Team:OLS Canmore/Collaborations

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COLLABORATIONS

This year we participated in two major and six minor collaborations with both high school and university teams. Our largest collaboration component was the publishing of 2 papers in an online peer-review synthetic biology journal called BioTreks.
We also collaborated with the Lethbridge high school team. We worked on an ethical review of their project, as well as provided an insight from the perspective of our faith.
Lethbridge worked with our parts to characterize them. Through this, we helped them answer different ethical and faith related questions that they had.
For other collaborations different members of our team were interviewed by other teams on how iGEM affected both their education and personal life. We also began mentoring a team from a high school that has just begun their synthetic biology career, shared our research with a team that is over 6,263 miles (10079.32 kilometres) away from us in Taiwan, and participated in many, many surveys.

University of Lethbridge

Our collaboration with the Lethbridge team began in mid-August and consisted of their iGEM team testing our construct, and us conducting an ethical review. Originally we had planned to also test their project but due to the nature of their project (working with blood) we would not have been able to do any relevant testing, because we are working out of a catholic high school.

For the ethical review, we answered in-depth, four main ethical questions and one faith question. The completed review can be viewed in pdf format by clicking here . It's a great read and we strongly encourage everyone to take a look at it because it raises some very interesting ideas and considerations.

Once we had completed the ethical review of their project they then conducted tests on our project as they are working out of a university lab and so we hoped that they could perform tasks we were unable to successfully complete. They ran a gel for us and a miniprep since we were struggling to properly miniprep and isolate our plasmids from cultures. However, due to reasons talked about in the 'Results' page the results from Lethbridge only further confirmed a synthesis error.
Two weeks before the jamboree (October 13th) we discovered why were having so many issues transforming, cloning, and miniprepping. Although we sent orders to the synthesis company and they confirmed that they were to be sent in the backbone pUC57, they were accidentally sent in a pet vector. The problems in the lab were because we were using Ampicillin to screen for colonies containing the plasmid, rather than Kanamycin. This seems to be a random error, and while it is unfortunate, we were still able to complete the biobrick parts.

We are very happy to have collaborated with the Lethbridge high school team this year. Our collaboration was very constructive for both teams.

Biotreks

This year our team was asked to participate in the publishing of the first ever edition of Biotreks. Biotreks is a peer-reviewed startup journal created specifically to showcase high school synthetic biology projects. We chose to write two papers that focused on different aspects of our project and overall iGEM experience: one researchpaper and one perspectivespaper. Both of our papers also required us to make videos to give short summaries of their contents.

Groups taking part in the Biotreks publication include:

• Rock Ridge High School
• Tuscarora High School
• Brockton High School
• Renaissance High School
• Broad Run High School

Our research paper included background on the problem we are aiming to fix, the methods we used to construct and test our project, the results and what we learned from them, and what he hope to do with our project in the future.

Abstract for "Expression of Keratinase Genes in the Bacillus Genera for in Escherichia coli JM109 and DH5alpha for use in the Poultry and Wastewater Management Industries"

An estimated 8.5 billion tons of poultry feathers are produced from farms globally every year, in addition to the tons of human hair that is extracted from wastewater treatment facilities worldwide. Keratinase is a serine protease that primarily attacks the disulfide bonds in keratin waste—such as feathers and hair. The expression of bacterial keratinase provides an opportunity to manage this degradation-resistant keratin waste. This study aims to provide a foundation for future management of hair and feather waste by reducing the negative effects that the current treatment methods have on the environment, and by producing a useful amino acid protein product of high quality such as animal feed and fertilizers. This is done through a semi-quantitative analysis of keratinase A (kerA) and keratinase US (kerUS) activity, and expression of these genes in E.coli. The genes for production of kerA and kerUS originate from Bacillus licheniformis and Bacillus brevis respectively. These genes were optimized for expression in Escherichia coli JM109 and DH5⍺. The KerA enzyme is most active in degrading keratin in feathers, while KerUS is most active in degrading keratin in hair. The production and effectiveness of keratinase was tested on human hair over five days at a temperature of 37°C. Observations from this semi-quantitative assay, combined with results from a skim milk plate assay suggest that some protease is being expressed and secreted.

Abstract for "Learning to Ker: Safety and Ethics in High School Synthetic Biology"

The Our Lady of the Snows Catholic Academy iGEM team is a dynamic synthetic biology group made of high school students from grades 10 through 12. On the team there are brains, athletes, princesses, and basket cases all working towards one goal: expressing Keratinases in E.coli JM109 and DH5⍺. Keratinases have the ability to reduce the 8.5 billion tons of keratin waste produced by the poultry industry every year, along with the keratin waste in wastewater treatment industries in the form of hair. The hair and feathers degraded by the keratinases could even be recycled into a high-quality protein product that can be used to make fertilizer and animal feed. While one focus is to complete this project, the true goal is to provide high school students with a well-rounded education beyond the classroom. This diverse scientific education is not limited to working inside the lab or on the technical aspects of the project. It extends to all areas of science, including safety and ethical considerations, as well as the acknowledgement of different religious and economic perspectives in scientific endeavours. Over the past 3 years, the Our Lady of the Snows iGEM and synthetic biology team has been learning how to build a lab that is economically feasible, through do-it-yourself projects and secondhand equipment. The team has tackled safety issues related to sharing lab space with many students in a high school. Students have also considered the project from a faith-based perspective, and addressed other ethical concerns related to young student scientists and genetic engineering.

Both manuscripts were published on an online platform and on May 21st, 2016 all those who published manuscripts, as well as judges and editors, read, reviewed, and offered suggestions to improve the papers. We received a lot of very helpful feedback from other authors and judges. The feedback they offered made us work hard to find very specific answers to challenging questions, and some comments challenged the way we approached problems we were facing in the lab. After the conference we came back to our project with new perspectives, answers, ideas, and questions.

For our content and efforts in collaboration during the conference we were awarded badges in the following categories:

• Biosafety and Ethics
• Conference Participation
• Problem Solving
• Scientific Rigor
• Education
• Collaboration
• Visual Communication

In late September we were contacted by the professionals in the synthetic biology field that we would be working with for editing of the papers. The formatting and copy-editing process is underway, and the papers will both be published by late October.

Interviews

As an aspect of our collaborations with other teams, we participated in Rice University’s “Humans of SynBio” project. Based on the Humans of New York social media campaign, where pictures and stories of people are shared with the world. This project allowed us to share our experiences in iGEM and as students participating in synthetic biology. We talked to a member of their team over Skype and he asked questions about our experiences. Their team then posted a summary of our experiences as part of their campaign.

“I think the experience is not as much about the project as it is about personal development and about learning and getting to know the world of science and everything it involves.” - excerpt from article (Aug 28. 2016, Rice iGEM Facebook)

Along with being interviewed by the iGEM team at Rice University, members of our team were also interviewed by a Swiss university team out of the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) that runs a website featuring iGEM news and interviews from iGEM teams and their members across the world.
The members interviewed were able to take an introspective look at the inner workings of the team, how far we’ve come, how we manage to work together and get along. Two articles were written on the team: one based on the interview, and the second about the project more specifically.

Mentorship

Another part of our collaborations included mentoring a new team from Notre Dame Collegiate high school in High River, Alberta, Canada. Though they did not participate in the iGEM competition this year, they began to work in the lab, develop project ideas, and plan to compete in future years. We got the opportunity to travel with them to a workshop in Lethbridge, Alberta, and the aGEM (alberta iGEM) competition. During this time we agreed to help them refine their lab and research skills. Mentoring a new team not only gives us a chance to help them learn and grow as a team, but also to solidify our own skills and share the experience we learnt through help from our own mentors of the years.

Taiwan
In early March of 2016 we were contacted by an iGEM team in Taiwan who also happened to be working on a project that involved the use of Keratinase. They requested biobricks of our parts KeratinaseA and KeratinaseUS. At the time we were nearing the end of our school year and did not yet have any functional biobricks.
The fact that a team that was so far away had reached out and asked for something we couldn’t provide made us even more determined to buckle down in the lab and in our research to create a functioning biobrick. Something we are still working on. Even though we weren’t able to give them the parts they needed we did in-fact exchange research and provide them with some research of our own to help them along with their project. However, we did provide them with the sequences of DNA we had synthesized and are using in creating our parts, if case they were interested in also synthesizing them.

Surveys

Additionally, various members of the team were asked to participate in a variety of surveys from other teams. Determined to boost response rates, we answered all we could find. These included both a Virginia iGEM team and the Munich United iGEM team survey.

One survey was in regards to bio-containment. Since this season we have decided to try our hand at building a bioreactor for our bacteria, this was helpful in not only expressing our ideas to others, but solidifying our own plans.
The survey done by Munich United focused more on the business side of synthetic biology.
The questions asked were related to areas we hadn’t focused on or even considered before, from funding to founding a company. Since our aim is to implement our construct industrially these kinds of questions are ones that we need to consider. By participating in these surveys it gave our team a chance to consider things we may not have otherwise considered had someone not brought the subjects to our attention.

Our team strongly believes in contributing to the larger scientific community through research, mentoring, ethical reflection, and providing feedback. For this reason we are always eager to collaborate with iGEM teams, or other synthetic biology teams and groups. In the true spirit of collaboration, these experiences are beneficial to all parties involved either by providing specific knowledge or by unexpectedly inspiring an idea to improve each other’s projects. For these reasons we’d like to say thank you to all the teams that collaborated with us this year! And thank you to all the teams who interviewed us as talking to other iGEM teams is always a great experience!

Contact us at:
https://www.facebook.com/OLeSsence/
@igem_canmore
larvisais@redeemer.ab.ca