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Team:Dundee/Team
From 2014.igem.org
Once upon a time there was a team
Roll call...
Students
Hover over the images to see another side to the person!
Aleks Płochocka
Nickname: Toothy MaGee
Described in 5: Enthusiastic. Determined. Kind-hearted. Funny. Young’un.
Aleks has a massive love for all things maths and physics. She puts everything she has in to the modelling and building the device, making her a multitasking genius! Aleks is great to be in the lab with as she is always so positive and upbeat about everything (even when it feels like nothing is working!).
Fatima Ulhuq
Nickname: Miss Chief
Described in 5: Resourceful. Creative. Loyal. Inspiring. Passionate
She is a talented Pharmacology Student who has just finished her final year. Not only great at cloning she is great at making smiles. From putting teammates faces on a range of images, with humorous results, to making witty comments that lighten the most stressful of days. A strong pillar of the group and the project could not be a success without her.
Robyn Shuttleworth
Nickname: Sharp Shootin’ Shotgun Shuttleworth
Described in 5: Knowledgeable. Caring. Motivated. Enthusiastic. Spirited.
A Raffish Bounty Hunter who teams with Gillian and Aleks to find the bacterial bandits binding behaviours in efforts to collect The Lung Ranger reward. Her aim and precision is widely acknowledged across the southern plains and her trusty companion Rou ensures she’s the fastest cowboy in the west. When she’s not out on the plains bounty huntin’, her propensity with numbers means she’s statistically the most likely to get a royal flush playing poker.
Dave Burrell
Nickname: Scarlet
Described in 5: Easy-going. Witty. Honest. Ambitious. Inspirational.
Dave is probably one of the most chilled out people in the lab.Studying Computer Science; he’s the master of coding. With everything he does there’s the attitude of “when stuff will work”, not “if”. Aside from being the wiz behind the wiki he worked on the LASSO and dived into electronics with huge enthusiasm. Overall one of the best things about working on a team with Dave is the encouragement he gives you. He’s always motivating in terms of new ideas that come up and always there to crack a joke with in between.
Gillian Forsyth
Nickname: Frisbeest
Described in 5: Calm. Composed. Full of energy.
Gillian is our team Mathematical Biologist. While trying to come up with stochastic models, she’s making the perplexed biologists relive their nightmare of doing math! Usually, she’s quite calm and composed, until she finds a mini bicycle, and then she’s off! The rest of us might have all moved into the shade, injured by their burns, but Gillian will still be out and having fun! She loves variety in her life so to mix it up; she likes to hop on a space hopper!
Dimitrios Michailidis
Nickname: Conchita Wurst
Described in 5: Bewhiskered Bionic Beauty Battles BioBricks
Science will never defeat him, it may knock him once...twice...three times (while going competent cells by the gallon full) but never will he surrender.He strives to do his very best, like no one ever has. To Biobrick the genes is his real test, to sequence them is his cause. He will travel across the labs, searching far and wide, each PostDoc to understand, the knowledge that’s inside. Gotta Biobrick them all. His life’s ambition is to be as successful as this year’s Eurovision song contest winner Conchita Wurst...do you think he has the potential?
Roddy McNeill
Nickname: Violet
Described in 5: A buffalo in a blizzard
Hailing from Glasgow's own Wild West end, Roddy brings a most necessary element of calm to the team - cool and collected in the face of results that might frazzle a softer scientist. Roddy has become our resident biochemist, absorbing the techniques of PhD students and PIs alike to become a one-gunned, sharp-eyed, no-horse-having, western-blotting hurricane. Roddy's extra mural activities also strengthen the team - his karate-honed reflexes mean he never drops the lunchtime frisbee and his time spent moonlighting as the lovely Violet has honed a thinly veiled talent for sass, which keeps the rest of us on our toes.
Jen Wood
Nickname: JeMCherry
Described in 5: Merry. Ambitious. Out-going. Energetic. Bubbly.
Jen is the cheery-cherry of the group. Aside from sharing her singing with us in the lab, her passion for running has somehow rubbed off and even the un-fittest amongst us are running to raise money for the CF trust. Jen is our outreach goddess; she is very well connected and her enthusiasm and positivity is very infectious. Watch out our future medic will treat you with happiness and fantastic lemon cake!
Jess Martyn
Nickname: Mr Chief
Described in 5: Grrrrreat Crrrrrackin Passionate Crazy Scientist
"We’ll sneak in after she's left the lab and set everything up for her birthday!" . . . around about midnight Fatima and Aleks managed to get into the lab to set everything up. Jess is typically the first in, and last out of the lab; diligently pursuing the fluorescent read out from our little Lung Ranger. Bubbly, cheerful and always ready to play a prank (or two!) on unsuspecting members of the team, Jess is a stalwart of the wet lab. Everything she's involved in can generally be summed up as Crackin'!
Advisors
Scott McCrimmon
Scott is a born synthetic biologist, and was in the lab the day after exams planning a cloning strategy. His long standing battle of attrition with colony PCRs has been costly, threatening to grind him down during long afternoons and evenings, and resorting to him pipetting with two Gilsons at a time. Yet his diligence and endurance has paid off, providing us with perfect clones for our devices. Scott’s sunny optimism often bolsters the team; during dark times, with no bands on gels, blank sequence results and no code on the computer, his “F*@k it; it’ll work” always lightens the mood and spurs people on! Scott’s musical expertise is undeniable; his highly anticipated iGEM mashup “Build Me Up Biobrick-All You Need is One (Resistant Colony)-Centrifuges Spin Me Right Round” is sure to make the headlines by the time Boston comes around.As one of the first in the team to present at the SULSA conference, and happy to ferry furniture to different offices when required, no job is too big or too small for Mr McCrimmon.
Francois Cleon
Like France, but with more "WAH” Francois is very enthusiastic and passionate about science. He is always cool and collected in the lab; as well as on the football field!
Karim Rafie
Karim has a talent for asking the questions which you haven’t even considered! He keeps us on our toes and helps us overcome any issues. With his help we are able to better understand our work and in turn progress with our project. Always popping his head in to see if there is anything he can help us with.
Avril Smart
Avril is an iGEM veteran at the University of Dundee, having been a member of the 2012 team and stepping into an advisory role for the 2013 and 2014 teams. Being a bit of a renaissance woman, Avril has helped us all out not only by contributing to our project-planning meetings at the start of the summer and helping to lay the groundwork in the lab, but also by creating some beautiful artwork for our wiki (including The Lung Ranger himself!). Not content with countless hours of brushstrokes, she has also been working on a wee musical iGEM treat…
Supervisors
Prof Tracy Palmer
Tracy “Cactus ” Palmer is making her debut to the Jamboree this year after heading up the Dundee iGEM competition at home since 2011. Cactus Palmer is one of the most notorious outlaws of the Wild West, keeping her band of lawless students in check and making sure we don't stray from the path by running an 8mm gel for anything longer than 3 minutes... Tracy's famous skill at the cloning bench (it's a black art!) is envied by us all and we've spent the summer trying to develop our own magic hands. Although Tracy has been known to leave the team shaking in their little cowboy boots, her knowledge and experience is always on hand to settle things down when there's a fox in the iGEM henhouse!
Prof Frank Sargent
Frank “Snakebite” Sargent is an iGEM veteran - with 3 competitions under his belt he returns to Boston this year on the poster judging panel, beware his eagle-eye! This poker-faced protein master has been mentoring the team over the summer by teaching us the way of the wild-western blot (with all the associated book-learnin’), helping us to design experiments to test our system, and by making an appearance as a scar-faced villain in our photoshoot.
Dr Fordyce Davidson
Dyce is the dynamic driving force behind the dry lab. His high expectations of each team member bring out the best in us. Behind his formal attire is a comedian at heart and someone who is always prepared to ply us with coffee in our hours of need!
Welcome to Dundee's 2014 Wiki (Site Information)
Cystic Fibrosis is a genetic disease that results in the accumulation of thick mucus in the epithelial linings of the entire body, particularly the respiratory tract. Over the course of a patient’s life, the mucus-lined lung epithelium becomes repeatedly infected with pathogenic bacteria that stimulate an immune response; leading to inflammation, tissue damage, and ultimately, respiratory failure.
The microflora of the Cystic Fibrosis lung changes over time. In childhood, the major coloniser is Staphylococcus aureus, but as the patient matures other bacterial pathogens infect. The later-dominating pathogens, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Burkholderia cepacia, are very difficult to eradicate and are associated with chronic decline in lung function. Burkholderia is so infectious that patients have to be isolated from one another, and can be denied lung transplants due to the persistence of this bacterium.
It is important, therefore, for medics to monitor and identify the levels of bacteria within the respiratory tract of a Cystic Fibrosis patient. Currently, patients must provide sputum samples and identification of bacteria takes between 72 hours and 2 weeks, by which point the bacteria can be in an antibiotic resistant state.
The Dundee 2014 iGEM project is focused on designing and testing a device that will rapidly and non-invasively identify the bacteria colonising a Cystic Fibrosis patient. Three biosensors will be developed that recognise external signal molecules produced by key bacteria, all of which are known to be in sputum samples of Cystic Fibrosis patients. A quinolone signal (PQS) is produced by Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a Diffusible Signal Factor (DSF) is produced by Stenotrophomonas maltophilia, an organism that is also associated with Cystic Fibrosis lung infection in adults, and BDSF is a related, but chemically distinct molecule that is produced by Burkholderia cepacia.
By engineering signal recognition and signal transduction proteins from these biological systems the Dundee iGEM team want to produce a portable electronic device that will identify infection outside of the clinic, so that patients do not have to travel great distances, and can be used to help health professionals make informed and rapid decisions on antibiotic treatments.
Read this again by clicking on Site Information in the navigation bar!
Bulletin Board (Policy & Practice)
Come look at the poster explaining how we involved the local and national Cystic Fibrosis community in our project, how we listened to people on the front line of the disease and how they affected our project.
School (Project)
Come in and learn about all the parts that make The Lung Ranger. The lab work that we carried out over the summer is explained here in detail, along with the modelling and implementation.
Library (Log Book)
Read about the experience the team has had over the summer. A week by week description of our work, how we carried out that work and some photos of our time together.
Saloon (iGEM community)
Come on in, take a seat and learn how we have interacted with the larger iGem community. Who the team are, who helped them and how we helped others.
College of Life Sciences
With more than 1100 staff and research students and external funding of around £60 million per year, the College of Life Sciences is one of the largest and most productive research institutes in Europe. This reputation is genuinely global and is reflected in the fact that researchers in our laboratories represent no fewer than 62 different nationalities
Division of Mathematics A small friendly Division which offers a lively and modern programme of study at both undergraduate and postgraduate level.We have research groups in Mathematical Biology, Numerical Analysis and Scientific Computing, Magnetohydrodynamics and Applied Analysis.
School of Computing With research areas in Human Centred Computing, Intelligent Systems, Space Technologies and Theory of Computation, the department has an emphasis on development. Furthermore, this department teaches popular undergraduate programs in Applied Computing and Computing Science.
We are a global charitable foundation dedicated to achieving extraordinary improvements in human and animal health. We support the brightest minds in biomedical research and the medical humanities. Our breadth of support includes public engagement, education and the application of research to improve health. We are independent of both political and commercial interests.
