message from FSU IGEM 2024 team (re TMA Breathalyzer)

About iGEM and it's annual competition (this year Oct24)

The iGEM Competition is an annual, worldwide synthetic biology event aimed at undergraduate university students, as well as high school and graduate students. The iGEM Competition gives students

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the opportunity to push the boundaries of synthetic biology by tackling everyday issues facing the world. Multidisciplinary teams work together to design, build, test, and measure a system of their own design using interchangeable biological parts and standard molecular biology techniques.

The Florida State University 2023 team took an interest in solutions for Trimethylaminuria.

They developed a 'probiotic' that metabolizes Trimethylamine (TMA) in the gut.

As far as we know they got a small grant from FSU to continue after the 2023 iGEM competition.

FSU iGEM team 2024 project : a TMA Breathalyzer.

A TMA sensor is very much needed as most sufferers are anosmic to their smells.

It also seems that often close relatives and other 'loved' ones may be anosmic too (1 theory being they are genetic mix carriers, not enough to be sufferers). 

It's unknown why this is (seems to be true for all types of BO or Halitosis ?).

Theories are like e.g. you get used to it (like lillies), or the brain ignores blood odors.

The 'health' research system has had little interest in TMAU.

Once you understand the system, its a bit surprising any therapy is discovered (at least, within decades).

The covid vaccine showed what was possible when the system focus was sensible. 

Normally that would have taken a decade or 2.

Message from FSU iGEM Team

We are pleased to post a message from the 2024 FSU iGEM team.

Thank you FSU iGEM 2023 and 2024 for your interest in TMAU.

The anti-TMA probiotic concept and a TMA Breathalyzer is as good a combo we could wish for (in terms of a current realistic working therapy). 

Hello MEBO Community,  

Our names are Megan Perusse and Lucas Bonassi, we are third year undergraduate students at Florida State University, and we are the co-leads for the 2024 FSU iGEM team. We just wanted to reach out and update the community on the 2024 project.  

Each year, the iGEM team consists of new members, and those new members select a new project topic to focus on. The 2024 team was moved by the struggles of the TMAU patient community and inspired by the potential impact of the 2023 team, so we chose to continue

 focusing on TMAU for this year’s project. However, we are not continuing to work on the probiotic that was developed by the 2023 team. Further research on the probiotic has been taken up by the FSU Institute for Pediatric Rare Diseases, so we unfortunately

 do not have up to date information regarding the progress of that project. Along with the work being done by the Institute, some current and past members of our 2024 and 2023 teams are working to create a start-up to focus on the potential commercialization

 and further development of the therapeutic and later diagnostic. 

 

Instead, the 2024 team is focusing on developing a breathalyzer device to measure TMA levels. This would theoretically be used along with the probiotic to measure how much TMA the body is producing and therefore how much of the probiotic to use. Our hope is

 that this will allow those of you in the community to gain more freedom in your lives and allow you to manage your symptoms around your life, rather than your life around your symptoms. 

Our engineering team has a design and are currently ordering the supplies needed to begin testing in the lab over the next few months. We will make sure to post another update regarding our progress before the end of the competition in October. At that time,

 we will share with you our project website and video presentation as well.  

Thank you for your continued support, and we are working hard to help the TMAU community!

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other links :

https://jamboree.igem.org/2024/home

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