Project 461939

Metabolism is at the heart of biology. Our bodies need many different small molecules like sugars, amino acids, and vitamins to maintain our tissues and we use drugs to fix health problems. Measuring the levels of these diverse molecules gives us a clear picture of our health. Measuring the levels of small molecules like metabolites and drugs is an excellent way to monitor our health but it is a major challenge for two reasons: 1.each small molecule is different and a 'one size fits all' approach is very difficult. Because of this, we measure small molecules with complex expensive machines like mass spectrometers. Nobody will ever have one of these in their home and this makes a huge bottleneck for health monitoring - if you want to analyse a urine or blood sample for a wide range of metabolites this has to be done remotely, greatly restricting the number of tests that we can do. 2.we cannot amplify small molecules. If there is too little in a sample for us to measure there is nothing we can do. This stands in stark contrast to DNA - we can easily amplify DNA millions of times within hours. This means it is nearly impossible to measure a large range of small molecules at the level of single cells or in limited samples like tears. Here, we want funds to exploit a new technology that solves both problems. Instead of measuring levels of small molecules directly, we use a specific type of sensor that detect small molecules and release a short stretch of DNA, a so-called 'barcode'. Each small molecule is detected by a different sensor and each sensor releases a different DNA barcode. In this way, just by detecting DNA barcodes, we can detect small molecules and we can either do this in research settings using DNA sequencers or in home settings using simple devices. The sensors are specific and sensitive and the released barcodes can be amplified easily. We believe that this will revolutionize how we measure small molecules across biology.