iGem Team

Alexandra Bisia: PR and sponsorship requests, primer design, BabbleBrick design, wet lab (BabbleBricks insertion and purification, Bead binding assays, BabbleBricks assembly and InterLab study) & dry lab (Lab Safety, Advantages and Attributions wiki page).

Azzurra De Pace: PR and sponsorship requests, wet lab (BabbleBricks insertion and purification, Bead binding assays, BabbleBricks assembly, BabbleBlocks extraction and insertion and InterLab study) & dry lab (Interlab, Protocols and NoteBook wiki page).

Brendan Largey: project design, primer design, presentation design, BabbleBrick design, PR, wet lab (BabbleBricks insertion and purification, Bead binding assay, BabbleBlock extraction and insertion, BioBricks Assembly and Dps BioBricks, parts submission) & dry lab (Abstract, Design and Biological Safety page).

Catalina Rotaru: PR and sponsorship requests, Human Practices, stream cipher and encryption, wiki realization & Encryption wiki page.

Freddie Starkey: project design, BabbleBrick design, BabbleBlock design, error correction design and implementation, DNA encoding and decoding programmes, wet lab (BabbleBricks assembly and Dps BioBricks), modelling, wiki realization & Informatics wiki page, DNA encryption system.

Patrick Lim: infographics, wet lab (BabbleBricks purification), video editing and recording.

Pepy Iliev: PR and sponsorship requests, modelling, primer design, wet lab (BabbleBricks insertion and purification, Bead binding assays, BabbleBricks assembly, BabbleBlocks extraction and insertion) & dry lab (Abstract wiki page).

Rosie Maddock: project design, PR, lab work (BabbleBricks insertion and purification, BabbleBricks assembly, BabbleBlocks extraction and insertion, Dps BioBricks and InterLab study), dry lab (Proof of Concept, Demonstrate, Limitations wiki page).

Niki Lazaroo: PR and sponsorship requests, social media, presentation design, infographics, wet lab (BabbleBricks assembly and Dps BioBricks), Human Practices & dry lab (Description wiki page, Human Practices Video).

Supervisors

Our entire team would like to thank the following people for their help and support over the duration of our project:

Our fantastic supervisors Jon Marles-Wright, Louise Horsfall, Chris French, David Clarke and Filippo Menolascina for the continuous guidance and for always pointing us in the right direction.

A special thank you to Dr Chris French, as our project stemmed from one of his ideas; our success is owed to your constant instruction.

To Dr Heather Barker for your excellent guidance in the lab and for never growing tired of our endless questions.

The Edinburgh Overgraduate team for helping us inside and outside of the lab by sharing your protocols, lab materials and encouragement with us.

Programming & Encryption

Dr David Aspinall for advising us to develop an encryption system based on the stream cipher method.

Dr Kami Vaniea for giving us the idea to look at possible scenarios in which our encryption system could be applied.

Dr Myrto Arapinis for helping us understand the limitations of our initial encryption system and revise it to include a SALSA stream cipher.

Dr Daniel Barker for pointing us in the direction of a MinION in order to sequence and retrieve our data faster.

Dr Aggelos Kiayias for providing us with a better understanding of how computer security and cryptography work.

Alisdair Share for helping us come in contact with Dr Riley Smith and Dr Richard Bennett.

Dr Richard Bennett for helping us to devise plausible scenarios in which our encryption system would be useful.

Lab

Dr Heidrun Interthal for lending us a magnetic rack for our assembly method.

Dr Patrick Cai, Dr Ivan Yuan, Dr Valentin Zulkower, Dr Hille Tekotte and entire Cai Lab and Edinburgh Genome Foundry.

Doctor De Las Heras for letting us use his plate reader for the InterLab study.

Human Practices

Dr Erika Szymanski and Dr Pablo Schyfter for putting us on the right track with our human practices, and inspiring us to go beyond the lab.

Dr Andy Turner and Dr Adam Carter (EPCC/Archer) for speaking with us about different data storage techniques and how not all people require the same thing out of their data.

Dr Tristram Riley-Smith for giving us the idea to look at FRRIICT and use it as a framework for doing responsible research.

Dr Joyce Tait for helping us focus on cell-free transfer laws rather than GMO laws.

Special Agent Edward You for helping us understand the need to incorporate a method of encryption that would restrict decoding.

Stuart Lewis, Kerry Miller, Cuna Mitchell, Stuart MacDonald, Lina Lewis for pointing out many issues we would have to address while developing an archival data storage system. Among these: the possibility of our software to become obsolete, the ethical issues of data sensitivity, accuracy of storage and retrieval and the potential of expanding our library. They also suggested to store the phrase “There to remain” for the University Main Library.

Collaboration

Newcastle Team for putting us on the right track with our BioBricks and for incorporating our encryption system into their project.

Exeter Team for their comprehensive review of our checksum system.

Cambridge Team for software testing.

Dundee for helping us plan the debate.

Many thanks to the people who helped us with fundraising

Holly Robertson-Dick for your constant help with funding, sponsorship and outreach.

Christina Tran and Cindy Wu for helping us set up and perfect our experiment.com fundraising page

SPONSORSHIP

BBSRC and Wellcome Trust

University of Edinburgh School of Biological Sciences

University of Edinburgh School of Chemistry

National Library of Scotland

JPMorgan

Edinburgh Genome Foundry

Next Generation Data

All our wonderful Experiment.com Sponsors