Team:KCL UK/Attributions
Attributions
Our Team:
Abigail Conner
Deputy Leader & Head of Wiki
Year 2, BSc Molecular Genetics
Abigail served as the Deputy Leader as well as the Head of Wiki. She was behind all the styling of the Wiki and was responsible for its completion. She also created all the illustrations found on Wiki (except for those made by Chris and Daria), took lots of pictures, and helped in other design aspects of the project - including the creation of the final poster and various other posters for promotional events. On top of this, she played a large role in Human Practices and Public Engagement. She was key in the aim to improve biosecurity at King’s, as she and Avi conducted an interview with Dr Frances Butcher. Additionally, she carried out an interview with Dr Brenda Williams to further the team’s understanding of rare genetic diseases. When she wasn’t working on the wiki, she was also editing videos; she created and edited the “Introducing Capacity: KCL iGEM 2019” video and edited the “A Kid’s Guide to Synthetic Biology” video to help spread the word about SynBio. She also helped during the Bexley School visit where she and Jack taught students about forensics.
Avi Patel
Wiki Team
Graduated, BSc Pharmacology & Molecular Genetics
Avi spent the majority of the summer working on the design and layout of the wiki pages, he was responsible for filming all of the team page videos. He designed multiple science themed cookie cutters (test tubes, beakers, capsids with DNA inside) as a part of our public engagement to help raise awareness for the project, which were used during our bake sale fundraisers. In the wet lab he filled in when needed, mainly just streaking plates. As part of the projects outreach the team hosted a Funzing talk in which he discussed the topic of gene doping and the abuse of gene therapy techniques. He was also key in spearheading the team’s aim to further biosecurity at King’s. He not only carried out an interview with Frances Butcher but met with Dr Ian Mcfazdean and Dr Steve Thompson to make biosecurity a component of King’s curriculum. His work was then expanded upon by other members of the team, allowing us to develop biosecurity surveys to examine the states of other schools.
Christian Chandler
Co-Finance Manager
Year 2, BSc Molecular Genetics
Christian managed the team’s finances account and assisted in the acquisition of various grants and bursaries. Preferring to work outside of the lab, Chris lent a hand in graphic design of the posters, banners and PowerPoints including the funzing talk presentation, team banner and Facebook events. He was responsible for creating our Human Practices plan, which amounted in the flow chart found on our Human Practices Page. He worked with Daniil to create and organize an activity for the students of Bexley grammar school during the school visit as well as the creation of an educational, online board game. Alongside Stephanie, Chris assisted in raising funds for the trip to Boston by setting up the GoFundMe account and participating in the fundraising events.
Daniil Kakorin
Wiki Team & Wet Lab Team
Year 3, BSc Biochemistry
Daniil worked on isolating the plasmid BioBricks, using PCR, gel electrophoresis and purification. He would also help with the restriction enzyme digestion and broth preparation. While not rerunning plasmid isolation and/or blowing up the agarose gel, Daniil would scour the nascent wiki pages, hunting for any bugs or errors in the wide plains of css and html to remove and correct. Should the wiki pages be free of problems, he would work on designing educational tools for public engagement with Christian, such as the virus board game and the protein synthesis activity for Bexley Grammar school, as well as an A-level workshop on mutations. He and Josephine were also involved in analyzing the biosecurity survey which was sent to many teams around the world. He would participate in several of the fundraising events to raise money for the Boston trip, such as the bake sale and the quiz night.
Daria Egorova
Wet Lab Team
Year 3, BSc Biomedical Sciences (Infectious Disease and Immunology Pathway)
Dasha prepared the fluorescence and OD measurements to assess the expression efficiency of J364 BioBricks. Furthermore, Dasha worked hard on the PCR of and the isolation of sRNAs, gel electrophoresis, restriction enzyme digestions and ligations, dealt with transformation of XL1 Blue cells and DNA Prep to create new BioBricks. At the start of the project Dasha interviewed Prof. Jungbluth as a part of public engagement in our project. Meanwhile, Dasha wrote the Patients’ and carers’ well-being guide and carried out the desk research on viral gene therapy. As a part of outreach Dasha took part in a Funzing talk initiating the discussion about the direct-to-consumer genetics tests. She finished off by submitting parts to registry. On the creative side, Dasha was responsible for the graphic design of her guide and the icon found above on this page!
Jack Morley
Co-Public Engagment Manager
Year 2, BSc Biochemistry
As a member of the wet lab team, Jack worked on protocols such as transforming and conducting fluorescence and OD600 assays on XL1 blue cells, analyzing the results to help characterize BioBricks. He contributed to the Capacity project further in the lab, undertaking PCR of sRNAs, gel electrophoresis of pSB1C3, BioBricks and sRNAs, purification of DNA and pSB1C3, pSB1C3 digestion and ligation. Outside of the lab, Jack played a key role as co-manager of public engagement, creating the “A Kid’s Guide to Genes and Synthetic Biology” video to teach younger children about this topic and inspire them to have more involvement in the field as they grow older. He also was a part of the Bexley Grammar School team, presenting the topic of “Applications of CRISPR” and undertaking a DNA forensic interactive activity with the pupils, aiming to inspire them to look further into pursuing Biosciences in higher education. He also organised and wrote the presentation for the Brighton College talk, explaining the Capacity project and what iGEM is, trying to get more schools and students involved in the project, either at high school level or at university. Jack presented the Ethics of Genome Sequencing in Embryos section of our Funzing talk. He co-wrote the grant application to the Biochemical Society, in order to gain funding from the society. Jack was also involved in the design part of the project, designing and bringing the capacity logo to life.
Josephine Eum
Team Leader
Graduated, BSc Biomedical Sciences
As a team leader, Josephine has been working tirelessly over the summer in and out of the lab, day and night, weekdays and weekends to ensure we are meeting all medal criteria and everyone in the team is happy. She run a number of information sessions and biotechnology nights at King’s College London in the beginning of the year to recruit the best out of best and create a team we have today. She was a key contributor in the wet lab carrying out quantitative experimental characterisation, creating new BioBricks, validating them and analysing the results. Whilst working in the lab, she also carried out literature research on sRNA, and viral capsids to help troubleshoot any modelling problems. Josephine used her expertise from working in science communication/education to produce material for educational visits, public engagement, well-being guide for carers and patients of rare genetic diseases and to develop workshops supporting A-level curriculum on the topic of the control of gene expression. She also developed a biosecurity curriculum for undergraduate students and launched a charter on newborn screening for rare conditions encouraging public to be more involved in such issues. She co-wrote the grant application to the Biochemical Society in order to raise funding for the team.
Megha Gill
Head of Dry Lab
Year 3, BSc Pharmacology and Molecular Genetics
Megha spent the majority her summer creating two software tools, the CapsidOptimizer and CapsidBuilder, designed to help further our understanding of optimizing viral capsid architecture. This task was comprised of countless hours searching through the literature, alongside developing her knowledge of Python. Alongside this, she was able to conduct and attend interviews with other students who shared the same enthusiasm for coding and mathematics, such as Nadav Brandes and members of the Warwick iGEM team. Whilst working on the dry lab script, she also created a lesson plan designed to teach students how to analyze biological data by writing their own programs in Python. When taking a break from her computer screen, Megha participated in a portion of the wet lab experiments, which involved assisted in PCR reactions, gel electrophoresis, and restriction enzyme digestions. Outside the laboratory, she took part in educational talks such as the ‘Is Ignorance Bliss?’ funding talk and running activities with students at the Bexley Grammar School.
Stephanie Avraamides
Co-Finance Manager & Co-Public Engagement Manager
Year 2, BSc Biomedical Sciences (Infectious Disease & Immunology/Cell and Molecular Biology Pathway)
As our co- finance and fundraising manager, Stephanie organised our fundraising campaign, creating brochures to promote and explain 'Capacity', corresponding and meeting with sponsors such as New England Biolab, helping to apply for fundraising grants with the Biochemical society and visiting organisations to discuss 'Capacity' and receive donations. Through conducting a literature review and interviews, she explored the social and ethical implications of issues surrounding rare genetic diseases, meeting with the deputy director of the Progress Educational Trust and corresponding with Genetic Alliance, helping to engage with the public to research and support their charter if they agreed or voice their concerns if not. Our fundraising campaign also lead her to organise and create promotional material for a bake off, quiz night, raffle and a Rare Genetic Disease Showcase, with the aim of raising awareness of rare genetic disease. She took a lead role in orchestrating and writing the content for our 'Is Ignorance Bliss? talk' as well as engaging with students at Bexley Grammar School. Stephanie has also spent time working with the wet lab team in the early stages of the project and organising and attending interviews to further our project, such as with Prof. Heinz Jungbluth.
Our Supervisors:
Dr Anatoliy Markiv
Director of Distance Learning Programmes & Academic Lead For Technology Enhanced Learning
Dr Markiv has been the lifeblood of our team making all our problems disappear as quickly as they were formed, supporting our project choices and helping us narrow our idea to develop a refined and well researched project, he has also allowed us to utilize his lab for the entirety of the summer, and guided our wiki team through the daunting task of building their first website. Dr Markiv also secured our team vital funding in the form of a King’s Undergraduate Research Fellowship.
Dr Alison Snape
Reader in Bioscience Education
Dr Snape has been aiding our team throughout the course of our project from the teams formation in February, she has been an influential mentor for our financing team providing vital contacts for our team and securing funding for our project. Alongside allowing the team to utilize her lab for the entirety of the summer. Dr Snape also secured our team vital funding in the form of a King’s Undergraduate Research Fellowship.
Professor Guy Tear
Professor of Molecular Biology
Professor Tear has aided us in securing a King’s Undergraduate Research Fellowship providing vital funding during the beginning few months to allow us to focus on developing our project.
We would like to say thank you for the support to the Faculty of Life Sciences and Medicine and especially the Executive Dean Professor Richard Trembath and to the Dean of School of Bioscience Education Professor Ian McFadzean.
Professor Richard Trembath, Executive Dean of the Faculty.
Professor Ian McFadzean, Dean of Bioscience Education.
Interviews
Dr Brenda williams
Senior Lecturer in Experimental Neuropathology Education
Interviewing Dr Williams introduced us to the gap in patient care for treating rare genetic disorders and focused on Inborn errors of metabolism especially Battens Disease. She played a large role in our project design as well as our motivation and inspiration.
Professor Heinz Jungbluth
Consultant in child neurology and senior lecturer
The interview highlighted the potential of gene therapy and how it is success in some neuromuscular conditions but how a key limitation is the size of current viral vectors. Thus, Prof Jungbluth was absolutely crucial on our inspiration and motivation.
Dr. Bran Bugarija
Genomics Solutions Field Application Specialist
We spoke of the limitations of cell penetrating peptides with the field application manager at Integrated DNA technologies. This was essential in our project design, as we were guided onto a path that included siRNA's to improve gene therapy.
Rowan Howell
(PhD student at King's College London)
He supported us with our modelling, providing us with guidance for python troubleshooting and advice for modelling techniques.
Dr. Frances Butcher
Specialty Registrar in Public Health (ST4)
In our interview we discussed biosecurity issues relating to gene therapy with Dr Butcher, a speciality registrar in public health. She was thus essential in the evolution of our human practices plan. Based on her interview, we were motivated to carry out our biosecurity surveys and implement biosecurity as a concrete component of King's curricula.
Dr Attila Csikasz-Nagy
Senior Lecturer in Computational and Systems Biology
In our meeting with Dr Csikasz-Nagy, we discussed different modelling techniques. This transformed our approach to modelling viral capsid construction. He also provided us with guidance and literature to help with our modelling approach.
Nadav Brandes
(PhD student at Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
Conducted an interview with him, where we gained knowledge and his support for modelling. We used data files from his paper, “Gene overlapping and size constraints in the viral world”, and equations as inspiration for our calculations.
Our Sponsors:
We want to say thank you to everyone who donated, bought sweets at our bake sales, shared our videos, provided us with software, and attended our events. No matter how small, these acts were essentially in keeping our team afloat. We want to reach out and thank you all for your help, Capacity wouldn't have been possible without all of you!
