Week 10 HW: Imaging and Measurement
Final Project
- Please identify at least one (ideally many) aspect(s) of your project that you will measure. It could be the mass or sequence of a protein, the presence, absence, or quantity of a biomarker, etc.
- Please describe all of the elements you would like to measure, and furthermore describe how you will perform these measurements.
- What are the technologies you will use (e.g., gel electrophoresis, DNA sequencing, mass spectrometry, etc.)? Describe in detail.
My final project is inherently related to measurement, as it is going to be a measurement instrument. The main aspect that I will measure for my final project is therefore its core purpose — measuring testosterone levels in sweat. To do that, I will use either cell-free systems, bacterial expression, or an aptamer-based method to create a fluorescent or electrical signal that correlates with the levels of testosterone in the sample.
Moreover, I would measure the following:
- The length of the different DNA fragments I designed for the project, using gel electrophoresis, to make sure they are consistent with my design.
- The time it takes for the sensor I create to detect the level of testosterone, or in earlier versions, the time it takes to produce a reliable signal that indicates that there is testosterone in the sample.
- The sensitivity and accuracy of the sensor - specifically, the range of testosterone concentrations it can reliably detect, its limit of detection, and how consistent the signal is across repeated measurements. This will help me evaluate how precise and usable the system is in practice.
- The specificity of the sensor - testing whether the system responds uniquely to testosterone versus similar molecules (e.g., other hormones in sweat), to ensure that the signal is not due to interference.
Additionally, this is a measurement that would be done further down the line, but is very much needed: I will measure both the levels of testosterone in sweat using my sensor, and the levels of testosterone in the blood using traditional blood tests, to create a correlation between the two (and verify that it exists). This will allow me to deduce what certain levels of testosterone in sweat, detected by my sensor, actually mean in terms of blood levels, and thereby validate the method.