Team:EPF Lausanne

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BioPad


EPFL


The Bio Pad Project

Most sciences have the advantage of being able to detect and process signals in a fast and efficient way.

Biology lacks this ability as signal detection and processing requires large amounts of time leading to inaccuracies and potential interferences from external sources. We aim to improve this and make signal induction faster and more accurate, while designing an innovating new biological machine using protein complementation techniques.

As a proof of concept of this way of viewing biology, this year’s EPFL iGEM team aims to build the first biological touchpad, hereafter referred as the BioPad.

The BioPad will have several applications: allowing users to control electronics in real time through living organisms; as well as deliver a fast, efficient, and accurate antibiotic screening system


Touch Pad

Our Touch Pad will be the first biological track pad. The pad itself will need nothing else than a little water and nutriments to be operational. The EPFL Bio touch pad aims to be a proof of concept for the introduction of biological components in engineering. As such, futuristic applications of this technology include a substitute to “traditional” touch pads. This could have an economic and ecological impact as indium oxide, the main component of today’s touch screens, is being rapidly depleted (some estimate depletion by 2030).


Drug Screening

One of the applications of the EPFL Bio Touch pad is drug screening. This is because it could allow researchers to track the activation of certain pathways by luminescence. Thanks to our light detection and localization system, researchers could screen small molecule libraries in a fast, fully automated, and cheap way. We could apply this concept to find molecules that could affect the biological pathway used for our Bio Pad project.


Touch Pad

Our Touch Pad will be the first biological track pad. The pad itself will need nothing else than a little water and nutriments to be operational. The EPFL Bio touch pad aims to be a proof of concept for the introduction of biological components in engineering. As such, futuristic applications of this technology include a substitute to “traditional” touch pads. This could have an economic and ecological impact as indium oxide, the main component of today’s touch screens, is being rapidly depleted (some estimate depletion by 2030).