Polutent detection(Bio sensor for cancer detection)
Li-koff is a team of 5 enthusiastic women. It is a faculty-led startup guided by Dr Kapila Kumar, associate professor, department of biotechnology; Director, MBRC; MRIIRS. Her expertise is in synthetic biology, virology and genomics.
Our team is technically sound, ambitious, competitive, and has the exact know-how to execute and achieve the mentioned project. Nitrosamine is a ubiquitous alkylating environmental pollutant. They have the property to alkylate our DNA
and cause mutation which ultimately leads to cancer development. They are everywhere, like in packaged goods, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, and even potable water. The conventional techniques used to quantify them are labour-intensive,
time-consuming and expensive. This problem has led us to build Li-koff. Li-koff is a bioengineered E.coli (a bacteria) built to detect these nitrosamines in a very cost-effective manner. E.coli has a natural DNA repair mechanism through
the ADA response model and using synthetic biology we have modified that model to make E.coli generate fluorescence upon detection of these nitrosamines. We are planning to make a ” Whole-Cell based paper biosensor”. This biosensor will
be easy to handle, cost-effective, accurate, and sensitive.
