Team:Glasgow/Attributions

Attributions and Thanks

While the project was most certainly a team effort, it is also important to acknowledge the individuals in the team. Here's a breakdown of what we all got up to.

Undergraduate Students

Wet Lab

• Amy Ferguson:Created, along with Lydia, the “Wilkins” mascot for the team. Documented the project in notebooks, including the weekly report, plasmids page etc. Worked extensively on the Gas Vesicle Proteins. Made GvpA/GvpC constructs with various different promoters and testing their ability to float. Made the J23100/GFP and did a comparison of the efficiency of the various fluorescent things.
• Jake Casson: Social media guru, informing the world of our cake-based exploits via Twitter.
  Designed the switch (and many other oligos), and also made the integrase Biobrick.
• Martin Campbell: Modified the low copy number vector (psc101) by extracting unneeded stuff and replaced with an iGEM MCS, then ligated in RFP/GFP switch. Transformed the switch and our integrase and performed in vivo switching.
  Designed lots of oligos.
• Beth Greig: Did a lot of work on the human practices side of things, and produced the majority of the material for the human practices page, as well as doing a lot of Biobrick documenting for the registry.
• Jacob Roberts: Optimised and tested the fliC biobrick. Master of competent cells.
• Gemma McLelland: Optimised and tested the fliC biobrick.
• Gintarė Sendžikaitė:Developed motility assay and worked with motA and motB motility genes and gene rescue.
• Lydia Alldred:Created, along with Amy, the “Wilkins” mascot for the team, and drew him in the various poses (poster comic strip, logo etc). Carried out the in vitro site-specific recombination assays to test switch operation

Dry Lab

• Aimee Bias: Modelling, measurements and wiki page. Also the main compiler of the risk assessments, both for the wet and dry lab and our science centre stalls.
• Robbie Evans: Modelling, measurements and wiki page.

Supervisors and additional support

Of course, we cannot take all the credit! A massive thank you to all our advisors, sponsors, and supporters. Without these guys, we would have been totally lost. No, really.

Main Project Supervisors

• Dr Sean Colloms ( primary supervisor and instructor): Lecturer in Synthetic Biology (Institute of Molecular Cell and Systems Biology): Our main day to day supervisor, helping us with all aspects of the project - including lab procedures, oligo designing. The "go-to-guy" for everything synthetic biology.
• Professor Marshall Stark (official instructor):Professor of Molecular Genetics (Institute of Molecular Cell and Systems Biology): His role was very similar to Sean's.
• Dr Julien Reboud (official instructor): Lord Kelvin Adam Smith Fellow in Synthetic Biology (Biomedical Engineering).
  His assistance and experience in synthetic biology was particularly invaluable to the biomedical engineers, to help shape their modelling and measurement system.

Lab and Techniques Support

• Ms Emma Smith (official instructor): One of our lab supervisors, she offered assistance as we were learning new lab techniques.
• Ms Abioye Jumai Adeola(team member): Both a supervisor and team member, worked with Gintare on motility genes.
• Ms Jia Zhao (Offical Advisor): Supplied integrase plasmids and expertise.
• Dr Femi Olorunniji: Supplied purified PhiC31 integrase protein and reaction buffer.

Project Planning/Development Support

• Dr Joseph Gray: Associate Academic (Institute of Molecular Cell and Systems Biology). Was present at many of the inital meetings, and helped to shape the plan of the project.

Modelling and Measurement Support

• Mr Saikat Jana: Provided guidance on the reporting and quantification of the engineer's findings, and also helped with some MATLAB coding for said quantification.

Wiki Support

• Miss Nadia Colloms: On a number of occasions, offered her knowledge of HTML/CSS to the less experienced engineers, and helped give the final result a bit more polish.

Human Practices Support

• Dr John Walls: Research Associate (School of Interdisciplinary Studies).
  With his extensive experience in the ethical considerations of research, he helped us plan out our human practices approach while teaching us the appropriate terminology.
• Mr Jamie Gallagher: Our primary contact for the science centre events. Always happy to help, and super quick in replying to emails!
• Glasgow Science Centre staff and Patrons: A huge thanks goes to the helpful and accommodating staff, whose organisational skills ensured smooth running events.
  And thank you also to all those who stopped to chat with us at our stall/play with the bubbles: your input was most greatly appreciated.
• All the researchers who answered our human practices emails - thank you!
  Dr Tim Overton‏ (Birmingham University‏)
  Professor Catherine Biggs‏ (University of Sheffield‏)
  Professor Steve Busby‏ (Birmingham University‏)
  Professor David Barrie Johnson(Bangor University).
  Catherine J. Gandy, Jaime M. Amezaga (Newcastle University)

General Support

• A huge thank you to all the other iGEM teams we met, at the Sulsa conference/iGEM meet up and the London meet up. It was great to get to know some of you, and share our ideas.
• Dr Annegret Honsbein: Postdoctoral Research Assistant (Institute of Molecular Cell and Systems Biology). Took the time to come and give the team a talk on her research, and gave us many ideas for the future of the project.
• Mr Kevin Dorman: for taking some of the team pictures (and on his lunch break too!)
• All the staff in the Bower Building
• The Wolfson Medical Building: for providing the caffeine addicts among us with our daily fix.

Sponsors

And of course, a huge thank you to all our kind sponsors. May we extend further thanks to Susla, who kindly invited us to, and organised, the first Scottish iGEM meetup/Sulsa Synthetic Biology Conference.

Sulsa -- Wellcome Trust -- Biochemical Society -- MSD -- BBSRC -- Society for General Microbiology -- Life Technologies

This iGEM project has been funded in part by the MSD Scottish Life Sciences Fund. The opinions expressed in this project are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of Merck Sharp & Dohme Limited, nor its Affiliates

From our own University, we would like to thank the The Institute of Molecular Cell and Systems Biology for their financial support.

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