Team:SoundBio/Awards

Team
Description Background Design Experiments Lab Notebook Results Characterization Safety Attributions
Demonstration
Modeling
Integrated Human Practices Public Engagement
Minterlab Collaborations
Judging Form
Awards
Bronze Silver Gold Awards

Bronze

  1. Registration and Giant Jamboree Attendance
  2. Competition Deliverables
  3. Attributions: We have attributed all the people who are given guidance and support on each aspect of our project, from wetlab to hardware to software to public relations to our team in general.
  4. Project Inspiration and Description: As we explored bacterial cellulose’s many applications, we found that it has great potential in the field of tissue scaffolding. The combination of bacterial cellulose’s incredible natural properties and its potential adaptability through additional spatial functionalization can not only improve tissue scaffolding but also refine the utility of biomaterials across a variety of industries.
  5. Characterization/Contribution: We characterized FixK2 (BBa_K592006), an inducible promoter that is part of our blue light system, by testing its reliability. Our results show that the FixK2 promoter has very little to no leaky expression.

Silver

  1. Validated Part/Validated Contribution: Even though we are not in a special track, we completed the requirements for validated contribution. We created a bioreactor that allows for control of the pH, oxygen level, and temperature of the growth environment, in order to provide optimal conditions for maximal cellulose production from our bacteria.
  2. Collaboration: This year, we collaborated with other teams for Minterlab, an alternative we created for teams to participate while expanding the concept of Interlab. We also collaborated with Washington iGEM to host teams across Washington and Calgary iGEM at the Pacific Northwest iGEM Meetup.
  3. Human Practices: This year, we collaborated with other teams for Minterlab, an alternative we created for teams to participate while expanding the concept of Interlab. We also collaborated with Washington iGEM to host teams across Washington and Calgary iGEM at the Pacific Northwest iGEM Meetup.

Gold

  1. Integrated Human Practices This year, our team reached out to a variety of researchers, surgeons, and academics to guide the design and future of our project.
  2. Model Your Project: To make the optogenetic circuit design for spatially controllable bacterial cellulose modification easily implemented for any desired patterning of a finished BC sheet, we laid the groundwork for a model that could determine intensity and time given the desired protein concentrations.
  3. Demonstration of Your Work: We designed and built a bioreactor that would efficiently grow bacterial cellulose as well as spatially control the presence of bacterial cellulose-modifying proteins.

Awards

Best Education & Public Engagement

Minterlab, directed towards middle schoolers, provided a valuable introduction to the synthetic biology topics covered in high school. The kids were very interested in seeing the amounts of bacteria that were found on everyday objects, and the Minterlab experiment gave them an example of how scientific principles can be applied to discover new things about everyday objects. Through this event, we were able to integrate cellular biology with the universal language of crafts to show younger students the invisible living world around us. An alternative for teams to participate in while expanding the concept of Interlab to kids around the world, Minterlab was held in various locations.

Learn more about our public engagement!

Best Hardware

Our team worked on finding the optimal conditions for bacterial cellulose production through hardware. We tested agitated vs. non-agitated conditions, different types of media and carbon source, seed culture to media ratios, and culture duration, to see which conditions produced the most bacterial cellulose. Using this data, we designed and built a bioreactor that would efficiently grow bacterial cellulose as well as spatially control the presence of bacterial cellulose-modifying proteins. We went through several iterations of our design, as the requirements were based on the genetic circuit design which evolved over the course of the season. Our final design featured sparging elements to oxygenate the culture, as well as a sprinkler system to introduce E. coli to an ongoing culture of K. rhaeticus. The bioreactor also has ports for pH and dissolved oxygen probes so that we can monitor the culture conditions and alter them if necessary using one of the media input ports.

Learn more about our hardware!

Best Integrated Human Practices

Throughout this year, we reached out to a variety of researchers, surgeons, and academics to guide the design and future of our project, from initial development to wetlab to hardware to software. They helped us understand the societal impact, as well as future project applications and development.

Learn more about our integrated human practices!

Best Model

Our project, optogenetic circuit design for spatially controllable bacterial cellulose modification, could only be practical if an arbitrary user could reverse-engineer the necessary light input conditions from their desired BC pattern. This year, we attempted to create a model that could predict protein expression over time in our optogenetic circuit given the system’s input light intensity over time. To do so, we found a model of a similar system from Rice University’s Tabor Lab which we could repurpose by training on our experimental data. This model consisted of multiple ordinary differential equations and a sigmoidal function for gene product expression, and had been shown to produce accurate predictions given appropriate training data. In the future when we've successfully cloned our construct, we hope to generate a comprehensive data set on which to train our model.

Learn more about our modeling!