Team:Paris Bettencourt/Newsletter3

OUR TEAM

Our team first participated in iGEM in 2012. In 2013 we received a gold medal at the European Jamboree.
We are made up of biologists, biochemists, mathematicians and computer scientists. We are mostly undergraduates.
We work closely with IGM (Institut de Genetique et de Microbiologie), which conducts research in genetics and microbial genomics.

OUR PROJECT

Certain ideas that would have been called nonsensical now are widely accepted as fact, such as Galileo’s vision of Earth, or the theory of evolution. Such paradigm shifts have vastly changed the way we understand and define various phenomena.
What about synthetic biology then? Will it change the way we perceive the representation of life? To further reflect on the matter, iGEM Paris- Saclay has decided to take part in the new Art and Design track. We believe that art is a great vehicle to share our ideas with the general public. The physical manifestation of our thinking is… a lemon.
Allow us to elaborate before you scratch your heads in confusion. We intend to recreate a lemon that will smell like one, look like one and even “ripen” like one, yet not be one. Basically the “lemon” is E. coli that will express lemon colors and smells. We will mold agar to obtain a lemon shape.
The discussion that will follow is quite multifaceted. If we have a “fake” lemon with exactly the same characteristics as the natural version, would you say that the two are equivalent? Would you be willing to use these genetically engineered “lemons” in your food? What sort of impact would such lab-grown food have on the market? If we can modify bacteria to create artwork, could we consider moving on to multicellular organisms? These are just a few questions we could ask ourselves.
We have several methods to spread our message. As we are in the Art and Design track, we sought the help of artists, such as Lia Giraud (www.liagiraud.com), Marion Laval-Jeantet, and Christina Agapakis (agapakis.com). We will also participate in CURIOSITas (www.curiositas. fr), an art and science festival held annually at Université Paris-Sud. We will soon conduct surveys on BioArt: we wish to ask iGEM teams, artists, scientists, and anyone in between.
Let’s move on to the technical aspects of the project. We will replace E. coli’s foul odor with lemon fragrance and express yellow or green chromoproteins to evoke the ripening process of the fruit.
In order to express the smell we will first remove the gene responsible for E. coli’s stench with homemade BioBricks that will synthesize limonene, citral and β-pinene, which are three essential molecules that are part of the fragrance of a lemon.
We use blue and yellow chromoproteins in our lemon: both will be expressed in presence of salicylate, and thus the lemon will give off a green hue. When the concentration of salicylate decreases, the blue chromoprotein will no longer be expressed and the lemon will be yellow. So far we have two BioBricks (actually two-in-one): NAHR sup D which suppress the expression of the blue chromoprotein. We are currently working on the lemon scent BioBricks (i.e. limonene, β-pinene, citral).

ABOUT OUR TEAM

Our team started at the end of a lesson of the subject “Synthetic Biology”.

Lucía and Jose realized they had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to participate in the iGEM as students, so they basically started stalking the instructors to start with our project. Alba and Alfredo showed their interest just a few weeks after, so we all four biotechnologists became labmates. Finally, Jana (Alejandra) and Iván, our engineers, joined the team along with an army of new instructors and advisors (One of them, Yadira, is in this team photo too).
Now, we are a team made of people from very different backgrounds working together to create our amazing Sexy Plant. We love what we are doing and we are going to rock this contest.

After a team meeting in July the students went to have lunch together near the engineer’s headquarters at the end of our university campus. It was around 3 pm, close to 40 Celsius degrees outside and extremely humid atmosphere when we finished having lunch and we realized that we didn’t want to sweat to dead. The biotechnologist of the team had to go back to the laboratory, which is about 20 minutes walking away from the restaurant, too long for walking in the sun in that weather. So we made our way to the laboratory crossing all the buildings with air conditioning we could find in our way, and resting in them for some minutes so we could cool down a little bit.
So we turned a 20 minutes walk into a 1 hour expedition through buildings we had never been in during all these years studying in our university.

ABOUT OUR TEAM

The Stanford-Brown-Spelman team is entering it’s fourth year of participation in the iGEM competition. Partnered with the NASA Ames research center, the team focuses on issues related to astrobiology and aerial technologies. They enjoy spending their time soaking up the California sun, eating lots of good food, and of course, pipetting.

Meet Jotthe. Although she may be the tiniest (or as she would say tinniest) member of our team, her many contributions and accomplishments would indicate otherwise. Jotthe enjoys baking, dancing, scheduling appointments to finally get her driver’s license, and of course, long walks on the beach. She also loves sharing pictures of her 15 month old nephew, discussing flag code, and drowning her quesadillas in hot sauce to mask the flavor of cheese. Although she despises the texture of cheese, Burrito Wednesday is quite possibly her favorite day to buy lunch in the cafeteria. As you can see, Jotthe is an intelligent, beautiful, and versatile bioengineer. With her unique interests and natural talent at baking cinnamon cakes, she’s quite the catch.

- Poorwa Godbole, SBS iGEM 2014

OUR TEAM

Our team consists of 8 undergraduate students from the University of Sheffield.
Sharan Nanuan - “Miniprep Queen”, a second year student of Biochemistry and Microbiology. Not great at laser quest.
Alex Simpson - a second year Aerospace Engineer, in his own words “quite successful with middle aged women” (this may be taken out of context).
Ben Madden - a third year Chemical Engineer with a thing for bioreactors.
Mustafa Hussain – a second year Mechatronics and Robotics student with a thing for remote control helicopters.
Jianxing Qin - a second year student in Automatic Control and Systems Engineering originally from China.
Lara Grew – a second year geneticist, bit of a lad, skilled at aiming fluids into other guy’s eyes.
Ben Lomax – stunningly attractive, massively intelligent, fantastically funny, and fairly modest first year molecular biologist.
Erika “Ethika” Otaviano – a third year Bioengineer. When it comes to ethics and consent forms for policy and practices research, she just can’t get enough.

On Friday 18th of July we held a meet-up for some of the other UK iGEM teams. Widely considered a success, the main aims of the meet-up was to find out about other teams projects, and potentially collaborate with our new iGEM friends. After a hectic morning of putting up sign posts and ensuring refreshments would arrive on time, other iGEM teams arrived from Oxford, Kent, York and UEA. We had talks from guest speakers Professor Phillip Wright about his perspective on synthetic biology as a chemical engineer, and Rob Meckin, who explored the sociology of the human practices aspect of synthetic biology. Each team then gave a two minute presentation on their project, and we all enjoyed a game of networking bingo – a great way to get to know each other. We ended the meet-up with a poster session and refreshments, and began to talk about collaborating with each other.

After the meet-up we went out for post-meet-up drinks and a celebratory night on the town. Conversation began regarding what we should wear for our presentation in Boston. It was noted that many iGEM teams incorporate their own national dress into their outfits (such as the Tokyo Tech and TU-Munich 2013 teams). After an intense debate about what British national dress truly consisted of, one somewhat inebriated team member bought a bowler hat on eBay (at the insistence of a postgraduate supervisor) in a certain notorious Sheffield nightclub. It was most likely not worth the £20 spent on it.

OUR PROJECT

When we came up with the idea for our project we imagined a home detection kit for toxins, allergens and other substances. So while we are doing PCR’s, run gels and document every step, we try not to forget what can be done with our work with some (a lot) more R&D, so we let our imagination sail and planed a home test, called “Safie”.
If you’re allergic to peanuts, eggs or any other substance you know how important it is to be sure your dish doesn’t contain the allergen – what if you could be sure the dish is safe?
Imagine you’re going out to celebrate your mom’s birthday. You’re the only vegetarian in the family so you are forced to go to a nonveg restaurant – how can you be sure there is no egg or meat in your dish?

The answer is “Safie”!

You test, wait 10 minutes and know what is safe for you!

Let us know what you think of the name and the concept

ABOUT OUR TEAM

Our team started at the end of a lesson of the subject “Synthetic Biology”.

Lucía and Jose realized they had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to participate in the iGEM as students, so they basically started stalking the instructors to start with our project. Alba and Alfredo showed their interest just a few weeks after, so we all four biotechnologists became labmates. Finally, Jana (Alejandra) and Iván, our engineers, joined the team along with an army of new instructors and advisors (One of them, Yadira, is in this team photo too).
Now, we are a team made of people from very different backgrounds working together to create our amazing Sexy Plant. We love what we are doing and we are going to rock this contest.

After a team meeting in July the students went to have lunch together near the engineer’s headquarters at the end of our university campus. It was around 3 pm, close to 40 Celsius degrees outside and extremely humid atmosphere when we finished having lunch and we realized that we didn’t want to sweat to dead.
The biotechnologist of the team had to go back to the laboratory, which is about 20 minutes walking away from the restaurant, too long for walking in the sun in that weather. So we made our way to the laboratory crossing all the buildings with air conditioning we could find in our way, and resting in them for some minutes so we could cool down a little bit.
So we turned a 20 minutes walk into a 1 hour expedition through buildings we had never been in during all these years studying in our university.

OUR PROJECT

Although UCSF & UCB’s iGEM team has students from a variety of backgrounds and schools, we bonded very quickly and have had many fun and unexpected team bonding experiences. Some instances of team bonding occur during late night data collection, as team members stay until 11:00PM to collect and analyze data, even when they have to come in to lab early the next day, leading to impromptu conversations as they wait to collect data. One day, when we learned that one of us had never had In-n-Out (a popular Californian hamburger fast food restaurant) before, we decided to order some for what turned out to be a crazy but unforgettable lunch. An interesting fact is that many of our team have dietary restrictions or allergies: when we tried to bring snacks for the rest of the team, such as chocolate or banana bread, there would always be one or two people who would say, “I’m sorry, I can’t eat that.” Fortunately, we’ve been able to overcome minor difficulties like these and find snacks we can all enjoy, such as popcorn, pretzels, and hummus. Pretty much only popcorn, pretzels, and hummus.

OUR TEAM

We are a group of students mostly from Faculty of Biology at Warsaw University, though we also have members from other faculties and universities of Warsaw. Our group is the oldest one in Poland – this will be our 7th time in iGEM. So far we managed to win 6 medals: 2 bronze, 2 silver and 2 gold – the last one in last year’s European competition finals in Lyon for our FluoSafe project. Although we love to spend all our free time in the lab, we also like to talk about science, Doctor Who and upload silly things on facebook.

OUR PROJECT

Our project consists of utilization of two-component system (PmrA-PmrB) from Salmonella enterica, which we used to detect and bind lanthanide ions.
Lanthanides is a group of fourteen elements in f block of the periodic table, which unique electronic properties make them irreplaceable in modern industry, such as electronic devices, catalysts and rocket science. Their deposits on Earth are limited, expensive to mine and difficult do refine.
Based on work of prof. He’s group from University of Chicago we were able to use mutated version of PmrA-PmrB system, where FeBT (iron-binding tag) was replaced by LBT (lanthanide-binding tag).