Individual Final Project
EARLY LIVER DAMAGE BIOSENSOR
Abstract:
Liver disease is a major global health issue, and early detection of liver damage remains challenging due to the need for centralized laboratory testing and reliance on single-biomarker diagnostics. This project addresses the need for a rapid, low-cost, and accessible diagnostic tool for early and accurate detection of liver injury. The overall objective is to develop a paper-based, cell-free biosensor capable of detecting and grading liver damage from a finger-prick blood sample.
The project hypothesizes that a multiplex biosensing system integrating synthetic gene circuits can accurately distinguish between different levels of liver damage by measuring multiple circulating biomarkers simultaneously, specifically miR-122 and Keratin-18 (K18). These biomarkers reflect early hepatocyte stress and cell death, respectively, enabling more robust disease classification than single-marker approaches.
To achieve this objective, the system will use freeze-dried cell-free transcription-translation (TX-TL) systems embedded in paper-based microfluidic devices. Each biomarker will be detected through engineered genetic circuits such as RNA-responsive toehold switches or aptamer-based recognition systems, producing a measurable colorimetric or fluorescent output. Signals from multiple detection zones will be integrated into a computational scoring model that assigns a liver damage grade from 0 (healthy) to 4 (critical damage).
This approach is expected to demonstrate that synthetic biology-based biosensors can enable rapid, multiplex, point-of-care diagnostics for liver disease using minimal equipment and sample volume.