Team:Pittsburgh/Attributions


Attributions


The team:


Wetlab - Victor, Harrison, Jemy, Ripal, Mel

Project design - Victor, Harrison, Jemy, Ripal, Mel

Outreach - Victor, Harrison, Jemy, Ripal, Mel

Religious study - Jemy, Ripal, Mel

CampBioE presentations - Jemy, Ripal, Mel, Victor, Harrison

DNA design - Victor, Harrison

Ordering reagents - Victor

Wiki design - Harrison

Wiki content - Harrison, Jemy, Ripal, Victor, Mel

Modeling - Harrison

Splicer tool - Harrison

Poster - Victor, Harrison, Jemy, Ripal, Mel

Intein mechanism research - Ripal, Mel


Advisors:


We are immensely grateful for the valuable advice and support our mentors have been able to give us throughout the iGEM experience. We appreciate the time that our mentors were able to take out of their busy schedules to provide us with advice through our weekly meetings and via email.

Dr. W Seth Childers - Provided tips and advice to troubleshoot protocols, connected us with a graduate student, Dylan Tomares in his lab, and provided valuable reagents and resources for protocols.

Dr. Alex Deiters - Helped to develop project design and troubleshoot protocols; gave us valuable advice on lab techniques.

Dr. Jason Shoemaker - Helped with project design and provided us with important advice on human practices.

Dr. Sanjeev Shroff - Coordinated logistics for funding and university policy along with providing us valuable insight on modeling kinetics.

Dr. Jason Lohmueller - Helped us with project design by giving feedback on experimental setup and provided us with tips on working with inteins and other proteins in the lab.


Other:


Dr. Nastasa Miskov-Zivanov - Graciously provided us with lab space and was available for any help that we needed in the lab.

Dan Gongaware and Erin Schuetz - Managed finances and budget for our team, including ordering reagents and supplies.


Lab support:


We thank Dr. Nastasa Miskov-Zivanov for hosting us at her lab space at the Center for Biotechnology and Bioengineering at the University of Pittsburgh to conduct our research.

Also special thanks to Dr. W. Seth Childers for generously allowing us access to his lab, equipment, and reagents at the University of Pittsburgh Department of Chemistry.


Team training and project start:


The Pittsburgh iGEM Team was chosen during the second week of April and began brainstorming project ideas on May 13th. We selected a project by the end of May and spent several weeks researching the literature, designing constructs and preparing materials to begin wetlab experiments. We began serious lab work in the third week of June and have been working continually since then.

One of our team members, Victor So, took a synthetic biology class offered during Spring 2018. This class was taught by Dr. W Seth Childers.

Interviews


We would like to thank all of the organizations and experts that aided us in gathering the information we needed and providing valuable input to our project design and human practices.

Dr. Hideo Iwai - Research Director at the University of Helsinki

Dr. Henning Mootz - Institute of Biochemistry at the University of Munster

Dr. Seth Horne - Department of Chemistry at the University of Pittsburgh

Dr. Cheryl Telmer - Research Biologist at Carnegie Mellon University

Rev. Dr. Ronald Cole-Turner - Professor of Theology and Ethics at the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary

Allegheny Union Baptist Association

Buddhist Center of Pittsburgh

Muslim Association of Greater Pittsburgh

Rodef Shalom Congregation

Special Thanks


We would like to give special thanks to all of the people who provided crucial support for our research.

Dave Gau - providing us with access to the gel imager room and resources for spectroscopy

Prof. Juel Smith - providing us with input on our educational games and getting us in contact with the Allegheny Union Baptist Organization

Dylan Tomares - Provided valuable input and resources on working with proteins and troubleshooting protocols