iGEM team members

The Brauer Group: Jeffrey worked with Benjamin Huang as part of the Brauer Group. They were in charge of the light regulation aspect of the WashU iGEM project. Ben and Jeffrey spent most of the summer cloning and testing the light regulated transcription elements.

Ben also spent a significant amount of time coding and making the team wiki page look pretty awesome. He did most of the coding for the site through self-learning of html and often sought Google for help involving web design elements. He did not use any outside resources or companies to code the site, but borrowed inspiration and snippets of code from previous iGEM teams: in particular 2013 WLC-Milwaukee, 2013 TMU-Tokyo, and 2012 WashU. He continued cloning work during the school year, when Jeffrey went abroad.

Jeffrey worked on managing the team, setting up meetings, and having conversations with the school administration and other iGEM teams. He also worked to create our team apparel.

The Rebstock Group: Caroline Focht worked with Richard Li as part of the Rebstock Group. They were in charge of the plasmid design and Nif activity testing aspect of the WashU iGEM project. Caroline and Richard spent most of their time in summer in protocol development and nitrogen fixation activity testing. They continued running experiments and biobricked during the school year.

Caroline also concentrated on WashU iGEM Outreach program, which produced numerous educational videos, and sought out other iGEM teams for collaborations. She also produced most of our logos and graphics for the website and presentations.

Richard was lab manger of iGEM at Washington University in St. Louis, thus in addition to the wet lab work he was also in charge of fundraising and securing for the project.

Attributions:

Dr. Himadri Pakrasi and Dr. Tae Seok Moon served as mentors during our iGEM project. We had a few meetings with them in order to present our project proposals and check on our progress updates, and helped to give us feedback and troubleshoot when necessary. They provided the funding for lab supplies.

Dr. Pakrasi: Dr. Pakrasi is Myron and Sonya Glassberg/Albert and Blanche Greensfelder Distinguished University Professor, also Director of International Center for Advanced Renewable Energy and Sustainability (I-CARES). His research interests are: Photosynthesis, Nitrogen Fixation, Systems and Synthetic Biology. Pakrasi Lab’s current focus is on Bioenergy Production in Cyanobacteria.

Dr. Tae Seok Moon: Dr. Moon is a Principal Investigator and Assistant Professor in the Department of Energy, Environmental & Chemical Engineering (EECE) at Washington University in St. Louis and heads the Moon Research Group (MRG). He generously allowed Ben and Jeffrey unfettered access to his lab and material equipment at all hours of the day (and night). Dr. Moon also financed ordering of primers and DNA sequence verification

Our team would not be complete without our list of direct advisors: Andrew Ng, Bert Berla, Cheryl Immethun, and Dr. Deng Liu.

Andrew Ng:  Andrew is an undergraduate biomedical engineer interested in the applications of systems and synthetic biology to cyanobacteria. He was also a past participant in iGEM at WashU. As the major peer advisor for iGEM project this year, Andrew provided invaluable advice and guidance on all aspects of both Rebstock and Brauer Group’s work, ranging from protocol design and lab technique training to providing material support for the GC activity testing.

Bertram Berla:  Bert is a PhD candidate in Energy, Environmental, and Chemical Engineering. He is working to apply techniques developed to optimize the operation of chemical reactors to get more useful stuff out of our favorite micro-reactors: cyanobacteria. Bert assisted Richard and Caroline on experimental design.

Cheryl Immethun: Ms. Immethun is currently a PhD candidate in the MRG with Dr. Moon in the EECE department at Washington University in St. Louis. She serves as a senior iGEM advisor and over the course of the summer, provided invaluable advice and guidance on all aspects of the Brauer Group’s work, ranging from primer design and DNA cloning issues to providing material support for the light experiment. She also aided with cloning during the school year closer to the deadline as work conflicts slowed down progress.

Deng Liu: Deng is interested in the research on cyanobacteria, especially on the synthetic biology and transcriptional regulation in cyanobacteria. Deng helped iGEM members on details of experimental design, plasmid design, and cell culturing.


Our Non-iGEM affiliated advisors worked in their respective labs and would help us on a daily basis, whether it giving valuable input on experimental or cloning protocols or feedback during our project presentations. The list includes:

Allie Hoynes-O’Connor, Ray Henson, Ryan Lee , and Tatenda Shopera: The graduate students of the MRG helped the Brauer Group by aiding in answering every day questions and making sure we contributed to the well-being and material readiness of the lab as well as following all safety and labeling protocols. Ms. Hoynes-O’Connor served as our lab safety officer and gave us guidance and training on lab safety procedures. Mr. Henson also gave guidance and plasmid material in the Brauer Group’s early attempts at constructing a sequence verifiable chromophore.

Kenneth Ng and Soo Ji Kim: Kenneth and Soo Ji are laboratory technician staff in the MRG and helped resupply the lab’s vital operating stock materials and equipment in addition to giving advice and answering questions the iGEM students had. Kenneth provided his advanced expertise in adjusting and optimizing protocols drawn from his vast knowledge due to a highly inquisitive nature.

Nancy Duan: Nancy is the technician in the Rebstock lab. She takes responsibilities of maintaining cyanobacteria culture and assisting iGEM in doing experiments such as PCR, sub-cloning, plasmid preparation etc.

Jingjie Yu: Jingjie works on developing a new cyanobacteria model system for synthetic biology purpose, especially, for biofuel production. During iGEM project, she provided detailed advice on nearly all aspect of experiment for Rebstock group.

At Monsanto, a group of scientists specializing in nitrogen fixation sat in on our team’s presentation about the outlook of our nitrogen fixation project and offered plenty of suggestions through the advisory panel meeting. The diagnostic panel meeting with scientists of Monsanto later proved to be productive for the design and procedure of the lab work.

Andrew Ng: Andrew also helped to create the list of kinetic equations for our model.

Brandon Nicklas: Brandon Nicklas is an undergraduate at Penn State; he helped us to design a kinetic model for our light regulation system.

Rajib Saha: Rajib is a PhD candidate at Penn State; he worked as a liaison between Penn State and WashU and guided Brandon and gave us feedback on the modeling.

Beyond the support of lab work design, Monsanto, and in particular Jose Prado, project lead of a paper published about how projects go from concept to market, provided human resources and materials including data sets, Power-point slides and presentations to enhance WashU’s iGEM video series.

Pakrasi Group: Dr. Pakrasi and his research group at Washington University in St. Louis provided material and working space support for both Rebstock and Brauer Group.

Moon Group: Dr. Moon and his research group provided material and working space support for the Brauer group.

Zhang Group: Dr. Zhang and his research group at Washington University in St. Louis provided material support when we were lacking certain chemicals and let us use their temperature controlled growth chamber in which we conducted our light regulation experiments.

Sigma-Aldrich has supported WashU iGEM program since 2012. This year, Tonya Jackson, the Product Manager of Genomics and Research, provided help by not only offering funding for our project, gave us feedback on our presentation, and also provided us a sample of a new prototype media “EnPresso B” to test and enhance growth of our colonies.

Monsanto’s sponsorship continued in 2014 through material and advisorial means. On Wednesday, June 4, our team was invited to visit Monsanto Headquarters and its affiliated facilities. The tour gave team members a terrific impression about industrial-sized biotechnology development procedure and growth capabilities.

WashU iGEM would like to thank Washington University School of Arts & Sciences, Washington University School of Engineering, Washington University Office of Undergraduate Research, Washington University International Center for Advanced Renewable Energy and Sustainability, Sigma-Aldrich and Monsanto for providing funding for stipends and materials. Lastly, we would like to thank SnapGene for their software to aid our plasmid designs.