Team:Washington/Judging

Judging Form

Requirements for a Bronze Medal (must complete all):

  1. Register the team, have a great summer, and plan to have fun at the Giant Jamboree.
  2. Meet all deliverables on the Requirements page (section 3).

  3. Create a page on your team wiki with clear attribution of each aspect of your project. This page must clearly attribute work done by the students and distinguish it from work done by others, including host labs, advisors, instructors, sponsors, professional website designers, artists, and commercial services.

    Required link: 2016.igem.org/Team:Washington/Attributions

    This team can be evaluated for this prize.

  4. Document at least one new standard BioBrick Part or Device central to your project and submit this part to the iGEM Registry (submissions must adhere to the iGEM Registry guidelines). You may also document a new application of a BioBrick part from a previous iGEM year, adding that documentation to the part's main page.
  5. Part Number(s): BBa_K2165001

Additional Requirements for a Silver Medal (must complete all):

  1. Experimentally validate that at least one new BioBrick Part or Device of your own design and construction works as expected. Document the characterization of this part in the Main Page section of the Registry entry for that Part/Device. This working part must be different from the part you documented in Bronze medal criterion #4. Submit this part to the iGEM Parts Registry.

    Part Number(s): BBa_K2165003

  2. Convince the judges you have helped any registered iGEM team from a high-school, different track, another university, or institution in a significant way by, for example, mentoring a new team, characterizing a part, debugging a construct, modeling/simulating their system or helping validate a software/hardware solution to a synthetic biology problem.

    Required link: 2016.igem.org/Team:Washington/Collaborations

    This team can be evaluated for this prize.

  3. iGEM projects involve important questions beyond the bench, for example relating to (but not limited to) ethics, sustainability, social justice, safety, security, and intellectual property rights. We refer to these activities as Human Practices in iGEM. Demonstrate how your team has identified, investigated and addressed one or more of these issues in the context of your project. (See the Human Practices Hub for more information.)

    Required link: 2016.igem.org/Team:Washington/HP/Silver

    This team can be evaluated for this prize.

Additional Requirements for a Gold Medal: (Two OR more)

  1. Expand on your silver medal activity by demonstrating how you have integrated the investigated issues into the design and/or execution of your project.

    Required link: 2016.igem.org/Team:Washington/HP/Gold

  2. Improve the function OR characterization of a previously existing BioBrick Part or Device (created by another team, or by your own team in in a previous year of iGEM), and enter this information in the part's page on the Registry. Please see the Registry Contribution help page for help on documenting a contribution to an existing part. This part must NOT come from your team's 2016 range of part numbers.

    Required link: 2016.igem.org/Team:Washington/Description

    This team can be evaluated for this prize.

    Part Number(s): BBa_K945002, BBa_K1161004, BBa_K1161004

  3. Demonstrate a functional proof of concept of your project. Your proof of concept must consist of a BioBrick device; a single BioBrick part cannot constitute a proof of concept. (Remember, biological materials may not be taken outside the lab.)

    Required link: 2016.igem.org/Team:Washington/Proof

    This team can be evaluated for this prize.

  4. Show your project working under real-world conditions. To achieve this criterion, you should demonstrate your whole system, or a functional proof of concept working under simulated conditions in the lab (Remember, biological materials may not be taken outside the lab.)

    Required link: 2016.igem.org/Team:Washington/Demonstrate

    This team can be evaluated for this prize.

iGEM Prizes

All teams are eligible for special prizes at the Jamborees. Your team will be evaluated by the judges if (1) you have documented your special prize activity on your wiki on the specified page, AND (2) you have explained on this form why you think your team is eligible for this prize. More information on special prizes

Integrated Human Practices

Required link: 2016.igem.org/Team:Washington/Integrated_Practices
This team can be evaluated for this prize.
Please write 150 words on why you think your team is eligible for this prize:

Our integrated human practices focused on the ethics, effects, and benefits of our system in an industrial setting. Through an investigation of literature and environmental data, we could conclude that our system would be energy efficient and cost effective for a lab to implement. Current problems with bioreactors are that they are expensive and inefficient, partly because of the need for human adjustment of inputs, which are affected by human error. An autonomous system would save workers time while producing less waste than current systems.

Education and Public Engagement

Required link: 2016.igem.org/Team:Washington/Engagement
This team can be evaluated for this prize.
Please write 150 words on why you think your team is eligible for this prize:

Our team is passionate about fostering a love for science and engineering in younger members of our community and engaging with parents about cutting edge solutions to real-world problems. Every year, we volunteer at local science fairs and STEM events, sharing our research and promoting interest in the biological sciences. This year, we attended multiple local science fairs and outreach events at our university and in local schools, where our exhibit allowed elementary students to try their hand at DNA purification from strawberries and a pH test.

Our team has also worked on a comic book aimed towards elementary and middle school students that addresses lab safety, synthetic biology dogma and basic lab protocols in a fun and engaging way, which we’ve posted on our wiki as open source curriculum.

Model

Required link: 2016.igem.org/Team:Washington/Model
This team can be evaluated for this prize.
Please write 150 words on why you think your team is eligible for this prize:

Our group’s modeling team produced models and specifications for our system using Autodesk Fusion 360, shown on our wiki page. Additionally, modeling was done in COMSOL to demonstrate the dispersion flow of yeast through the culture tube in our autonomous device. This helped to determine that yeast were being provided proper aeration, which will influence further work on our system.

Applied Design

Required link: 2016.igem.org/Team:Washington/Design
This team can be evaluated for this prize.
Please write 150 words on why you think your team is eligible for this prize:

In this project, we utilized the engineering design process to take knowledge of a specific need in industry and develop a workable solution, culminating in a functional prototype device. Culture management is a vital task in synthetic biology research labs and in industry, but constantly measuring and adjusting culture conditions is time consuming, tedious, and inefficient. We worked to develop a system using control theory that automates cell culture management by adding inducer molecules in response to RGB measurements made of a culture tube. First, we designed genetic parts using the violacein pathway, which can yield four different colored outputs in response to stimuli. Next, we designed and built a chemostat and Raspberry Pi control system that captures images of the culture tubes, computes the RGB value, and directs the gradual release of inducer chemicals in order to change or maintain a certain color value over time. Finally, we plan to use machine learning to optimize our system, collecting data to formulate relationships between the measured RGB value and metabolite concentration. We hope that this will be an affordable, easy-to-use system that allows for more efficient and precise control of cell cultures, leading to a reduction in cost and waste for labs and companies that put it to use.

Hardware

Required link: 2016.igem.org/Team:Washington/Hardware
This team can be evaluated for this prize.
Please write 150 words on why you think your team is eligible for this prize:

The hardware component of our project uses control theory to mediate the function of the violacein pathway by automating the addition of inducer molecules and creating a feedback loop for maintaining color levels. To do this, we built a chemostat, which is a bioreactor that keeps yeast in constant log phase by continually expelling the bulk solution while inputting new media. This allows the culture to be kept in steady-state. In addition to this culture management contraption, we also built a system for image processing and response. To control the products being made, a camera controlled by a Raspberry Pi computer will continuously take an image of our yeast cultures. Through processing RGB values, it will determine the amount of metabolite in solution and send feedback signals to the culture management system to change inducer concentration. Thus, our device measures, computes, compares, and corrects, fulfilling each step of control theory. The device also uses machine learning to formulate empirical formulas relating the RGB value of the culture to the inducer and metabolite concentrations.

Team_Parts

To help the judges evaluate your parts, please identify your highest quality part for each of the following prizes:

Best New Basic Part

Provide the name of your one best Basic Part. Parts are documented in the Registry, but there might be more at Basic Part.
Part Number: BBa_K2165001

Best New Composite Part

Provide the name of your one best Composite Part.
Part Number: BBa_K2165003

Best Part Collection

List all of the Parts in this collection (Yes, all 100 of them to impress the judges)
Part Number(s): BBa_K2165000, BBa_K2165001, BBa_K2165002, BBa_K2165003, BBa_K2165004

Please write up to 150 words describing the function of this Part Collection, and give the Range of Part Numbers

This parts collection is a codon-optimized set of biobricks containing pieces of the violacein metabolic pathway for use in yeast. BBa_K2165000 (VioC) and BBa_K2165001 (VioD) are improvements on parts BBa_K1161003 and BBa_K1161004, respectively, which were originally submitted by the Alberta team in 2013. These basic parts are isolated and easy to insert into a custom violacein system.

BBa_K1161002 and BBa_K1161003 are composite parts containing VioC and VioD from the previous two parts, along with a CUP1 promoter (BBa_K1161002) and a Gal1 promoter (BBa_K1161003). These parts also contain ADH1 terminators. The inclusion of inducible promoters in each of these constructs makes it easier to control the color output of the violacein pathway by altering the concentration of cupric ions or galactose, respectively, in the cell environment to control the level of expression in the presence of other genes in the violacein pathway.

BBa_K1161003 is an isolated CUP1 inducible promoter for yeast, which can be found in the parts registry as BBa_K945002; here, we optimized it and removed RFC illegal restriction sites.