There are so many people to thank for making this project possible. There is absolutely no way we could have done this alone. We are so grateful for every Skype call, donation, and e-mail that got us through. We are better because of it. Scroll down to read all of our gushy thank you's!

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

Head of Biochemistry Kings College London

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.

Interviews

Dr Brenda williams

Interviewing Dr Williams introduced us to the gap in patient care for treating rare genetic disorders and focused on Inborn errors of metabolism especially Battons Disease.

Proffessor Heinz Jungbluth

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.

Dr. Bran Bugarija

We spoke of the limitations of cell penetrating peptides with the field application manager at Integrated DNA technologies.

Dr. Frances Butcher

In our interview we discussed biosecurity issues relating to gene therapy with Dr Butcher, a speciality registrar in public health.

Dr Attila Csikasz-Nagy

Conducted a meeting with him, where we discussed different modelling techniques. 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.

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.

Individual attributions

Team Member	Wet lab	Wiki creation	Outreach	Public engagement	Sponsorship	Safety	Modelling	Presentation	Graphic design
Abby Abigail spent most of her summer stressing over the Wiki, bearing all its tumultuous downfalls. She designed the template code and was key in the painstaking process of putting everything on the Wiki. Most of her time was spent in her coding corner, working with the colour scheme, editing videos, or making the poster or illustrations for the Wiki. When she wasn’t in said corner, she was helping with human practices and public engagement, trying to animate viruses, or nagging the team to get the wiki content done.
Avi 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.
Christian Christian managed the teams 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 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 Daniil - 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, analyze surveys, and help organize fundraising events.
Dasha 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 team members icon on the wikipage.
Jack Jack - 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 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 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 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.

Team:KCL UK/Attributions1

Attributions.