Abstract

Our project is focused on developing a biosensor for certain water pollutants, with a modular and scalable approach. This approach would make it easy to adapt the response for the detection of different substances. Until now, there have been some experiences of pollutant biosensing in iGEM, but most of them rely on expensive and specific equipment, or qualified people to interpret the results. Being aware that most of the populations affected by consumption of contaminated groundwater don’t have scientific or technical training, we intend the device to be cheap and easily distributed. We also have designed it in a way that any user with minimal training (using an image-based instructions) could easily determine the presence and level of the contaminant on drinking water. The project will focus on measuring a primary pollutant: arsenic. However, its modular and scalable design provides an easy way to measure various contaminants such as nitrate/nitrite, lead, hydrocarbons, etcetera. We are working with industrial designers and 3D printing technology (see Attributions) to expand our initial idea to the industry production. We now have a prototype of the physical devise and are testing the hole biological design before assembling all together. We have also measured field samples with a simplified model of our hole system. We expect to have all assembled together and ready in the user hands in the near future.