Team:Virginia/Attributions
Project Idea and Development
Each year, the Virginia iGEM team enrolls in a course during the Spring semester titled BIOL 4770: Introduction to Synthetic Biology. The course curriculum is discussion-based and serves to prepare new iGEM members for research by introducing significant concepts in synthetic biology. Our final assignment was to craft a project proposal that mimics an iGEM project. At the end of the semester, we compared the various project proposals and selected the one that seemed the most interesting and feasible. Thus, Transfoam was born.
Wetlab
Dr. Keith Kozminski, Professor of Cell Biology at UVA and Director of SynBio@UVA, served as the Principal Investigator for wet lab and our mentor since the initial formation of the team and project design. He taught the “Introduction to Synthetic Biology” course preceding our summer research. Once our research began, he graciously allowed the wet lab committee to utilize materials and machines from his lab and provided valuable resources to the modeling and human practices committees as well. We are extremely thankful for his unwavering dedication to the team since January, from educating us about the basics of synthetic biology to guiding us to develop our own project through the Summer and Fall.
Ms. Kay Christopher, Lab Preparator for Upper Level Labs at UVA, ensured the correct use of lab materials and provided guidance to correct procedures. She also oversaw the safety and cleanliness of the lab throughout our summer and fall research.
Ms. Joanne Chaplin, Lab Coordinator and Preparator at UVA,provided us with certain lab materials and oversaw the safety and cleanliness of the lab as well.
Special thanks to the Department of Biology at UVA for allows us to use Gilmer 148 throughout the summer and fall and for access to other lab facilities.
Dr. George McArthur, Director of Genetic Design-Build at Arzeda, played a significant role in guiding us through plasmid design optimization and DNA synthesis techniques. He provided us with information about and access to plasmid design systems, namely ApE and Teselegen. As a Virginia iGEM alumnus, he also provided us with valuable feedback on our general project design and implementation.
Dr. Michael Fero, CEO of TeselaGen Biotechnology, was referred to us by Dr. McArthur and greatly helped us in understanding how to use the TeselaGen software for designing our plasmids.
Dr. Richard Gross, Professor of Chemistry at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, provided recommendations as to which PHA genes needed to be in our plasmid design.
Dr. Brian Berger, Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering at UVA, offered expert advice on styrene integration, specifically regarding partitioning.
Dr. Justin Barone, Professor of Biological Systems Engineering at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, guided the project to be more oriented towards comparing the cost of PHA production to the process of styrene waste disposal.
Dr. Walter Harman, Professor of Chemistry at UVA, referred us to the experts we consulted for understanding many of the protocols required for our project, namely C-NMR/H-NMR/IR spectroscopy and gas chromatography.
Dr. Gunnoe and Dr. Venton, Professors of Chemistry at UVA, and Mr. Earl Ashcraft, Instructional and Research Chemical Instrument Technician, helped us design a protocol for gas chromatography and allowed us to use their facilities.
Weihao Zhu and Fanji Kong, Graduate Students in Dr. Gunnoe’s Lab, demonstrated proper use of gas chromatography technologies and offered to help wet lab conduct the procedure with prepared samples.
Dr. Jeff Ellena, Biomolecular Magnetic Resonance Facilities Manager, helped us with setting up NMR use at UVA.
Dr. Spano, Professor of Biology at UVA, instructed us on how to use the lyophilizer.
Charles Grisham, Professor of Chemistry at UVA, helped us understand specific chemical measuring properties.
The Duesseldorf iGEM Team informed us about Labfolder.
Tomás Lopes da Fonseca, Head of Marketing at Labforward, guided us on how to organize and document daily laboratory activities on Labfolder.
Special thanks to the following for helping us in our plasmid design and transformation troubleshooting:
- William Huang, 2018 Virginia iGEM Team Wet Lab Member
- De Novo
- ApE
- Promega
Special thanks to the following for offering complimentary lab materials:
- Kitwa Ng
- Twist
- IDT
- GenScript
- NEB
Modeling/Wiki Design
Dr. Jason Papin, Professor of Computational Engineering at UVA, served as our second Principal Investigator. He met with the modeling committee to verify the flux-balance analysis model and summarize our analysis on the model. He also helped us prepare for the iGEM competition by advising us on how to present our models in a concise and comprehensible manner.
Tom Moutinho, Graduate Student at UVA in Dr. Papin's Lab, helped the modeling committee in understanding, constructing, analyzing, and verifying the FBA and metabolic network model.
Ryan Taylor, 2018 Virginia iGEM Captain, advised the modeling committee on which tools work best with our system and which questions should be answered to inform our experiment. As head modeler of last year’s team, his advice provided us a student-perspective on how to develop effective and informative models.
Dr. Daniel Mietchen, Data Scientist for the School of Data Science at UVA, provided us with general advice on project development.
Dr. Rachel Letteri, Professor of Chemical Engineering at UVA, provided us insight into project implementation by informing us about constructing a bioreactor using a process flow diagram.
Dylan Culfogienis, 2018 Virginia iGEM Wiki Designer, helped our team’s Wiki designer, Ben Ascoli, update the 2018 Virginia wiki tool.
Special thanks to the 2018 Virginia iGEM team for guiding us throughout the summer and fall from team organization to Jamboree preparation.
Human Practices & Outreach
Ms. Christine Alencar, Green Labs Specialist at the UVA Office for Sustainability and Co-Director of EPS Taskforce, invited us to the Expanded Polystyrene (EPS) Taskforce meetings to discuss how Styrofoam recycling works at the university and how it can be improved. Through our meetings with Christine, we were able to gain a stronger understanding of why it is so difficult to sustainably dispose of polystyrene.
Ms. Sarah Goggin, President of the UVA Science Policy Initiative, advised us on the process of writing a clear and informative policy brief as well as visually-appealing one-pagers for our EPS food container ban proposal. She also guided us on how to best approach delegates regarding our policy recommendation.
Mr. Lane Rasberry, Wikimedian-in-Residence at the UVA Data Science Institute, emphasized the importance of open-source information-sharing and its alignment with non-proprietary aspect of synthetic biology. He gave us a small workshop on how to use Wikipedia as a reliable medium for sharing information with the masses. This inspired us to edit and develop the Biodegradable Plastic wikipedia page.
Mr. Adam Gendell, Director of the Cold-Packaging Committee at GreenBlue, met with us to discuss the degree of impact our EPS food container ban would have on industries and businesses. In addition, he explained various aspects of the general packaging industry that are overlooked by environmentalists.
Alex Zorychta, Assistant Director for Technology Entrepreneurship Program at UVA and Director for Works in Progress, gave us general advice about the impact of our project and outreach strategies as a former Virginia iGEM member. He was also the keynote speaker at our 2019 Mid-Atlantic iGEM Meetup.
Mr. Phil Mcalips, Director of Solid Waste at McIntire Road Recycling Center, allowed us to tour the recycling center to learn more about polystyrene recycling.
Representative Stanley Paige Zeigler, the prime sponsor of the polystyrene food container ban in Maine, provided us with a list of all of the counterarguments he encountered and refuted when trying to pass the bill in the entire state of Maine. We included these arguments in our policy brief to address common concerns of the ban.
Ms. Sadie Gary, Chief of Staff in the Office of Delegate Chris Hurst, and Mr. Christopher Fleury, Legislative Aide of Delegate Elizabeth Guzman, advised us on how to approach writing a policy brief for the EPS food container ban.
Dr. Sally Hudson, Professor of Economics at UVA and candidate for Charlottesville/Albemarle County representative, met with us to discuss the next steps of our EPS ban policy proposal.
Special thanks to all of the Virginia General Assembly House Delegates that expressed interest in our policy brief proposing a ban on EPS food containers in localities across Virginia.
Agilyx, a chemical recycling company, helped us understand the process of pyrolysis for converting polystyrene into styrene, an essential first step for our device to operate in the real world.
Mr. Richard Ivey, Marketing Manager at Danimer Scientific, provided an industrial perspective on PHA manufacturing.
Dr. Martin Chapman, CEO of Indoor Biolabs, and team showed us how a real biotechnology company operates and expressed their challenges with sustainability. They also gave us feedback on our presentation skills.
Shaun Moshasha, Executive Director at Open Bio Labs and former iGEM judge, participated in our panel at the Mid-Atlantic iGEM Meetup and provided valuable advice to all the iGEM teams present.
Mr. Christopher Chamberlin, iSTEM Teacher at Walker Upper Elementary, invited us to participate in Walker Upper Elementary’s annual iSTEM Night. He also discussed a possible collaboration with us involving developing our own biology or synthetic biology related project for his students to conduct.
Joyce Cheng, President for the UVA Chapter of Virginia Student Environmental Coalition, guided us on how to lobby for environmental causes and gave us tips for writing to politicians that helped move our policy brief forward.
Elizabeth Heider, Chief Sustainability Officer at Skanska, offered writing strategies for our policy brief to attract legislators.
Dr. Robert Cox, Professor of Evolutionary Biology, advised us to plan our bioreactor in a way that aligns the evolutionary advantages of the organism with the goals of our project (maximizing PHB production).
Finances
We are incredibly grateful for our donors who made the entire project possible!
- Office of the Executive Vice President and Provost
- Experiential Learning Fund
- Parents Fund Grant
- Biomedical Engineering Department
- Experiment.com donors
Ms. Patty Marshal, Ms. Mary Liberman, and Ms. Terry Ludovissy helped organize our expenses and managed our incoming funds.
Cindy Wu, Co-Founder of Experiment, met with us to set up our Experiment crowdfunding page and display our project details in a brief yet informative manner.
Sokphal Tun, Programs Manager at National Pancreas Foundation, looked over a select few of our grant applications and provided suggestions with her background as a grants coordinator.
Team Member Attributions
Simonne Guenette, Wet Lab Lead, worked closely with Aarati to create and develop the project’s device. Throughout the duration of our research, Simonne managed the device design and execution, kept the lab on task, and adapted to problems that arose in device assembly and implementation.
Aarati Pokharel, Wet Lab Member, worked closely with Simonne to create and develop the project’s device. She designed and executed experiments and the assembly of our plasmids.
Kobe Rogers, Wet Lab Member, designed and executed experiments and the assembly of our plasmids.
Jermaine Austin, Wet Lab Member, designed and executed experiments and the assembly of our plasmids.
Evan Biedermann, Team Captain and Modeling Member, managed and led the team through the summer to Boston! In addition, Evan assisted in building the genome wide metabolic model that informed our wetlab.
Jainam, Modeling Lead, built a genome-scale metabolic model that informed our wet lab team by researching models and reaching out to modelling experts.
Shaalini Desai, Human Practices/Outreach Lead, was in charge of making sure the committee’s initiatives contributed to the project’s main goals and potential in society. Her main contributions consisted of drafting and distributing the EPS ban policy brief, editing the Biodegradable Plastic Wikipedia page, and organizing the Mid-Atlantic iGEM Meetup.
Alec Brewer, Team CFO and Human Practices/Outreach Member, managed the finances for the team and spearheaded entrepreneurship initiatives. His main contributions consisted of writing grants that funded our project and connecting with local groups to build a more robust synthetic biology network.
Katie Zhang, Human Practices/Outreach Lead, pursued committee initiatives through reaching out to experts and local groups, completing customer discovery, and researching to edit the Biodegradable Plastic Wikipedia page.
Ben Ascoli, Wiki Programmer, worked on synthesizing all the information generated by the team and developed the wiki page.
Hannah Towler, Graphic Designer, designed and produced all the graphics for our wiki, events, newsletters, advertisements, and posters.
