Team:TU-Delft/HP

Snifferomyces - A solution for world problems?

This is a very complicated question. When we started the project, first was determined on which possible solutions we would perform study:

• Tuberculosis Detection
• Detection of explosives

The tuberculosis detection was our main case study and a lot of wetlab work on this possible methyl nicotinate receptor has been done. The detection of explosives is a application we thought of was inspired by the K-9's detecting explosives. Reportings of sensing DNT by yeast strains (Venkat Radhika et al. (2007)) supported this.

Is Snifferomyces the solution for tuberculosis detection?

This question is approached on two different ways. A interview with Dr. Rene Lutter and a implementation study. For the implementation study we subdivided this question into several smaller, more specific questions.

• What is tuberculosis?
• What are the present diagnostic tools?
• Why would a diagnostic tool based on our principle contribute?
• What does the problem area look like?
• What would be the possible drawbacks during R&D and usage?

Is Snifferomyces the solution for explosive detection?

In this case we didn't do a wetlab study but spoke to the Royal Dutch Military Police. The Royal Dutch Military Police are present at Schiphol to detect possible threats to the National Security. One part of their job is to be on the lookout for explosives. This is mainly done by K-9's, we asked their opinion about using micro organisms and GMO's as explosive detectors!

Please click on the photo's to see the project

Military Police	Implementation Study	Interview with Doctor