Students
- Arnaud. Human Practices, Collaborations, Experiments (‘Golden lab coat’ with 2 months of lab work!), Team management (Team leader), WIKI writing, Brainstorming on the project, Presentation at the Giant Jamboree
- Brahim. Experiments, Brainstorming on the project
- Clara. Collaborations, Experiments (‘Golden lab coat’ with almost 2 months of experiments !), Management of benchling lab notebook, WIKI writing, Human practices, Brainstorming on the project
- Colombe. Human Practices, Collaboration, Experiments, Art&Design, WIKI writing, Brainstorming on the project
- Guillaume. Modeling, Development, Brainstorming on the project, WIKI writing
- Hugues. Collaborations, Experiments (also ‘Golden lab coat’ with almost 2 months of lab work!), Modeling, WIKI writing, Brainstorming on the project
- Julien. Modeling, WIKI writing, Brainstorming on the project, Presentation at the Giant Jamboree
- Laura. Art & Design, Human Practices, Experiments, Brainstorming on the project
- Lucas F. Development, Brainstorming on the project, Human Practices
- Lucas L. Technical support, Brainstorming on the project
- Marie . Human Practices, Collaboration, Experiments, Gestion, WIKI writing, Brainstorming on the project, Art, Presentation at the Giant Jamboree
- Natacha. Human Practices, Experiments, WIKI writing, Philosophical iGAME, Poet, Brainstorming on the project, Presentation at the Giant Jamboree
- Sarah. Development, WIKI webmaster, Brainstorming on the project
- Yacine. Team support, Brainstorming on the project
Attribution in details
Project: the ideaWe’ve chosen this projet after many weekly meetings and a brainstorming weekend, with all team members. Because all our initial project ideas stumbled on the issue of genetic containment, we decided to explore the potential of a DNA-free cell. We all contributed ideas for the Human practices, the collaboration, and the design of the experiments. From early on we wanted to incorporate an artistic dimension to our project. Indeed, one member of our team (who created the animated cartoon) opted to study science after considering a career in art/design. Other members felt poems would be an unusual way to communicate about science because this art form emanates from the expression of feelings.
ExperimentsMany members of the team performed experimental work in the laboratory during the summer: Arnaud, Hugues, Clara, Natacha, Marie, Laura, Colombe and Brahim. Lucas L. helped during a few days. Experiments were done under the supervision of Mahnaz Sabeti et Laetitia Maroc.
Design of the experiments.Our experiments were designed by Hugues, with the help of our team supervisors, Stéphanie Moné, Ombeline Rossier, Mahnaz Sabeti, Laetitia Maroc and Philippe Bouloc.
Human PracticesMany team members contributed to the Human practices aspects of our project. First, Colombe drew and assembled her drawings to produce two original animated cartoons for non-scientist: the first one is an introduction to synthetic biology, and the second explains our project to functionalize DNA-less cells. Marie is the nice voice of these videos. Then Marie organized a workshop in an elementary School with 10 year-old children. Marie, Lucas F. and Natacha supervised this workshop. Arnaud and Marie moderate a workshop on DNA extraction from kiwi for the Science Fair in Gif-sur-Yvette. Natacha designed the « philosophical game » (iGAME) to question people about the meaning of our experiments, but also to learn about people opinion’s on synthetic biology. Clara wrote the survey to collect haikus. Finally, all team members (including supervisors) took every opportunity to collect poems created by scientists and non-scientists who heard/read about our project.
ModelingJulien and Guillaume made a huge work to adapt a standard model of bacterial growth to the specific case of a DNA-less cell. They both went to Vincent Danos' laboratory (one of the authors of the princeps article we used for our project) to meet Guillaume Terradot (Edinburgh), a specialist in this model. Hugues is biologist and helped Julien and Guillaume to interpret the data. Laura drew the cartoon they used to explain the important parameters of their models.
WIKI.We decided to share the work of the redaction of the WIKI. Natacha wrote the summary project and attributions. Hugues (the ‘golden pen’) worked on the ‘project’ part (« Demonstrate ») and wrote the parts concerning the « RNA cell » and « DNA-free cells and de-pollution ». He also helped Julien and Guillaume for the model. Arnaud attended to the characterization of biobricks and wrote the parts about « Nuclease_A1 », « Nuclease_gp3 » and« Nuclease_ygcG ». Julien and Guillaume wrote the « Model » part. Marie and Colombe wrote the « Human practices » part. Arnaud and Marie told the story of the meeting in the « Collaboration » part. Clara managed all the collaborations with worldwide iGEM teams. She also supervised that all the lab work was correctly entered into our Benchling lab notebook (a huge work !). Natacha created the « iGAME » and analyzed the answers, and wrote the « Team » part of the website (team and attribution). Sarah attended to the sponsors. Sarah, Guillaume and Lucas F. are the developers of the WIKI, and Laura managed the design of the website.
PosterColombe, Marie & Laura prepared a wonderful poster for the meetups we attended: we won the price of the best poster in the meetup of Leuven!
TalkHugues and Clara presented our project to the European Meetup in Paris. Marie and Hugues made the oral presentation at the Meetup in Leuven.
SponsorsStéphanie, Guillaume, Mahnaz, Laetitia and Lucas F. managed to find sponsors. Sarah was also actively helping to find sponsors.
ArtLaura managed the design of our project. She also did our banner, and some illustrations for our experiments. Colombe drew and created two animated cartoons for popularization. Natacha formed « the philosophical iGAME » and wrote most of the haikus produced by the team. Sarah and Guillaume also wrote some haikus
ManagementArnaud is our « Team leader ». He supervised the team and sent information (and reminders) to the team members. Arnaud and Marie organized the trip to Boston. Colombe and Marie supervised the creation and purchase of T-shirts and sweats.
Giant JamboreeMarie, Natacha, Julien and Arnaud did the oral presentation at the Giant Jamboree in Boston.
Acknowledgements
SupervisionWe want to thank all our advisors, Ombeline, Stéphanie, Philippe, Mahnaz, Laetitia, who supported us throughout the project from the brainstorming sessions to organizing the lab, and without whom the project would not have been possible.
We thank them for all their precious contribution to our project:
Administrative support
Sylvie Lautru did a lot of administrative work for the team and organized the trip to Boston.
General support
The GO Paris-Saclay iGEM team is mostly supported by the University Paris-Saclay and the I2BC (Institute for Integrative Biology of the Cell). For a full list of sponsors, please see the "Sponsors" page.
All the supervisors helped us for the design of the experiments and the interpretation of our results.
ModelingJulien and Guillaume went to Vincent Danos' laboratory (one of the authors of the article on bacterial cell modeling that inspired us) to meet Guillaume Terradot (Edinburgh), a specialist in this model. Guillaume T. helped us to correct and adjust our model. We thank Vincent and Guillaume T. for their help.
MS2 phageWe thank Pr. Christophe Gantzer (Université de Nancy) and Marianne De Paepe (INRA, MICALIS) for kindly providing the MS2 phage and its bacterial host Escherichia coli Hfr.
BrainstormingWe thank Olivier Namy for his participation to some of our weekly meetings and to our brainstorming week-end.
Workshop at the elementary School « les Arcades » (Viroflay)We are grateful to the teacher Audrey Bourguelle who helped us for the organization of a workshop at the elementary school « les Arcades » in Viroflay. We also thank Daniela for her help, and all the children for their enthusiasm.
PoetsWe also thank people who were inspired by our work and wrote haikus for us!
Workshop on DNAWe are grateful to Marie-Claude Serre (I2BC, Communication office) who gave us the opportunity to moderate a workshop on DNA at a Science Fair held in the “Château de Button” (Gif-sur-Yvette, France) on the campus of the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) in early October.