Next Steps

Conclusion & Direction

Our Current Vision For safeTEA

SafeTEA is a plasmid-based system that uses single-stranded DNA aptamers to selectively bind and filter out aflatoxin B1 from contaminated agricultural solutions while still preserving essential nutritional content. We designed this system so that it can be expanded to target other mycotoxins beyond aflatoxins, allowing for broad adaptability across food safety challenges.

Our initial concept centers on creating an accessible and scalable way to treat mycotoxin contamination in a variety of contexts. At the industrial scale, we learned that producers are often forced to discard entire batches of contaminated products, leading to massive resource waste measured by the water, land, energy, and labor that were put into the production of goods. SafeTEA aims to address this by allowing contaminated products to be purified rather than destroyed, which prevents waste before disposal becomes necessary.

On the community level, we learned that resource-constrained communities bear a disproportionately large burden from mycotoxin contamination. Our stakeholder collaborations showed us that this is fundamentally an inequity issue driven by climate change, lack of consistent regulations, and lack of supportive policy. Communities that lack infrastructure, like cold storage facilities or proper regulatory policy, face higher contamination risks, yet have the least access to detection and decontamination tools. These are the same regions already burdened by malnutrition threats, where contaminated food products often represent essential dietary staples. In these contexts, discarding entire harvests is not a viable option when food insecurity has been a longstanding, looming threat. Children are often most affected by these intersecting challenges, since chronic early-life aflatoxin exposure compounds the effects of other prevalent issues in these communities, like malnourishment and nutrient deficiencies. This leads to irreversible developmental delays, stunted growth, and long-term health complications. Behind every contaminated harvest, regardless of the scale at which it occurs, are families and children whose futures depend on equitable access to safe, nutritious food.

As we see it now, safeTEA has the capacity to operate at each of these levels to create multiple levels of protection, regardless of regulatory enforcement capacity or the implementation of additional infrastructure. This can help to ensure that contaminated food sources are not simply redirected to populations that exist with fewer protections, but instead empowers these communities to be strengthened in their adaptive capacity to climate-related hazards. Our design was created to be scalable and adaptable so that it can function all the way from a simple teabag that individuals can use at home to decontaminate their own food and beverages, to industrialized settings. By using renewable and biodegradable components, safeTEA's materials can safely return to the environment rather than act as pollutants.

The idea of creating an accessible solution and, overall, creating equity in food safety by ensuring consumer-level detoxification tools led us to consider how our project could be applied to more than just agriculture and food.Conversations with public health experts helped us understand how our project could eventually be expanded to be part of a sustainable treatment infrastructure within established global health initiatives. We learned that the largest gap in mycotoxin response is due to a lack of diagnostic testing, specifically with reliable blood testing to identify mycotoxin exposure. SafeTEA’s aptamer-binding filtration system can be expanded into the medical industry by leveraging binding specifically to targeted mycotoxins for detection. Also, because safeTEA requires no large volumes of solvents or harsh reagents, it produces no hazardous chemical byproducts requiring disposal, supporting safe and sustainable use in both clinical and community settings.

Any cellulose-based product can facilitate the selective removal of toxic molecules while retaining essential macromolecules, including fats, proteins, and micronutrients, which are often depleted through ultrapure or microfiltration techniques. Examples of commonly found cellulose-based products include: paper products (napkins, paper towels, printer paper), cotton-based textiles, and filters (coffee filters and teabags). Because mycotoxins degrade quickly in soil, composting serves as an effective disposal method with little risk of long-term environmental impact. By creating a scalable and versatile removal method that adapts to the needs of small farmers and large corporations alike, we aim to equip a wide range of people with a safe method to remove toxins from their food.

Engineering safeTEA For The Real World

• Culture & derepression. DH5-Alpha cells, transformed with our modified pUC19 plasmid, can be transported efficiently to allow for at-home growth and reproduction. When derepression is required, the cellular system, upon being placed into a lactose-containing solution, initiates the lacZ promoter, allowing for the maturation of the plasmid and availability of our aptamer system.
• Field-adaptable plasmid isolation (“snot” protocol). Once matured, the plasmids must be extracted and isolated from the cell through an alkaline lysis or “snot” plasmid isolation protocol. While typically performed with SDS and NaOH, it’s proposed this can be replicated in the field with lye and commercially available soap; neutralize with an acid such as citric acid. Clarify by centrifugation or a high-RCF string-spin method (such a system harnessing the rotation of a string supported by sticks); the viscous “snot” layer retains cell debris while aptamer-containing plasmid DNA remains in the aqueous layer above.
• Immobilize aptamers on cellulose. Introduce an activated cellulose based product (e.g., coffee filter) to the purified solution to bind DNA, then wash - leaving only the isolated seagull with the aptamer arms produced by our plasmids on the "filter". This system can then be used as a traditional filter where a toxin-containing liquid can be poured, or physically dipped into solution. This effectively removes any AFB1, as it would bind to the aptamers immobilized on the cellulose solid support, pulling out the toxin.
• Why cellulose. Widely available cellulose items (paper products, cotton textiles, coffee/tea filters) can selectively remove toxins while retaining fats, proteins, and micronutrients that are often lost by microfiltration. Mycotoxins degrade rapidly in soil, so composting used materials minimizes environmental impact.

Next Experimental Steps

• Verify plasmid via Sanger sequencing, then confirm expression using His-tag purification.
• Optimize expression with a pilot protocol (as outlined in Cycle 4 Benchling).
• Lyse cells by freeze–thaw with lysozyme; purify on Ni column under native conditions (Thermo Fisher protocol).
• Confirm by SDS-PAGE.
• Deliverable: reusable bottles with plasmids in cells for local reproduction. When needed, run the snot protocol, extract plasmids, activate under lactose, deploy in solution, and capture with cotton for proof-of-concept.

Expanding safeTEA: Our Future Vision

As an iGEM team, it is important to us that our project is driven by innovation that focuses on moving towards the creation of accessible tools for the communities that need them most. When aligning our project with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, we learned how much aflatoxin can cause both acute and chronic issues in populations. While our current design aids in strengthening the capacity for risk management in the agricultural realm, our conversations with public health experts led us to realize that our project has the potential to expand into meeting the most critical need of clinicians and field workers in vulnerable regions by providing accessible and rapid diagnostic tools for mycotoxin exposure. It has the potential to provide rapid testing comparable to laboratory assays but implementable without specialized infrastructure. SafeTEA also functions without cold storage and is made of biodegradable materials that can easily be composted, which makes it viable in resource-constrained settings.

Our conversation with Dr. Groopman left us with an impactful idea: design the lowest level of technology for maximum impact. His emphasis on quantitative data reinforced that any intervention must include mechanisms to measure effectiveness over time, a consideration that extends beyond our initial project scope, but is essential for real-world impact. This means designing not just for usability in the resource-constrained settings, but also challenging ourselves to expand our initial ideas to find more comprehensive ways to help vulnerable populations, where the long-term sustainability of solutions determines whether interventions succeed or fail. Our long-term goal is to make this system a tool in the creation of better preventative and diagnostic tools against mycotoxin contamination. Whether it be on the agricultural or diagnostic scale, we hope that our project can empower communities to protect their health with the same level of capacity as those supported by advanced infrastructure, strict regulations, and stable import economies.