This past year, McGill iGEM has developed Nucle.io, a sepsis diagnostic device using CRISPR and DNA computing technology, to identify pathogens and antimicrobial resistance (AMR) markers in less time and at lower concentrations than the current industry standard. Given a sample of the patient’s blood and a couple of hours, our Nucle.io system can identify what pathogens are present and what antibiotics these pathogens are resistant to in a single Eppendorf tube.
The test is initiated by a novel CRISPR-CasX system we designed to easily detect specific bacterial and AMR DNA sequences at low concentrations and with high precision, which act as fingerprints to identify the culprit pathogen and its resistances. Our CRISPR-CasX system is then able to amplify our “fingerprint” signal at an extremely fast rate. We aren’t waiting for the fingerprint itself to replicate, which wastes valuable time, but instead we are using it as the trigger for much faster reactions that operate on DNA computing techniques. The final output is a fluorescent DNA strand, which allows for easily accessible results that just require a laser and an eye to read.
Nucle.io represents a major advancement in DNA computing technology, not only in application to medical diagnostics, but for detection, amplification, and classification of any mRNA biomarker. Nucle.io may be integrated into personalized medicine tuned to subtle differences in individual genotypes, boost research for understanding the effect of pollutants on the environment, and even create DNA computing devices with parallel processing, able to quickly solve large problems without consuming high amounts of electricity or water. We created the Nucle.io Compiler, an open-source software for designing, simulating, and generating new DNA circuits, as an accessible way to incorporate our DNA computing technology for broader applications.
