Difference between revisions of "Team:Groningen/Applied Design"
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| − | < | + | <h2> Applied Design </h2> |
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| + | <section id="Overview"> | ||
| + | <p class="left"><b>Overview</b></p> | ||
| + | <p class="left">We wanted our product to be used on the factory work floor, to that end we designed a cartridge that could be used easily and safely. Legislatively this is still a problem as any GMO that is used needs a special GMO permit throughout European countries. In most cases food industry companies we went to are very opposed to acquiring such permits for factories as the public image of GMO's is often considered dangerous, especially in the food industry.</p> | ||
| + | <p class="left">The cartridge we designed is made to be very cheap to produce (just injection molded plastics and bacteria), and very easy to use. It does not require any extra expensive lab equipment nor would it need much training. This has clear advantages compared to more involved methods such as PCR analysis which need well stocked labs with highly trained personell.</p> | ||
| + | <p class="left"><b>Cartridge</b></p> | ||
| + | <p class="left">We started out with a 2D blueprint for a box with slides that could be opened from the outside by the operator. In this idea the bacteria would be a freeze dried powder in the reaction chamber. To get the bacteria to grow a growth medium would first be added before the milk sample. Afterwards the whole thing would be autoclaved or incinerated. It was decided that the slides idea would be too hard to make waterproof, plus any leakage would be to the outside. We redesigned it to have as few components penetrating the cartridge as possible, to make it as safe as it can be. Furthermore we made it a lot safer already by putting the bacteria inside a semipermeable plastic, so even if anything leaked the bacteria would not be able to get out. This new plan was worked out in 3D and a prototype was printed using our <a href="igemmov">extruder 3D printer.</a> The problem with this design was immediately obvious as the fidelity of the racks and pinions (gears) was too low to work right. Plus we had doubts concerning the slides going sideways instead of smoothly to either side. Making it watertight seemed daunting at this point. We had another insight that we did not need to add growth media separately, being <i>L. Lactis</i> they should already grow in a milk sample. To speed up the grow we would simply add freeze dried nutrients to the package, that way you would only need to add water. A previous <a href="https://2012.igem.org/Team:Groningen/Sticker">Groningen team (2012)</a> has done something similar with a semipermeable package. From talking to </p> | ||
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| + | <p class="left"><b>Semipermeable Plastic</b></p> | ||
| + | There are various semipermeable plastics. They work the same as semipermeable membranes in that they allow the passage of a certain size of particle. For our purposes we need a plastic with pores in it of around 100nm. That way they can let through the water and virus particles while retaining the bacteria. The most obvious plastics are Low density polyethylene or cellophane, both are in use as semipermeable plastics in other applications (dialysis membranes for example). | ||
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Revision as of 11:28, 14 October 2017
Applied Design
inputsetxe
Overview
We wanted our product to be used on the factory work floor, to that end we designed a cartridge that could be used easily and safely. Legislatively this is still a problem as any GMO that is used needs a special GMO permit throughout European countries. In most cases food industry companies we went to are very opposed to acquiring such permits for factories as the public image of GMO's is often considered dangerous, especially in the food industry.
The cartridge we designed is made to be very cheap to produce (just injection molded plastics and bacteria), and very easy to use. It does not require any extra expensive lab equipment nor would it need much training. This has clear advantages compared to more involved methods such as PCR analysis which need well stocked labs with highly trained personell.
Cartridge
We started out with a 2D blueprint for a box with slides that could be opened from the outside by the operator. In this idea the bacteria would be a freeze dried powder in the reaction chamber. To get the bacteria to grow a growth medium would first be added before the milk sample. Afterwards the whole thing would be autoclaved or incinerated. It was decided that the slides idea would be too hard to make waterproof, plus any leakage would be to the outside. We redesigned it to have as few components penetrating the cartridge as possible, to make it as safe as it can be. Furthermore we made it a lot safer already by putting the bacteria inside a semipermeable plastic, so even if anything leaked the bacteria would not be able to get out. This new plan was worked out in 3D and a prototype was printed using our extruder 3D printer. The problem with this design was immediately obvious as the fidelity of the racks and pinions (gears) was too low to work right. Plus we had doubts concerning the slides going sideways instead of smoothly to either side. Making it watertight seemed daunting at this point. We had another insight that we did not need to add growth media separately, being L. Lactis they should already grow in a milk sample. To speed up the grow we would simply add freeze dried nutrients to the package, that way you would only need to add water. A previous Groningen team (2012) has done something similar with a semipermeable package. From talking to
Semipermeable Plastic
There are various semipermeable plastics. They work the same as semipermeable membranes in that they allow the passage of a certain size of particle. For our purposes we need a plastic with pores in it of around 100nm. That way they can let through the water and virus particles while retaining the bacteria. The most obvious plastics are Low density polyethylene or cellophane, both are in use as semipermeable plastics in other applications (dialysis membranes for example).