It sounds very very crazy at first, but as I take your hand and we venture deeper into the physics and chemistry behind it your eyes will slowly grow larger (because your eyelids will open, of course) and you'll look like a crazy awestruck scientist (even if you're a banker). The simplicity will grip you like you just heard the answer to everything and you'll realize it truly isn't rocket science, so to speak.
That's how I imagine, with proof to back up, a conversation about my project with a stranger. My boss and I have been nurturing this brainchild of his for four years now. It looks nothing like the rough sketch he had conjured when the idea was first born, because I came along and made it wackier yet closer to what I like to call the benevolent mutant XI of DNA nanomachines (Xmen, anyone?).
It's a small machine packed with opportunities to detect any molecule that can be detected. It's like a color-gun that is limited by how many colors you have. So this machine, let's call it the Slider, is made using DNA as the building material, which makes it extremely cheap. DNA is also quite robust; its insane desperation to exist on this planet gives it very high shelf-life - throw a tube of dried DNA in the desert, come back after 6 months, rehydrate and use it! My boss, in one of his coffee breaks, calculated the cost of 1 one these bad boys to be $0.000000000000000001...that's 17 zeros in case you aren't counting.
DNA is a very fascinating molecule. Everyone knows it as the instruction manual of living organisms on Earth. If we, the products of our genomes, were fictions, then evolution would blow Tolkein, Rowling and Martin and every bestselling author out of the water. It codes genes and those genes pretty much run the world by expressing proteins and RNA molecules. Another facet of DNA is its extreme inclination to form double helices - two DNA strands wrap up around each other based on their very specific sequence - like two spies meeting in a shady ally, "did John send you?" "No, John's my middle name". Right, I'm not the spy-type.
Using this highly specific sequence, different DNA strands can be synthetically designed and if allowed to mingle in a match.com cocktail event for DNA strands, lo and behold you have a DNA nanostructure! Now imagine these DNA nanostructures to look like, for simplicity, the big rectangle lego boards that we build skyscrapers on (though DNA nanostructures can be pretty much of any shape). The way one can plug other lego pieces on the board, scientists can chemically and very precisely attach different molecules onto DNA nanostructures - you want protein A 5.5nanometers away from protein B on the top left corner of this DNA nanostructure? Done and done! And then done again! In less then a week.
This nanomachine, the Slider, works the same way. It has been plugged with a molecule capture site and a light-emitting site to tell us humans of the diagnosis. It's a pregnancy-test stick, only extremely small and tailored to diagnose other diseases.
We believe in our DNA and in synthetic DNA, and we have dedicated our time to creating a very inexpensive, easy to implement diagnostic tool. The Slider, can be coded to have signals that indicate the presence of certain disease-related molecules. For instance, Ebola is causing massive havoc. It's not affordable to provide every make-shift clinic around the world with state-of-the-art testing machines. If we can program the Slider to detect the presence of Ebola associated molecules, diagnosis can hopefully become a $1-1day-every-person affair.
Traditionally, scientific research has been considered a thing for geeks. But, did you know you have been part of it all this time? The money that goes into universities and research labs is yours! Crowd funding is a very exciting strategy to bring you closer to the product of your money. So please consider making a difference by funding us!
That's how I imagine, with proof to back up, a conversation about my project with a stranger. My boss and I have been nurturing this brainchild of his for four years now. It looks nothing like the rough sketch he had conjured when the idea was first born, because I came along and made it wackier yet closer to what I like to call the benevolent mutant XI of DNA nanomachines (Xmen, anyone?).
It's a small machine packed with opportunities to detect any molecule that can be detected. It's like a color-gun that is limited by how many colors you have. So this machine, let's call it the Slider, is made using DNA as the building material, which makes it extremely cheap. DNA is also quite robust; its insane desperation to exist on this planet gives it very high shelf-life - throw a tube of dried DNA in the desert, come back after 6 months, rehydrate and use it! My boss, in one of his coffee breaks, calculated the cost of 1 one these bad boys to be $0.000000000000000001...that's 17 zeros in case you aren't counting.
DNA is a very fascinating molecule. Everyone knows it as the instruction manual of living organisms on Earth. If we, the products of our genomes, were fictions, then evolution would blow Tolkein, Rowling and Martin and every bestselling author out of the water. It codes genes and those genes pretty much run the world by expressing proteins and RNA molecules. Another facet of DNA is its extreme inclination to form double helices - two DNA strands wrap up around each other based on their very specific sequence - like two spies meeting in a shady ally, "did John send you?" "No, John's my middle name". Right, I'm not the spy-type.
Using this highly specific sequence, different DNA strands can be synthetically designed and if allowed to mingle in a match.com cocktail event for DNA strands, lo and behold you have a DNA nanostructure! Now imagine these DNA nanostructures to look like, for simplicity, the big rectangle lego boards that we build skyscrapers on (though DNA nanostructures can be pretty much of any shape). The way one can plug other lego pieces on the board, scientists can chemically and very precisely attach different molecules onto DNA nanostructures - you want protein A 5.5nanometers away from protein B on the top left corner of this DNA nanostructure? Done and done! And then done again! In less then a week.
This nanomachine, the Slider, works the same way. It has been plugged with a molecule capture site and a light-emitting site to tell us humans of the diagnosis. It's a pregnancy-test stick, only extremely small and tailored to diagnose other diseases.
We believe in our DNA and in synthetic DNA, and we have dedicated our time to creating a very inexpensive, easy to implement diagnostic tool. The Slider, can be coded to have signals that indicate the presence of certain disease-related molecules. For instance, Ebola is causing massive havoc. It's not affordable to provide every make-shift clinic around the world with state-of-the-art testing machines. If we can program the Slider to detect the presence of Ebola associated molecules, diagnosis can hopefully become a $1-1day-every-person affair.
Traditionally, scientific research has been considered a thing for geeks. But, did you know you have been part of it all this time? The money that goes into universities and research labs is yours! Crowd funding is a very exciting strategy to bring you closer to the product of your money. So please consider making a difference by funding us!
