iGEM UWaterloo 2019 - Model

Attributions

Our project would not have been possible without the help of many people. Here, we would like to take the time to recognize and thank everyone who helped us on our journey this year!

Project Development

We would also like to give a huge thanks to Maximillian Reed, a previous lead on the iGEM 2017, for his support and guidance in the development of BBa_K2995002 biobrick experiments. We would also like to thank him for the time he put in on the intial experiments for the BBa_K2995002 biobrick for the 2019 iGEM project.

Co-op Students

Thanks go out to iGEM team member Claire, who also acted as the co-op student during the months of April - August. It was with their assistance that the literature discussing the nat1 gene, integral to the design of our project this year, was found. Claire's dedication, and all the time they put in with the day to day operations during the summer, helped the project develop as it did.

As a team member and our summer finance co-op, Gurlin was instrumental in coordinating our financial accounting, securing funding, and managing relations with our stakeholders.

Advisors

We would like to give a huge thank you to all the advisors of the Waterloo iGEM Team. They have helped the team immensely over the years and we can not be more grateful. From things like giving feedback on potential projects, troubleshooting, finances, and even networking-- all of the advisors were very helpful.

Dr. Barb Moffatt
Dr. Brian Ingalls
Dr. Trevor Charles
Dr. Andrew Doxey
Dr. Marc Aucoin
Dr. Valerie Ward
Dr. Forbes Burkowski
Dr. John Mclevey

Experimental Design and Consultation

Along with the guidance provided by the Waterloo iGEM advisors, faculty and graduate students of the university were consulted, and aided in the development of our design. Thanks go out to Scott Liddycoat, who is a departmental technician in the faculty of science, and who helped us optimize the growing conditions of the soybeans. As well, to the departmental technician Cheryl Soullière who provided a protocol for facilitating nodulation in soybean plants, as conducted for the university labs. Graduate student of Dr. Trevor Charles, Adrian Van Dyke, was of immeasurable help in guiding our team throughout the conjugation protocol, culturing rhizobia, and providing weekly aid and insight. Alongside this, other parties non-affiliated with the university guided the development of the project. Barney Geddes, a Postdoctaral researcher at McMaster University, helped answer our questions regarding gene manipulation in Bradyrhizobium and root nodule forming assays. Dr. George DiCenzo, of Queen's Univerity, provided feedback and advice on the initial designs for cloning that were being used for the project. Dr. Robin Horst, a senior scientist at Joyn Bio also met with us in July to discuss our project. He gave us advice on our epxerimental design (which controls to include, how many replicates we need when working with plants, measuring fluoresence in root nodules, etc.). We also discussed biocontainment and how our project might be applied in the real world.
We would like to thank Newcastle iGEM, and specifically Connor, for their support in this helping us develop our minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) experiments, detailed on experiments page (https://2019.igem.org/Team:Newcastle/Collaborations#UofW).

Hardware Support

Thanks go towards Dr. Josh Neufeld, Dr. Brain Ingalls, and Dr. Trevor Charles for allowing for the use of their lab equipment: the plate reader, the flowcytometer, and the bioscreen respectively. Thanks also go to Dr. Raymond Legge, for allowing the use of his facilities and his BioTek Synergy 4 plate reader.

Human Practices

We would like to thank the following people for taking time out of their day to help us better understand the implications and implementations of our project. Thank you to Robert Martin, Dr. Breanne Tidemann and Dr. Sara Martin of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada who helped us learn the typical views on herbicides from the general public, barriers to communicating agriculture practices, and potential ways to overcome them. As well, thanks to Steven Fekete of Fekete Farms and Karl Gmach from Gmach Gardens for speaking with us about their farming practices, including fertilizer and herbicide use, and communicated potential concerns from their consumers about our project. Finally, thank you to Phil Nadalin from Bayer Canada for answering our questions concerning current industry standards with using Rhizobia, as well as on potential implementation of our project.

Administrative Help

We would like to thank Lucy Satora for providing administrative assistance and help with handling shipments during this years project, and Vivian Cheung's help in regards to financial administration.

Team:Waterloo/Attributions