Title: Run Sperm Run

Description: Sperm quality has been facing challenges worldwide. It is a problem that we cannot escape anymore, for our next generation, for the future of all humanity, yet it still lacks public awareness due to shame feelings and fluke minds. Tsinghua iGEM 2022 team aims to develop a novel diagnostic method to test sperm quality for potential household applications, contributing our efforts to tackling the issue of reproductive health.

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Title: An electrochemical enzyme biosensor for bisphenol A detection

Description: Environmental pollution has always been a critical issue, our project focuses on one of the most widely used chemicals, bisphenol A.

Since its advantages in industrial production, which are transparency, durability, anti-corrosion, etc., bisphenol A has been used in plenty of aspects of the industry. However, the majority of people have nearly no awareness of how BPA is harmful to our health. It is verified to be associated with a variety of diseases including hypertension, prostatic cancer, and chromosomal defects. Therefore, investigating a method to detect bisphenol A is crucial.

Our detection method is based on displaying tyrosinase on the surface of E. coli, followed by adsorption onto a glassy-carbon electrode. In detail, tyrosinase is an oxidase that can oxidize BPA to catechol. After that, catechol can still be oxidized by BPA to o-quinone. O-quinone is an electrochemically active substance that can produce electric energy. By detecting this electric signal, the concentration of BPA can be obtained. Apart from that, cell-surface display technology is chosen because of its stability, high specificity, and cost-effectiveness. Finally, in applications, the results show our detection method can provide a better solution for BPA detection in cost, accuracy, and simplification.

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Title: Ceres

Description: Ontario is the top provincial greenhouse producer in Canada. In 2020, Ontario produced 257.6 million kgs of greenhouse tomatoes, with a farm gate value of 1.2 billion dollars. Growers experience massive yield losses worth hundreds of millions of dollars every year due to disease alone. At iGEM Guelph, we have engineered a solution capable of defending greenhouse tomatoes from insect and fungal infections.

We engineered Bacillus subtilis, a bacteria naturally found in the rhizosphere of healthy tomato plants, to express two cytotoxic proteins isolated from the bacteria Bacillus thuringiensis. The toxins were placed downstream of an inducible promoter, giving the grower control over whether our bacteria expresses the bioinsecticide. Our biopesticide-producing bacteria can be added to the soil to form a protective biofilm around the plant’s roots. Now, when insect larvae, which often carry fungal diseases, attempt to feed on the plant's roots, the insect will perish.

This new bioinsecticide will allow farmers all over Ontario to improve protection and take preventative measures for their crops, as well as form a stepping stone for a new generation of innovative and safe biopesticide defence.

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Title: Dia-Beatable: A simple treatment for diabetes using self-amplifying RNA

Description: Diabetes affects millions of people around the world. The current treatments can be expensive and time-consuming. Our project “Dia-Beatable” aims to solve some of these problems by having diabetes patients produce their own insulin. We have developed a system that consists of a self-amplifying mRNA that expresses the human insulin gene on an as needed basis. We hope that our system can be injected in patients monthly, making diabetes treatment much easier.

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Title: Deconta-Mn-ate

Description: Our goal is to engineer bacteria to sense the presence of manganese ions in water. Our plasmid has a manganese sensitive promoter and riboswitch that would drive expression of green fluorescent protein when manganese is detected in a sample. We believe this technology will enable people to test their own water without the use of a lab or expensive equipment.

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Title: Design of a Biosensor for Gold Prospecting in Mining

Description: Our project seeks to reduce environmental degradation, cost, and time, associated with mining - by developing a geophysical method based on synthetic biology. We're developing a multifunctional biosensor. By leveraging the functionality of the golTSB operon, the ARS operon, and the Ferric uptake regulator. We engineer 3 strains of E coli bacteria, that will detect gold, arsenic, and iron. The bio indicators from these bacteria give explorers an idea of gold prospects on a piece of land. Finally, we put all components within a stake, which is simply plunged into the ground.

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Title: Melabios: A New Friendly Way to Increase Melatonin Production from Plants

Description: The number of people who have insomnia keeps increasing for many reasons. Taking melatonin, a natural hormone produced in the pineal gland of our brains will affect one’s sleeping cycle. Our project aims to develop an environmental-friendly and natural way to synthesize melatonin. Melatonin can be found in plants. However, the yield is relatively small. And what we try to improve is the yield.

We first extract COMT DNA, related to melatonin production, from aspen, run gel electrophoresis to test its purity, and then amplify it using polymerase chain reaction. Then, we transformed our target DNA into two different carriers for storage and expression and transferred them into E.coli. Finally, we transformed extracted plasmid into agrobacteria to infect aspen, over-expressing our target DNA, therefore increasing productivity.

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Title: Micro Nuwa: A multi-target editor for DNA information storage

Description: Our project aims to accelerate the practical application of DNA storage technology. The Micro Nuwa editor was brought into existence by our team for the purpose. With the assistance of multi-target technique, she is capable of modifying information which has been stored in DNA sequences, and eventually satisfy our needs of changing information in DNA storage.

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Title: Your almighty detective

Description: The full potential of biosensing devices is hampered by their high analytical costs, due to the need for expensive apparatus. Thinker_China is creating a revolutionary low-cost detection system used in surveillance and environmental monitoring applications: SRRz gene inserted in the recombinant plasmid leads to an observable chromatic reaction, allowing efficient detection of specific chemical compounds and biological analytes, which will be promising for scientists to utilize.

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Title: Memory-ذكري

Description: Novel treatment for the most common type of Dementia which is Alzheimer's disease, the latter is characterized by the presence of vast aggregates of NFT (Neurofibrillary Tangles) of Tau protein and amyloid-beta plaques which are the main cause of the disease progression. Whereas, current medications do not treat the disease entirely but reduce the symptoms and most of them have no effect in the late stage of AD. The proposed drug aims to work in both stages early and late. In the early stage, the dysfunction in the brain starts to appear in the entorhinal cortex and hippocampus region by the formation of aggregates of phosphorylated proteins and the dysfunction of the ubiquitin-proteasomal system, our solution is to reactivate the dysfunctional system to degrade the accumulations of Tau protein to recover the healthy brain again. In the late stages, this accumulation of Tau, and amyloid-beta proteins become in the matrix of the brain after disintegrating the microtubules by this aggregation, therefore our cure will be a switchable one based on a protease system to degrade these plaques to avoid the dangerous effects of this accumulation.

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