Difference between revisions of "Team:TU-Eindhoven/HP/Silver"
| Line 28: | Line 28: | ||
float:left; | float:left; | ||
width:300px; | width:300px; | ||
| − | margin-left: | + | margin-left:241px;} |
.Text2, .Text4{ | .Text2, .Text4{ | ||
float:left; | float:left; | ||
Revision as of 13:32, 27 October 2017
Think before doing
RIVM
In the Netherlands, the RIVM (the Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment) conducts research to make sure that we keep ourselves and our environment healthy. This also includes opening discussions about the developments in synthetic biology and the safety issues regarding this.
This year the RIVM encouraged the Dutch iGEM teams to 'think before doing': think about how we are going to incorporate safe-by-design in our project.
Safe by design
Below you can find a short description of our implementation of "Safe by Design". If you want to know more about certain topics use the arrows.
What is Safe by Design
Safe by design is a way to incorporate safety in every design aspect: start to think about safety issues and risks even in the design stage of the project to identify the risks beforehand instead of considering them afterwards.
The first step to incorporating safe-by-design is to think about what is meant by safe-by-design. Safe-by-design can be seen as a way to incorporate safety in every design aspect. By starting to think about safety issues and risks even in the design stage of the project, risks can be identified beforehand, instead of considered afterwards. Key to this is to not only to think about the components (DNA, chemicals, proteins) which are used, but also about the outcome of the reactions taking place. For instance, if a chemical reaction could produce unwanted by-products, these should also be considered.
Our project
In our project we do not design a bacterial system, but we work with proteins which can form a network. The scaffold protein and its binding partner are well studied at our university. The small molecule inducer is a toxin, but research has shown that it has no measurable negative effects in high concentration. The proteins will be used in our project to make a network, we have modeled this network formation to provide us with more information about this.
Second text
Application --> protease specific
The application of our project lies in encapsulating cancer cells. The idea is that an inhibition site is present which prevents the two proteins to interact. However, a cleavage site is introduced which can only be cleaved by proteases excreted by tumor cells, thus making it a specific process.
What if it goes wrong
To prevent unwanted gelation, an extra cleavage site can be introduced, specific for another protease. When the network formation occurs at an unwanted location, this other protease can be added and the network will fall apart.
