W1- Principles & Practices- Class Assigmnent

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First, describe a biological engineering application or tool you want to develop and why. This could be inspired by an idea for your HTGAA class project and/or something for which you are already doing in your research, or something you are just curious about.

Lactate Biosensor Tattoo for competition swimmers!

I propose developing a semi-permanent, waterproof biosensor tattoo that detects lactate levels in athletes during pool training. The system would rely on engineered biological circuits that respond to lactate and trigger a visible fluorescent or colorimetric signal, functioning as a traffic-light-style, semi-quantitative indicator of physiological stress.
The idea is connected to course topics such as genetic circuit design and fluorescent protein signaling. Lactate would act as the biological input, while the output would be a color change generated by chromoproteins or fluorescent reporters, similar to the chromophore and genetic circuit.
This tool doesn’t pretend to replace clinical blood tests or provide precise measurements. Instead, it will support athletic training by providing real-time visual feedback, reducing invasive blood sampling, and minimizing medical waste, such as needles and collection tubes.
This idea is inspired by my personal experience as a competitive swimmer, where lactate monitoring required repeated finger pricks during intense training sessions. I am particularly interested in exploring how biological sensing circuits and fluorescence-based outputs could be adapted to function under demanding conditions such as exercise, pool conditions, and temperature variation.

Swimmer (physiological lactate production):

→ Input: Lactate diffusion into the tattoo microenvironment

→ Sensing module: Lactate-responsive biological circuit

→ Signal transduction: Activation of chromoprotein / fluorescent reporter

→ Output: Visual color scale (green/yellow/red)

Biosensor tattoo swimmers.png