https://video.igem.org/videos/watch/77ea98b7-b4a5-4690-8049-997ee4ba1e91 Title: AmpliRen: An at-home urine test for earliest molecular warnings of Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) Description: Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) affects approximately 10% of Hong Kong's population, with cases rising and driving high mortality and healthcare burdens. Conventional diagnostic methods like eGFR and uACR often fail to detect early-stage structural kidney damage. To enable accessible early intervention, our project introduces a non-invasive, home-based detection kit, AmpliRen, that targets microRNA (miRNA) biomarkers in urine. While initial designs utilized toehold switches with cell-free expression kit for precise sequence recognition, detecting low-abundance miRNAs required enhanced signal amplification. Addressing these limitations, we explored an enzyme-free Hybridization Chain Reaction (HCR). Further optimization replaced the initial G-quadruplex (G4)-ThT assay with a hemin-G4/TMB assay to enable colorimetric detection of the target miRNAs. Future work aims to eliminate false-positive background signals caused by spontaneous hairpin opening and non-specific G4 formation. This low-cost, enzyme-free kit is designed to achieve high sensitivity with minimal crosstalk, offering a reliable at-home diagnostic tool to improve early CKD management. Wiki | Official Page Thu, 29 Oct 2026 22:22:19 GMT https://validator.w3.org/feed/docs/rss2.html PeerTube - https://video.igem.org https://video.igem.org/client/assets/images/icons/icon-1500x1500.png https://video.igem.org/videos/watch/77ea98b7-b4a5-4690-8049-997ee4ba1e91 All rights reserved, unless otherwise specified in the terms specified at https://video.igem.org/about and potential licenses granted by each content's rightholder.