Team:Chalmers Gothenburg/Attributions
Although all of the work was carried out by the team unless otherwise stated, it was facilitated by the people around us. Their goodwill and friendliness has greatly benefited all parts of the project.
Principal Investigators
Verena Siewers is a project leader in Systems and Synthetic Biology Group at Chalmers. Her main research interest is the application of yeast as a cell factory for sustainable production of a variety of chemicals, including biofuels. As the main supervisor of the project she was available for questions, help and motivation without compromising the autonomy of the project. From the planning stages right up to the Jamboree.
Ivan Mijakovic, Director of the Chalmers Area of Advance Life Science Engineering and professor at the Department of Biology and Biological Engineering. He and his group are researching signaling and regulation in bacterial cells, focusing in particular on regulatory phenomena based on protein phosphorylation. He made a big difference to us, both in terms of funding and expertise.
Instructors
Gustaf Edman, MSc student, Raphael Ferreira, David Bergenholm, PhD students, are all former iGEM participants. Their experiences with practical and theoretical systems biology as well as being familiar with the competition was a great help to us. They were always ready to discuss and help us with our choice of primers, PCR conditions, provide us with protocols, preparing us for our presentation and many other things. The list is very long and their efforts have truly been appreciated. We also got chocolate cake once.
Other teams
The 2015 Amsterdam iGEM team
Our project starts roughly where the 2015 Amsterdam iGEM team left off, they were undoubtedly our biggest inspiration. We strived to expand on their idea through creating a modular library of symbiotic organisms to suit the needs of chemical synthesis demands. The possible implications of a successful development of this idea is what sparked our interest.
Department of Biology and Biological Engineering at Chalmers University of Technology
We feel privileged to have had unlimited access to the Chalmers Systems Biology lab and thankful for the help and tolerance of the researchers we shared space with.
Dr. Eva Albers contributed with her expertise within the field of microalgal research and cultivating photosynthetic organisms.
Cyrielle Bonzom, PhD student, is researching enzyme production and immobilization in mesoporous materials. She explained everything we needed to know about the microplate reader we used in our promoter study.
Dr. Carl-Johan Franzén, associate professor, provided great support with his years of experience within the field of industrial biotechnology. In his position as head of the Biotechnology bachelor programme at Chalmers University of Technology he was also instrumental in funding the project.
Dr. Joshua Mayers is developing microalgal biorefineries. His experience of growing photosynthetic organisms was very helpful as he gave us feedback and advice on setting up cultivation conditions for the cyanobacteria. He also lent us equipment used to in growing of photosynthetic microorganisms.
Marie Nordqvist is the manager of the SysBio lab. She is responsible for lab security and made sure we had a proper introduction to working in a professional environment. She was also very open to our more practical requests regarding equipment and space.
Dr. Lei Shi works with signaling and regulation in bacterial cells through phosphorylation in B. subtilis. She and Aida Kalantari, postdoctoral fellow, provided us with plasmids and a suitable strain for the project.
Dr. Yongjun Wei works with metabolic engineering of yeast for production of advanced biofuels and he provided us with wild type Y. lipolytica CBS 6124.
Leonie Wenning is doing her PhD in metabolic engineering of yeast for advanced biofuel production. She gave us the production strains of Y. lipolytica as well as corresponding integrative plasmids and protocols.
Dr. Nikolaos Xafenias works in the Bioelectrochemical systems field. As a super user of the HPLC he gave us an introduction and helped us with any questions.
A special thanks to Lisbeth Olsson, head of the Division of Industrial Biotechnology, and Jens Nielsen, head of the Division of Systems and Synthetic Biology, for allowing us to use their equipmentKTH Royal Institute of Technology, Science for Life Laboratory
Dr. Paul Hudson, assistant professor and group leader at KTH, has worked extensively with developing cyanobacteria for use in biorefineries. He made the project possible by approving us using wild-type Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803 and acetate producing mutant JA06.He and his PhD students Josefine Anfelt and Lun Yao were kind enough to give us not only these strains but also some plasmids, spare plates and a number of relevant protocols.
University of Gothenburg
Anne Farewell, senior lecturer at the department of Chemistry and Molecular biology, gave us access to their labs and provided us with plasmids for pRED/ET protocol and one E. coli production strain. She also provided a ArgR::Kan knock out strain. She and her PhD students helped us with ideas and feedback for our design and set us up on site.
Others
David Dagson, Msc student at Chalmers, provided us with Latex code for making schematics of our constructs, which greatly facilitated visualization and continuity of the lab work
Dr. Armin Ehrenreich of the Technical University of Munich sent us the wild type strain of B. licheniformis we needed to assemble the glyoxolate shunt.
