Attributions

The UT Austin iGEM Team would love to thank everyone who has helped us achieve our goals, no matter how big or small the contribution. Without these acts of generosity, we would have not accomplished all that we have done.

The following labs, professors, post docs, and graduate students were instrumental in helping us learn specific techniques, sharing reagents or strains or equipment with us, or for giving input that influenced our project.

• Dr. Chris Yellman and [http://www.marcottelab.org/index.php/Main_Page/ The Marcotte Lab] for providing ADH and PDC S. cerevisiae knockouts.
• Aziz Al'Khafaji and [http://www.brocklab.com/ The Brock Lab] for providing a fluorescence microscope and advice on improving conjugation experiments.
• Jiri Perutka and [http://ellingtonlab.org The Ellington Lab] for constructing the plasmids pBTK518, pBTK19 and pBTK520 which we used for conjugation.
• [http://barricklab.org/twiki/bin/view/Lab/ The Barrick Lab] for providing helpful advice and comments throughout the summer.

The following students either assisted us as we learned new techniques, began our project, gave feedback on an array of things, or helped us keep the lab neat, clean, and well stocked.

• Kimberly Ornelas for aiding us with 16s sequencing, conjugation and recapitulation.
• Samah Khan for helping us initially isolate various microbes from different kombucha brands.
• Natalie Schulte and Samita Charolia for their initial research on pH sensitive promoters for use in E. coli and creating the original experimental procedures for general pH testing.
• Nadia Zaidi and Jocelyn Li for contributing to the original pH promoter work.
• Kelsey Hu for working throughout the summer to keep the lab stocked with media and for providing assistance running pH experiments.
• Kimberly Corona for creating the yellow green chromoprotein composite part.

The following iGEM students worked on specific aspects of our project.

• Matthew Hooper for identifying and sequencing bacteria and yeast strains in store bought kombucha, recapitulating the strains, and screening for ethanol levels.
• Zachary Martinez for initial kombucha strain identification and their conjugations and for organizing meet ups with Rice University, Texas Tech University, and Monterrey Tec.
• Katelyn Corley for making recapitulations from the previously identified kombucha strains and taking part in organizing meet ups with our collaborators.
• Ian Overman and Alexandra Alario for working with and characterizing the pH sensors CadC, P-atp2, and G. oxydans.
• Sofia Chinea for working with and characterizing the pH sensor CpxR, and for identifying potential pH sensitive promoters in G. oxydans.
• Prachi Shah for the work done on Brazzein, Human Practices, and judging forms.
• Stratton Georgoulis for ethanol production assays.
• Daniel Garza for completing the Interlab study.
• Jenna McGuffey and Erum Dhanji for creating the Gellan Gum project and facilitating the outreach involved with it.
• Riya Sreenivasan for creating the blue chromoprotein composite part.
• Laura Shub for designing and formatting the wiki.
• Grace Long for ensuring safety requirements were met, completing judging forms on time, and organizing meet ups with our collaborators.

All iGEM team members collaborated on the wiki.

The following institutions graciously met up and collaborated with our team.

• Rice University
• Texas Tech University
• Monterrey Tec.

Greg Goodman and KTonic for giving us a clear direction in how to expand and progress our current work with kombucha, while keeping in mind issues of intellectual property, the product and what the consumer wants in their product, and how bench science can be vital to many things beyond the bench.

We received funding from the following sources.

• BEACON
• The Freshmen Research Initiative (FRI) at UT Austin, and HHMI for helping to fund our FRI research.
• NSF CAREER (CBET-1554179)