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 also
began work on the kinetic model system of the light regulation system.
He continued cloning work during the school year, along with taking over organizing the team and keeping up with the many deadlines 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:
Project
Support:
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.
Modeling
Support:
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. Unfortunately we did not continue with the model as we were missing some experimental values that we ran out of time to find.
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.
Human
Practices Support:
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.
Financial
& Lab Facilities:
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.