Team:Munich/Achievements


Description

Thanks to advances in molecular biology and biochemistry, scientists have been able to consistently detect lower and lower concentration of molecules1, to the point where single molecules can be reliably recognized using methods such as polymerase chain reaction (PCR)2, fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH)3 and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISA)4. This has opened doors for synthetic biology to create better and more accurate diagnostic tests that use biomarkers like nucleic acids and proteins as a target5,6. These advances have led to development of the field of molecular diagnostics. Unfortunately, current standard diagnostic methods require expensive equipment or trained personnel, which limits their usability to hospitals or laboratories. Recently, there has been a push to develop new tests that fuse the reliability of standard methods with affordable platforms such as lab-on-a-chip or paper strips to overcome these restrictions7-9. We wanted to help seal this gap and thus set out to engineer a diagnosis principle for the detection of a wide array of targets that could be used at the point-of-care.