Team:UPF Barcelona/Design

Team:UPF Barcelona - 2021.igem.org




Project

Design

In order to start each of our multiple engineering cycles, the design of ARIA’s three main components was the first step. In this page, this first cycle stage for each of the three main elements of our project is exposed.

Introduction

Our whole project consists of 3 different modules that have been produced in parallel. Two of them are based on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the third is a wet laboratory module.

Alpha is a research AI made from a variety of tools that is capable of analyzing thousands of genomes from public databases on the internet, constructing pangenomes and finding differences between genomes. Then, it is able to characterize if different DNA regions fit in antibiotic resistance characteristics or even other forms of action such as promiscuity and virulence. Finally, it can construct a set of gRNAs by analyzing word frequency in the sequences in order to create a matrix organized by functional classes.

Alexandria is a library of self-growable biosensors that have been engineered to target specific antibiotic resistant sequences found by Alpha. This step is crucial because it allows us to detect and sense individual bacterial resistant patterns. The information is deployed as a matrix where each element contains a different biosensor specific for the detection of a particular resistant sequence.

Omega is born as a second set of AI modules designed for the diagnostic prediction. Based on the markers found in the arrays it can be trained to infer resistant profiles of the pathogens sent by the users. The information arrives to the system by the means of a cross platform application that is capable of capturing the array and identifying the sensible information. To ensure a good communication between the system and the user, a server architecture is provided to allocate the algorithms and make them accessible to the public.

Each part is interconnected to the others as seen in Figure 1. In order to see the general pipeline of each part and their interconnections, mouse over the tags 'Alpha', 'Alexandria' and 'Omega' and the arrows 'Alpha → Alexandria' and 'Alpha → Omega'.


Figure 1: Scheme of the 3 modules that make up ARIA with their respective pipelines summarized in the most important steps.


Alpha Alexandria Omega AlphaToOmega AlphaToAlexandria

Mouse over the tags 'Alpha', 'Alexandria' and 'Omega' and the arrows 'Alpha → Alexandria' and 'Alpha → Omega'.