would detect specific volatile compounds. Our aim in this project is to introduce olfactory receptor gene fusions into <i>Saccharomyces cerevisiae</i> and link these to a physiological response that can be seen with naked eye. We divide the project into two subcategories
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<li>A diagnosis system for the presence of tuberculosis bacteria in the lungs via sensing of chemical compound <i> methyl nicotinate </i>by <i> S. cerevisiae</i>. For diagnostics, the response to these molecules is light, generated by either Lux proteins (visible blue light) or GFP (fluorescent green).
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<li>A generic toolkit, allowing scientists to introduce their own olfactory receptors in yeast with minimal effort for the detection of other volatile compounds.
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<p> In line with this year’s focus of the festival on emerging autonomous technologies that play by the rules of nature, our interdisciplinary project team embodies the true essence of the festival by demonstrating how people from different areas of science can come together to innovate and create technologies that can improve our quality of life. The olfactory system also showcases how an organism as ancient as yeast, with its rich tradition in industrial microbiology can be used, with a little innovation, in designing autonomous systems which can contribute in an extraordinary way for the betterment of society.  
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Revision as of 08:58, 12 July 2012

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Snifferomyces - A Tuberculosis Screening Automaton

What is the use of technology, if it cannot contribute to improving human life? With this thought in mind, the TU Delft 2012 iGEM team, composed of students from the life sciences, bioinformatics, applied physics, aerospace, mechanical and chemical engineering disciplines decided to use the Synthetic Biology platform to work on, addressing a real challenge affecting several lives.
Inspired by the sniffer rats trained to smell the presence of tuberculosis, the team decided to build an autonomous olfactory system to detect volatile compounds, by re-inventing man's oldest industrial microorganism, yeast, to provide for a non-invasive, rapid and cost-effective diagnosis system for tuberculosis.



The problem

Lack of diagnostic capacity has been a crucial barrier preventing an effective response to the challenges of Tuberculosis (TB). It is second only to HIV/AIDS as the greatest killer worldwide due to a single infectious agent. In 2010, 8.8 million people fell ill with TB and 1.4 million died from it and over 95% of TB deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries where, standard TB diagnostic tools that need to be used in a lab setting pose major barriers for screening due to the costs and time involved in the process.


The Approach

We approach this challenge by designing an olfactory device that would detect specific volatile compounds. Our aim in this project is to introduce olfactory receptor gene fusions into Saccharomyces cerevisiae and link these to a physiological response that can be seen with naked eye. We divide the project into two subcategories

  1. A diagnosis system for the presence of tuberculosis bacteria in the lungs via sensing of chemical compound methyl nicotinate by S. cerevisiae. For diagnostics, the response to these molecules is light, generated by either Lux proteins (visible blue light) or GFP (fluorescent green).
  2. A generic toolkit, allowing scientists to introduce their own olfactory receptors in yeast with minimal effort for the detection of other volatile compounds.

In line with this year’s focus of the festival on emerging autonomous technologies that play by the rules of nature, our interdisciplinary project team embodies the true essence of the festival by demonstrating how people from different areas of science can come together to innovate and create technologies that can improve our quality of life. The olfactory system also showcases how an organism as ancient as yeast, with its rich tradition in industrial microbiology can be used, with a little innovation, in designing autonomous systems which can contribute in an extraordinary way for the betterment of society.

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