Team:TU Eindhoven/Attributions
Attributions
As iGEM Eindhoven 2019 we would like to express our gratitude towards a number of people who helped us in various ways to get the best out of our team and to make our project a success.
Supervisors
First of all, we would like to thank our supervisors Prof. dr. ir. Luc Brunsveld, Dr. ir. Tom de Greef and especially Prof. dr. Maarten Merkx for guiding us through the scientific part of our project and, in particular, in helping us overcome our problems that sometimes seemed to be non-resolvable.
An even bigger help in all our problems, big or small, in or outside of the lab, was Ir. Eva van Aalen. She introduced us to the biochemical lab, taught us all the necessary lab techniques and was always available to answer our questions. We would not have been able to succeed in our experiments without this, so for that we are extremely grateful.
Lab
The NanoLuc-mNeonGreen part has been developed by Ir. Simone Wouters, which helped us with the measurements of our parts. Another student team from our university, T.E.S.T., and Dr. Yan Ni expressed this protein. They made the protein and some measurement data available to us for use, which we then used to optimize our measurements.
Ir. Glenn Cremers helped us to get on track with using bacteriophages while Ir. Pascal Pieters assisted us with Gibson Assembly.
Because we are working with Genetically Modified Organisms, we had to fill in safety forms for the iGEM Foundation. These forms have been discussed with and signed by Ing. Peggy de Graaf-Heuvelmans and Dr. Moniek de Liefde-van Beest.
Queen Astrid Military Hospital (QAMH)
The experiments with bacteriophages could not be performed in the laboratory at our university because the phages could contaminate all other experiments within the lab. The laboratory of Molecular and Cellular Technology (lab MCT) of the QAMH provided us with the space, materials and expertise to execute our experiments with bacteriophages and assisted us in these experiments. We would like to thank Maia Merabishvili, Tea Glonti, Bruno Pascual, Griet Steurs, Steven De Soir, Daniel de Vos and many others who helped us a lot. A special thanks to Dr. Jean-Paul Pirnay for sharing all his knowledge on bacteriophages and being the point of contact from the QAMH.
PAMM
PAMM is an independent laboratory that takes care of microbiological diagnostics for several hospitals and other healthcare providers. PAMM has supported our iGEM team for the past few years, and their expertise in the detection of bacterial infections is particularly interesting for our project. We would like to thank doctor microbiologist Kees Verduin for sharing his expertise with us and giving us feedback on our project. We would also like to thank pathologist Jitske Stalpers for allowing us to join her on her daily routine within the PAMM laboratories and thus see how microbiological diagnostics are currently performed. This allowed us to further improve our project and integrate the bottlenecks in current diagnostics into our project.
Student team
iGEM Eindhoven is an official student team of Eindhoven University of Technology. Therefore, we have been present at several information days at our university and public events. Our team was assisted in providing us with a working office at the university and in team managing by Mia Jelsma (head of all the student teams). Together with Sacha Claessens (Student team communication) and Carmen van Vilsteren (Director of Strategic Area Health), they formed the communication between our team and the university, and we would thus like to thank them.
Human Practices
For our Safe-by-Design challenge, Korienke Smit and Cécile van der Vlugt from the Netherlands National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (Dutch: Rijksinstituut voor Volksgezondheid en Milieu, or short RIVM) have been giving us very useful information and have been of great help in the completion of our Safe-by-Design challenge and in our Human Practices overall. We would like to thank them for that.
Finances
We would like to thank Nanda Brouwers for making our invoices and managing our banking account.
General
We appreciate the help and advice from the previous iGEM Eindhoven teams and especially the 2018 team who made sure that there was a smooth transition between their team and ours.
