Team Venus: Meetings 5 & 6

Team Venus met this past Monday to evaluate our two ideas and to pick one of them. We discussed both ideas and decided that both have pros and cons. We finally chose to go with the nanotube idea because it seemed more feasible. With this idea, we would insert nanotubes along the membrane that would act like sodium channels to increase the influx of sodium. These tubes would then be connected to working sodium channels, so that the tubes would open when the existing channels opened. With a basic grasp on our idea, we decided to split up the research needed to develop the intricacies of our design (these research topics were changed slightly after our meeting with Dr. Wasser on Wednesday, so I will state the revised ones at the end).
Then on Wednesday, we met with Dr. Wasser, and our initial idea was revised slightly to make the design more efficient. Dr. Wasser reminded us that all the sodium channels on the membrane are still present, they are just inactive. So, instead of creating new artificial sodium channels and mimicking how they work, it would be easier to take advantage of the inactive channels. He suggested that we insert nanotubes around the inactive channels and connect them to the motor neuron’s axon terminal to catch the signal. We thought it would be hard to activate these tubes, however, without the acetylcholine receptors. Therefore, we elaborated on Dr. Wasser’s suggestion and thought that we would try to encapsulate both the channel and the acetylcholine receptor. By encapsulating the receptors, we could keep the channel open all the time and manually gate it shut with our nanotube. Then we could activate the tubes by connecting them to the motor neuron’s axon terminal to capture the signal. With this method, our device could be implanted when the patient is first diagnosed with Myasthenia Gravis and it could potentially stop the disease’s progression. The main concern with this idea is that we don’t know where the acetylcholine receptors are located, on the channel or next to it. If the receptor is next to the channel we would have to encapsulate it separately and connect it to the channel. If the receptor is on the channel, then we don’t know if the antibodies would destroy the channel by attacking the receptors on the channel. If this is the case then we won’t be able to use the inactive channels and we will have to go back to making new ones. With these and other questions unresolved, here are the research topics we assigned each person.

How the channels function and where the receptors are located—Brian and Kathy
Nano-materials—Alheli
How to seal the tube to the membrane—Harry
How to link the tubes to the axon terminal of the motor neuron—Victor
How our device will locate the existing channels—AudraOverview of Myasthenia Gravis and what exactly it does to the channels and receptors—Thomas