GENESIS - Space Apps Challenge

GENESIS| Purify the Air Supply

Purify the Air Supply

Has your time spent indoors increased during the COVID-19 pandemic as a result of stay-at-home and shelter-in-place policies worldwide? Your challenge is to use the International Space Station (ISS) as inspiration and develop a system to monitor and/or purify indoor air. It is entirely up to you whether the system you design is able to be used on Earth (for example in homes, businesses, transportation, etc.) and/or in space.

A small filter- custom designed for each hazardous material that can be used on earth and on zero-g.

Summary

Small filters that can be replaced in air conditioners in offices and homes, can be swayed and particles collected in low economic areas or places with no electricity, can be attached to drones and special design for the ISS, sent with payload with new and varying custom design for each new emerging disease.

How I Addressed This Challenge

I have designed a solution that works for all walks of life, people with any Socio-economic and uses the power of genetics and smart material science to design filters that can harbour and test for hazardous biological pathogens in the air, water or on clothes.

A swap collected either in the air filter of the air conditioners or in swabs of clothes, swayed in air or by uav drones via an air filter system attached to them. These are then allowed to grow in DMEM medium with heat-inactivated fetal bovine serum (5% or 10%) and antibiotics/antimycotics. These are then treated with a special liquid that breaks down their cell wall, and then using CRISPR as a diagnostic tool, these filters themselves in the detection chamber carry out a completely autonomous system, with a special chromogen added a simple colour change can help tell you weather the filter you have for COVID-19 is a positive or a negative. This is theorised to work since CRISPR associated nucleases have shown to be useful as a tool for molecular testing due to their ability to specifically target nucleic acid sequences in a high background of non-target sequences. The result can be collected and fed to the app to warn of anyone coming in close contact with these areas or persons.

How I Developed This Project

short repeats (CRISPR)/Cas13a‐powered filter system with DMEM and viral medium storage for growth and collection using microfluid movement withing the filters to the bionic chamber where it is sealed and protected to collect the filtrate and grow these size filtered targeted towards the pathogen for which it was designed. Still some biologicals and biological pathogens will be collected that are not the designated pathogen.

Then an integrated the quantification of the potential epitope markers without any nucleic acid amplification. Using CRISPR-CAS9 a amplification for the designate epitope is carried out. In step 2 a cromogen is added which will help us identify the epitopes.

The expected read out time is 10 min collection and process time is less than 5h, limit of detection is if pathogen is more than 10pm, in at least 0.5ul.