Team:NUS Singapore/Awards
NUS iGEM Team 2019 is proud to have achieved:
Best Foundational Advance ProjectBest Part Collection
FinalistBest PosterBest PresentationBest WikiBest Basic PartBest Composite Part
Gold Medal
Bronze Medal
✓Registration and Giant Jamboree Attendance
We have registered for Giant Jamboree 2019.
✓Competition Deliverables
We have fulfilled all 8 competition deliverables! Check out our Judging Form to find out more about the prize and medal criteria our project has successfully accomplished.
✓Attributions
We are excited give attributions to the selfless individuals and organizations that have helped our team! Check out our Attributions page to find out more about what goes on behind-the-scenes at E.co LIVE.
✓Project Inspiration And Description
The amazing applications of engineered bacteria are limited by their short lifespan and inherent stochasticity. We have developed a way to turn bacteria cells "ON" and "OFF" to regulate their productivity. Read our Project Description page to find out more about our platform technology.
✓Characterization / Contribution
Check out our thorough experimental characterization data for an existing BioBrick Part in the iGEM registry at our Parts page.
Silver Medal
✓Validated Part / Validated Contribution
Find out more about our team’s carefully designed parts at our Parts page.
✓Collaboration
We had successful collaborated with 2 iGEM teams. Our collaboration with the Nanyang Technological University on outreach and public education was exceptionally impactful. Find out more about our collaborations at our Collaborations page.
✓Human Practices
We spoke to various people about the science, applications and ethics of our project. Check out our Human Practices methodologies that allowed us to gain insights into the different aspects of our project.
Gold Medal
✓Integrated Human Practices
The valuable feedback from experts, stakeholders and future customers have shaped our project since day one. Check out our Integrated Human Practices timelines for more information.
✓Improve a Previous Part or Project
Our team improved upon a blue-light repressible composite part constructed in 2018. Find out more our improved new part that comes with an extra spacer DNA sequence after the blue-light repressible promoter.
✓Model Your Project
We built predictive growth models for our toxin-antitoxin and glucose uptake systems. Predictions made by the models helped guide our experimental design. For more information, please refer to our Modelling page.
✓Demonstration of Your Work
We used Lux protein production and AHL biosensor to demonstrate the functionality of our systems. For more details on how we demonstrated our work, visit our Demonstrate page.
Prizes We Are Aiming For!
✓Best Integrated Human Practices
Our project aims to bring Synthetic Biology to its fullest potential by addressing the relatively limited functional lifespan of engineered organisms using our novel growth switch. Applications that can benefit from our platform technology include those in rural areas such as water testing and biolighting, whereby infrastructure and costs restrict the use of other solutions. This demand was identified by interviews with various stakeholders such as biosensor companies and people who came from rural areas, giving us a clear understanding of the possible social impact of our project. Moreover, we also received constructive feedback which helped us to pivot away from applications where our technology might not be suited for. We understood the inherent risks of engineering bacteria to be long-lived, and sought the advice of safety committees to understand how we can mitigate our approach. This led us to the conception of the biocontainment and retention system. We created a systematic questioning framework to enable efficient conduct of interviews, with the opinions of over 25 individuals and groups rigorously documented on our IHP wiki page.
✓Best Education & Public Engagement
We realized that our pre-tertiary curriculum provides limited reach knowledge of Synthetic Biology, depriving students the opportunity to know more about this exciting field. We approached Nanyang Technological University (NTU) iGEM team and hosted a one-day symposium; LifeHack!2.0 on 19th June 2019 to high school students across 10 pre-tertiary institutes. We conducted interactive activities that introduced them to synthetic biology concepts and meaningful sharing sessions that elaborated more on the field. To plant the seeds of innovation in the next generation, we enlightened them on the field of bioentrepreneurship through a panel discussion led by leading researchers - Professor Hanry Yu, Assistant Professor Adison Wong and Dr Tan Yan Chong. In an effort to bring together the Synthetic Biology community in Southeast Asia and beyond, we liaised with the ambassadors of Asia, Dr Izzati and Mr Rahmat to host the After iGEM in conjunction with our event. Through these fruitful collaborations, we are proud to have engaged and educated our participants, inspiring almost 70% of our participants to pursue Synthetic Biology in the future.
✓Best Model
We have constructed kinetic models to simulate the biological systems used in our project. Initially, our first-principle models were used to run simulations that could answer the starting questions raised by the wet lab team. These preliminary models were then refined and trained using characterization data from the wet lab team. In order to make our models more well-informed, multiple rounds of identifiability analysis were carried out to understand the uncertainty in the parameters. After establishing our models, we ran many simulations and did sensitivity analysis to identify crucial parameters and factors that the wet lab team could manipulate to optimize our project’s final design. We found that varying the synthesis and degradation rates of the toxin specifically could help the wet lab team obtain significantly different results if needed. Through our simulations, we were also able to pinpoint the optimal combination of inducers to be used. Subsequent experiments were then performed using these recommendations and the results agreed well with the model's predictions. In addition to offering experimental design recommendations, our models can help users predict bacteria growth trends given certain inputs such as inducer concentration and induction time point.
✓Best Measurement
Our team developed a novel workflow to characterize the effect of our growth switch on inducible luminescence production. To demonstrate that our growth switch has the ability to regulate and at the same time induce protein production even after a long period of time, we devised a long-term protocol spanning up to 10 days long. We grow our control cells and growth-arrested cells in falcon tubes at 37°C and aliquot the cells into microplates on different days to induce the expression of target gene (lux) and antitoxin gene. We utilized the Opentrons OT-2 robot to assist us in our pipetting, and calibrated a single plate reader to ensure reproducibility in our results. We thereby demonstrated consistent trends in total protein production between the control cells and our growth-arrested cells on different days of measurement. We hope that users can adopt our workflow for use in other cell-based applications such as heavy metal biosensors. With further optimization, we envision that the workflow can be lengthened to beyond 10 days for a more comprehensive long-term study.
✓Best Supporting Entrepreneurship
We believe that our project has the potential to bring the biosensors industry to its fullest potential. During the course of our project, we have spoken with multiple stakeholders and mentors, ranging from incubators to scientific experts and experienced entrepreneurs. This allowed us to rapidly iterate through our business plans and thus reach our current business model as detailed in the iGEM page. We have received funding from our university’s venture arm, and gotten a written letter of support from FredSense, a former iGEM team-turned-company. We have also spoken to investors from deep-tech firms such as SG Innovate, and will continue to keep the connection in place before seeking venture funding. Intensive market research has also been conducted, with detailed competitor analysis and market penetration plans in place. We intend to file a provisional patent and optimize our product further while continuing the customer validation process.
✓Best Software Tool
We have developed a software named E.co Grow that can provide users with experimental design recommendations to achieve their desired control of bacterial growth and protein production. For example, our software can inform you of the inducer concentration needed to reduce the growth rate of E.coli by a specific amount. The foundation of this software lies in our robust models which have been built using our characterization data. Even before carrying out experiments, our software allows the wet lab team to predict bacterial growth and protein production trends once they input the time of induction and inducer concentrations. We believe that by offering simulations and providing experimental design recommendations, our software effectively reduces the number of experiments that the wet lab team needs to carry out for testing and optimising the system. We envision our software to be a platform that scientists around the world can make use of as well as contribute to by providing more data.
✓Best New Basic Part
✓Best New Composite Part
✓Best Part Collection
Our part collection allows users to decide how exactly they want to tune their cells to be on or off. We have 2 different 'on' toxin modules, which work differently to put cells to a resting metabolic state with their separate mechanisms. Their corresponding 'off' antitoxin modules are also in this collection. We have linked our parts here to a common reporter system, which is the LuxCDABE operon, demonstrating the effectiveness of our on-off modules in extending the viable protein production window of engineered cells. We believe that users of this collection can use our software to help decide which of these parts would be most suitable for their usage. We envision that our parts are truly modular and can fit a variety of promoters and subsequent genes of interests, and we have also demonstrated that by showcasing the repression and recovery occurring under the control of a unique blue-light promoter. Our parts are BBa_K319800(0-8).
✓Best Wiki
This beautiful website is a testament for itself.