Team:NRP-UEA-Norwich/Quanticare

From 2012.igem.org

Quanticare

As part of our human practices we have produced a film in conjunction with our artist [http://www.amycongdon.com/#!mainPage Amy Congdon] which explores a futuristic world where synthetic biology is an aspect of everyday life. As we explored the idea of synthetic biology in the future we developed the idea of "Quanticare", a company created on the back of synthetic biology's rise to prominence. As the project within the labs continued and the idea of the Comparator Circuit came about we looked at how this new idea of cellular computing could be used within the Quanticare concept, leading to the idea of the living tattoo, Cura.

We wanted to produce something that would spark the imagination and truly show the future power and potential of synthetic biology, and we believe that Cura and Quanticare have achieved those aims. With Cura we have developed an original idea of a tattoo not drawn with ink, but instead drawn with immortalised mammalian cells containing different BioBricks. The concept involves each shape of the tattoo containing cells with specific BioBricks that sense a particular chemical within the body, and report on any particular changes on that chemical's levels (Figure 1.)

Figure 1. Cura is Quanticare's revolutionary healthcare solution, a tattoo made of immortalised mammalian cells containing different biobricks that have been specifically tailored to monitor and respond to changes in the body. Different areas of the tattoo correspond to different areas of the body, and using biological technology developed by the Norwich Research Park and University of East Anglia 2012 iGEM Team can react automatically to many unwanted changes, as well as fluorescing to alert the user of any problems.

The NRP iGEM team would like to thank the Biochemical Society for funding our concept video.