Team:UAM Poznan/Team
TEAM
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Daria Niewiadomska
Area of expertise: biotechnology, molecular biology
About me: I have started working in a lab during my bachelor and then I thought that this is what I want to do in my life. I have started working in iGEM project by chance, last year, then our group won silver medal. This year we decided to continue and develop our project to get gold medal. What I love in synthetic biology is that, it is easy to see changes that we’re introducing into the system.
Attributions: I was involved in the multipromoter expression system project. I was in charge of assembling constructs and measuring the promoters’ strength (fluorescence measurements). I also contributed to Wiki content: methods, ethical issues and patenting. I described some biobricks, created a part of presentation and conducted classes during workshops. What is more I also prepared survey for human practices.
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Julia Zielińska
Area of expertise: biotechnology, molecular biology
About me: When I first started working on iGEM project, it was mostly about gaining practical experience in the lab and learning to work by myself. Now it is so much more- this is my second iGEM edition and I developed as a person who aspires to be a scientist. I‘ve not only learnt lab etiquette, new techniques and widen my scientific horizons, but also figured a lot about myself.
Attributions: assembly of constructs with E1 enhancer & altered UTRs, promoters’ activity measurements, data analysis, preparation of poster, notebook, galleries and illustrations for wiki, project and results description, project presentation, team’s logo and banner design, sfGFP and mRFP production and purification, biobricks description.
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Maja Szymańska
Area of expertise: biotechnology, molecular biology
About me: Participating in iGEM project is a great opportunity to create something own what can be useful for the others. If the system works and we obtain what we expected it's unbelievable fantastic feeling. However, sometimes the results are surprisingly different and we have to face up to new challenges, what is equally exciting. I'm convinced that participating in iGEM will allow me to realize my dreams.
Attributions: I was involved in “open reading frame project”. To check the importance of codon optimization in protein production I designed different variants of fluorescent proteins and measured the fluorescence during 6h culture in three different media. I was also responsible for creating and organizing workshops for students. Thanks to those workshops we have spread synthetic biology among over 230 high school students!
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Adrian Lejman
Area of expertise: biotechnology, molecular biology
About me: For me iGEM competition is a great chance to learn something new and meet fantastic people with passion. It gave me a great opportunity to develop and improve my skills. Synthetic biology is an excellent way to create something new which will be useful for other scientists. Achieving pre-peeled goals gives me a lot of satisfaction.
Attributions: My main tasks in our UAM_Poznan team were optimization of open reading frame project and creation of our wiki. I created different versions of two fluorescent proteins and after obtaining them, I was involved in 6 hours measurements to check how they are expressed in E. coli. Second most important challenge was to create our wiki – hope you enjoy it ;)
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Marcin Osuch
Area of expertise: biotechnology, molecular biology
About me: It’s quite obvious why I participate in iGEM contest. I will fly over the ocean, I will see skyscrapers, MIT, the Big science, people that have lots of knowledge and plenty of ideas on how to repair this world. And I don’t like having too much of free time. I like the fact that I make something that lots of people don’t even understand, so I have the opportunity to explain it to them and exercise my teaching skills.
Attributions: I help everyone who needs help.
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Max Olbrich
Area of expertise: biotechnology, molecular biology, microbiology, virology
About me: Since the beginning of my studies, I have been long waiting for an opportunity to work in the lab more or less on my own rather than just following supervisor’s instruction. iGEM project has given me not only a possibility of that but also provided me with a substantial deal of experience and knowledge that will for sure prove very valuable in the future. As in every job, there are some ups (when everything goes just as planned) and downs (when it just keeps getting worse) but at the end of the day I just can’t imagine myself doing anything else. Although synthetic biology wasn’t my primarily field of interest, it certainly got so during this worthwhile experience!
Attributions: As the newest member of the UAM_Poznań team and therefore the least experienced one, I was mostly involved in helping others with their tasks and experiments. Those included participating in comparison of activity of different modified promoters as well as examination of the influence of ORF optimization on fluorescent protein expression. Together with Marcin, I was responsible for validation of chosen existing BioBrick Parts in order to confirm if they really work as described. I have also been engaged in conducting successful trials of overexpression of different proteins (RNase I, miraculin) using our expression systems. As for our iGEM wiki page, my job was to create and describe the Medal Criteria section.
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Melania Nowicka
Area of expertise: bioinformatics
About me: As a member of another Poznan team I participated in iGEM competition twice in both wet and software tracks. Since that time synthetic biology have become “the core” of my scientific interests. I am really passionate about the “dry side” of synthetic biology, especially design of SynBio tools with medical applications. Now, I am looking for opportunities to combine my broad bioinformatic background and SynBio passion as a PhD student. Because I started my iGEM journey as a member of the first wet lab team in our city it is a real pleasure for me to help the next generation of Poznan iGEMers as the advisor.
Attributions: I was responsible for ORF design, especially for protein expression optimization which includes: different codon and codon pair frequency rankings preparation, codon context optimization (using the software which is the result of my Master's Thesis) taking A-homopolymers and restriction enzymes sites removal. The designed ORFs have also been checked for undesired mRNA secondary structure. As an advisor I helped describing the dry lab part of the project and with the wiki building.
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Jakub Bartoszewicz
Area of expertise: bioinformatics
About me: Doing synthetic biology has been my dream from the beginning of my studies. I love designing things. This brought me to participating in two of the previous iGEM editions and pursuing my PhD in bioinformatics for synthetic biology. However, building a community is almost as important as doing science itself, and that’s why I wanted to advise the new generation of iGEMers in their latest project.
Attributions: I helped building the Wiki and crossing the language barrier by proofreading, suggesting refinements and commenting on the Wiki’s content so that nothing (hopefully) would get lost in translation. I have also teamed up with Melania to ensure optimal mRNA secondary structures of some of the designed ORFs.
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Przemysław Nuc
For me iGEM competition is a training in convincing very good students to work as a team, when competitiveness to some extent has to be sacrificed for the cooperation, what in fact is obviously profitable for everyone in a team. Synthetic biology is the most logical way towards understanding of self-replicating, mistake-making and self-learning systems as human beings and bacteria, or in other words: how the evolution does really work. When we collect biological data starting from simple observations of physiologists, molecular biologists’ exaggerated enthusiasm about a single gene and/or a single protein, through a global, more and more detailed view of changes in the universe of the cell where let say 30K gene products interact with each other, named ……omics, to the intelligent information selection, processing and synthesis, finally we obtain the opportunity to formulate an intriguing hypothesis and hopefully a good way to test it.
