Team:CU-Boulder/Attributions
Attributions
What we Accomplished
During the course of this research project, we made some advances towards the end goal, which would eventually be to design a clinically viable antibody construct that would work in humans as an on/off switch.
Firstly, we were successful in modeling the construct by putting the two protein domains (the FITC-E2 ScFv antibody domain and the AraC domain) together in a computer simulation, and testing the energy levels of different conformations with linker length and composition.
We also worked on wet lab, and completed our control plasmid Golden Gate with successful colony growth.
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank Brian DeDecker for being our project advisor, our faculty liaison, for providing project support and advice, fundraising help and advice, and presentation coaching. He consulted with us daily over the summer and the school year, and supported us through brainstorming for our project, conceptualizing the construct, making computer models, and walking us through all the relevant wet lab techniques, as well as helping us analyze results and determine next steps
Yalin Liu, Brandon Smith, and Lauren Vanhousen are our team members who did the majority of the work on our computer models using the programs PyMol as well as PyRosetta. These computer models were crucial in determining whether our construct was viable, at least at a general level controlling for some of the environmental factors within a living cell environment. It helped us determine the optimal size and composition of linkers between the two domains of our construct for maximized predicted success
McKayla Vlasity, Lauren Vanhousen, Manasa Ponnapalli, Brandon Smith, and Stella Koliavas are our team members who primarily worked on wet-lab experiments in parallel with our computer modeling efforts. This included using techniques such as Golden Gate assembly, electroporation into E.coli cells, PCR, gel electrophoresis, protein grow-up, gel extraction, and purification. These efforts were in pursuit of the goal of isolating our control and experimental constructs in order to run fluorescein assays to determine the efficacy of our product.
Yalin Liu and Stella Koliavas are primarily responsible for designing our team wiki page. This was really important in order to properly display all of our work over the course of the research project. Other team members contributed by writing content to display on the website.
Manasa Ponnapalli and Yalin Liu were responsible for reaching out and conversing with the clinicians for our integrated human practices efforts. This included reaching out to doctors and scheduling either phone or in-person meetings to discuss our project, and also writing up the results after each meeting.
Brandon Smith, McKayla Vlasity, and Yalin Liu were responsible for attending the Colorado-wide collaboration meeting over the summer and sharing our project with the other groups as well as learning about other research projects and networking with the other teams.
Brandon Smith was responsible for coordinating our educational outreach in the form of the “Sidewalk Symposium” at CU Boulder. This is an event at which any research program at CU can display their research and talk to students about it in an exciting and approachable way.