Although our team members carried out all the work and deliverables of this project, it is important we acknowledge those who have been a part of this journey. We would like to thank everyone who has contributed to this project. As a team, we have had an unforgettable experience and a summer that has provided us with the knowledge and skills across our shared disciplines. Our PIs have provided us with expertise advice and important feedback. We would like to thank all our advisors, without them the project would not have been possible without their support. Our heartfelt thanks go to everyone who has helped our project, be it suggesting team names to providing us with bacterial strains and other material.
The Students
Alice Goddard
Human practices co-lead - conducted interviews with healthcare clinicians and professionals, involved in all Parkinson’s UK events including their memorial cycle; Boston deliverables – presentation speaker; Hosted and presented the UK iGEM meetup; Wiki – project description, human practices (special prize), public engagement (special prize), medals page, and neuroinformatic brain video; Abstract (in-conjunction with Connor Trotter); Admin including team merchandise.
Karen Fung
Karen - lead of wet lab and heavily involved in bronze characterisation and measurement. Involved in eicosane and CRISPR biosensor. Collaboration - organisation and scheduling of the UK iGEM meetup. Lead of wiki content - ensure content was on the wiki and distributed tasks and deadlines for each member. Worked alongside the wiki lead providing suggestions on the wiki design and assisting on graphic elements of the Wiki.
Matthew James Rogan
Matt- Human practices lead- heavily involved in integrated human practices. Contacted and interview clinicians and researchers and involved in Parkinson’s UK events. Wet lab - Lead in Glutathione biosensor wet lab and eicosane biosensor characterisation. Collaborations; hosted and presented in iGEM UK meetup.
Connor Trotter
CRISPR SHERLOCK wetlab lead; Collaborations lead - Waterloo and organised, hosted and presented at UK iGEM meetup; Modelling lead - constructed all 3 models; School outreach; Safety form and related check-ins; Sponsorship organiser; Abstract (in conjunction with Alice Goddard); Admin (Boston organisation); Wetlab aid for glutathione bionsensor and bronze medal criteria. Presenter at iGEM Giant Jamboree.
Emily Louise Walker
Public engagement - heavily involved in interactions with Parkinson’s UK, oversaw bake sales and set up the Go Fund Me page. Participated in the sponsored cycle. Digitised the lab book.
Danielis Golubovskis
Daniel was the lead for the team wiki and thus was primarily focused on designing and constructing the wiki pages.
Daniel has also done the designs for the team banner, fliers and merchandise.
Jasmines constant support and guidance across all aspects of our project has been invaluable. From proofreading our wiki to helping us in the laboratory (even on the weekends), she has gone above and beyond her role as our supervisor. iGEM would not have been a success if it wasn’t for her commitment to help us achieve our goals. She was the first point of contact for many of us for iGEM and non-iGEM related queries.
Bradley Brown
Bradley has a breadth of knowledge in biology, coding and modelling, is there anything he doesn’t know? From teaching us how to code to going about modelling biology; many aspects of the project would not have been successful without him. He would encourage us to keep on top of our deadlines and to work hard to meet them and make sure we were on track, giving us feedback and many ideas on ways to improve the project.
Alba Iglesias Vilches
Alba provided advice and materials required for Gibson Assembly. As she is involved in the iGEM diversity committee, she provided us with a talk on the history of diversity in iGEM and how the committee came about. Her talk made our team aware of ways to ensure we were diverse and inclusive of all members.
Dr Colette Whitfield
Colette has been a constant source for guidance and materials in the biology laboratory. She provided us with bacterial strains and chemicals and advice on how to achieve medal requirements during group meetings. She has assisted us on using many of the lab equipment and provided us with the material for the bronze medal requirement for characterising a part. Her help in the laboratory was invaluable given the limited amount of time.
Dr Alice Banks
Alice has given us valuable feedback on our project during our progress meetings and guidance on cell-free in the labs with her expertise. She has been a constant source for advice and guidance in the laboratory and goes in depth to explain how to achieve the results we required. She keeps us on track with upcoming deadlines and ensures they are completed in good time.
Tom’s enthusiasm in iGEM has enabled us to successfully complete this project. He constantly encouraged us to do our best throughout this project and provided us with guidance in many aspects of the project. He has given us valuable feedback and ideas on how to improve many aspects of the project during our project meetings.
Dr Angel Goñi Moreno
Angel gave us a talk about synthetic biology and past iGEM project themes during bootcamp which assisted in our brainstorming session for project ideas. He also assisted Alice in gaining access into the Urban Science Building to facilitate her with using the computer science facilities.
Dr Jon Marles-Wright
Jon has constantly guided and supported us throughout this project. He is always willing to sit down and run through the projects goals and has been heavily involved with providing advice on how to achieve our goals and providing us with the materials to do so. He is enthusiastic and always checks up on what each one of us is doing and encourages us to keep going above and beyond.
Dr Jem Stach
Jem tasked us with a gene construct design question during bootcamp which greatly prepared the team during the project. He inspired us with the idea of a biosensor for Parkinson's Disease during our brainstorming sessions when Matt mentioned Joy Milne. He provided us with valuable feedback during bootcamp which led us to our final project idea. Jem also contributed to suggestions for our tag line "A sensible approach to Parkinson's Disease".
Dr Dana Ofiteru
Dana gave us a talk during bootcamp about modelling. Her talk allowed Connor to successfully model the three biosensors.
Dr Ciarán Kelly - attending our team presentations and giving us invaluable feedback. Despite moving to another university, his visits to the Devonshire building would always involve asking us on how the project was going and providing us with ideas on improving the project
Ani Paloyan - helping us with guidance on working with proteins and providing materials for protein purification
Dr Will Stanley - helping us in the laboratory and giving us expert protein knowledge. He sourced out E. coli Rosetta plyss 2 cells for us and provided us with important advice on our CRISPR SHERLOCK system
Dr Cecilia Piergentili - helping with the part characterisation testing for our bronze award by assisting Karen in using the BCA kit and providing guidance on how to characterise the part
Andrea Giachino - helping us with protein work and providing guidance in the laboratory. He also assisted us in the part characterisation testing for our bronze award and provided guidance on formatting figures using R
Professor Marcus Kaiser - consulting neuroinformatic specialist and aiding the construction of diffusion tractography brain videos for use in wiki documentation and the Boston deliverables.
Ms Vivienne Rogeson - contact for Parkinson's UK, enabling us to attend events and meet both volunteer organisers and people affected by Parkinson's disease, and supporting both Alice and Emily in the annual Geoff Cobbing memorial cycle.
Dr Dow Smith - reviewing our initial project from the perspective of a General Practitioner and advising the team on healthcare diagnostic tools standards such as a low false positive rate.
Professor Richard Walker - aiding project design and integrated human practices and insight into current NHS Parkinson's Disease diagnostics.
Dr Daniel Erksine - feedback for project design and biosensors with input of future work and biosensors at the time unknown to the team.
Sponsors
Integrated DNA Technologies - for providing us with free DNA to carry out our experiments
Synthego (Malek Haddad) - for providing us with guide RNAs to carry out our CRISPR SHERLOCK experiment. Special thanks to Malek for arranging this for us and providing us with free sgRNAs
Wellcome Trust - for providing funding
Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) - for providing funding
