General Support:

Daniel Ziemianowicz

Daniel was a Teaching Assistant of the UofC_Calgary 2016 iGEM team. He was familiar in many of the different parts of our project and provided coaching to the various subgroups working on different objectives. He also used his experience in mass spectroscopy to help us with two important parts of our project. He helped us determine the concentration of BBI in mouse blood (in vivo testing) and the levels of BBI secretion from the genetically engineered chassis, Bacillus subtilis.

Nicholas Jette

Nicholas was a Teaching Assistant for the team. He was a great aid in the execution of the assays that we wished to run related to the peptide BBI. He trained some members of the team in tissue culture, conducting clonogenics assay. Nicholas was a great help in characterizing BBI.

Rai Chaudhuri

Rai, as an advisor, assisted the team with troubleshooting chassis (B. subtilis) experiments. As well, she provided mentorship for the Human Practices aspect of the project by editing the Policy Brief, suggesting ideas for outreach, and possible collaborations.

Ainna Randwana

Ainna provided mentorship in chassis and human practices aspects of the project. Her work was used in some of our outreach efforts, such as the Hack It Adults Night with Telus Spark.

Technical Support:

Chassis:

Dr. Sui-Lam Wong

Dr. Wong provided the team with protocols for growth media, super rich media,
sporulation media, 2X SG media , competency and glycerol stock protocols for B. subtilis. He kindly gave us B.subtilis WB800 strain to work with for our project.

Dennis Kim

Dennis assisted the team in troubleshooting for ComK transformations and integration into Bacillus subtilis.

Nic Sieben

Nic provided the team with the plasmid miniprep protocol that we used to perform most of our minipreps.

Biotarget:

Dr. Susan Lees-Miller

Dr. Lees-Miller’s lab kindly donated the mammalian cell line HCT116 to the team. Also, she provided few members of the team with access to her gamma cell irradiator, both of which were a great help to us in characterizing BBI.

Dr. Aaron Goodarzi

Dr. Aaron Goodarzi was a great help in conceptualizing the project by introducing the team to the soybean derived radioprotective peptides. As well, he helped us brainstorm the list of experiments we needed to conduct in order to characterize BBI. Also, Dr.Goodarzi kindly donated to us the primary fibroblast cell line 1BR3 and trained some members of the team in conducting an H2AX foci assay. He was critical to the process of characterization of BBI.

Shaun Moore

Shaun mentored a few members of the team in conducting and troubleshooting the double strand break assay, which helped us characterize BBI.

Karolin Klement

Karolin helped us with the execution of the clonogenics assay and provided us with advice when we changed our cell lines from HCT116 to 1BR3. Since primary cell lines have different requirements than cancer cells, she showed a few members of the team the requirements to run a clonogenic assay with 1BR3 cell line.

Device:

Dr. Amir Nezhad

Dr. Nezhad offered counselling on the early development of the project and referred various professor to us as possible mentors.

Dr. Colin Dalton

Dr. Dalton provided the team with an insight into microneedles and their inadequacy for the objective of the project and advised us to change of design of the delivery system to a transdermal patch.

Dr. Uttandaraman (U.T.) Sundararaj

Dr. Sundararaj offered technical support with the prototype by providing us with insights on thermoforming and properties of polymers, and how we can incorporate these methods for small scale production.

Robert Mayall

Robert offered counselling on the membrane experiment and suggested alternative materials that we can use for the delivery system.

Dr. Justin MacCallum

Dr. MacCallum mentored few members of the team on molecular simulations of BBI delivery through a lipid bilayer.

Alina Kunitskaya

Alina had mentored few members of the team on the delivery device design process, troubleshooting visual modelling and providing alternative opinions on the project design. She also acted as our contact within NASA and helped to schedule a meeting with Dr. Cagle

3M

3M provided the materials required for the production of the prototype for in vivo testing in mice models, and fabricated a prototype in their lab for the team to use as a demo.

Dow Corning

Dow Corning provided the team with adhesives for making the prototype for in vivo testing in mice models.

in vivo Testing:

Dr. Craig Jenne and Members of the Jenne Lab

Dr. Jenne has a license to work with mice models for scientific purposes. He has assisted the team by submitting the ethics approval for in vivo testing of the patch, BBI, and B. subtilis in mice models. Few members of the team have filled out the ethics application but it was submitted under Dr. Jenne’s name. Once, ethics approval was received, Dr. Jenne kindly donated 18 BALB/c mice for the testing. Rachelle Davis (Graduate Student) and Mandy Tse (Lab Manager) did all the mice handling work (put the patches on, regular check up on mice health and behavior, blood extraction, and euthanization). Dr. Seok-Joo Kim (Post- Doctoral Fellow), Rachelle, and Dr. Jenne performed mice tissue analyses (Tissue fixing, Immunohistochemical staining, and imaging).

Wiki:

Patrick Wu

Patrick provided few members of the team with an iGEM design seminar on Wiki design, and visual presentation tips.

Human Practices Support:

Outreach:

Eduardo Villarreal-Barajas and Nicolas Ploquin

They planned and executed a Tom Baker Cancer Institute tour for our team - where we gathered data about the usage of Ionizing Radiation in a medical context, where off target effects can be minimized through the use of radio protective drugs.

Minds in Motion

Minds in Motion provided the team with an outreach opportunity to interact and educate children between the ages of 10-14 years about the emerging field of synthetic biology.

Beakerhead

The team was provided with an outreach opportunity to interact with children and adults on Bacterial painting.

Telus Spark

Telus Spark provided the team with an outreach opportunity to educate adults about Synthetic biology through their Hack It Adults Night.

Policy Brief:

Agnes Klein

She helped us initiate and reviewed our Policy Brief on regulations on cell-based therapeutics in Canada.

Dr. Walter Glennon, Dr Gregory Hagen, and Dr. Fabiola Ting

They reviewed the Policy Brief on cell-based therapeutics in Canada, and provided us with suggestions and feedback that we used to improve upon the Policy Brief.

Collaborators:

Guanajuato Mexico

The team set up a collaboration with the Mexico iGEM team to create and execute a curriculum to educate first year university students on the basis of Synthetic biology.

University of Rice

A few members of the team contributed to their Humans of Synthetic Biology project by providing them with the story of they joined iGEM.

Mind Fuel

Mind Fuel provided the team with the opportunity to meet with international iGEM judges and receive critical feedback on our project. Also, they worked with us to plan and execute aGEM, a competition between all Alberta iGEM high school and collegiate teams.

Team:

Dr. Mayi Arcellana-Panlilio

Adjunct Associate Professor, Biochemistry & Molecular Biology

Dr. Mayi was our principal investigator for this project. She helped us conceptualize the project idea, obtained funding, and provided both technical and conceptual support in all aspects of the project

Christine Phan

BSc. Biological Sciences

Team Member

Christine performed assays for material testing, created Solidworks model and Autodesk Maya animation of the design of the delivery system, and collaborated on the design process for the physical delivery system. Also, she designed wiki wireframes and the final presentation format.

David Nguyen

BSc. Chemical and Petroleum Engineering

Team Member

David undertook material research, reached out to companies to obtain materials, designed and fabricated a physical prototype for in vivo testing. He also initialized the diffusion mathematical model, and compiled device sub team notebook and results. Additionally, David applied on behalf of the team for travel cost funding.

Elena Fekete

BSc. Cellular, Molecular, and Microbial Biology

Team Member

Elena planned outreach activities, and worked on research and editing for the Policy Brief. Also, she helped to set up interviews with professionals.

James Johnston

BHSc. Biomedical Sciences

Team Member

James worked on determining the growth of Bacillus
subtilis with Rachelle. Also, he worked on the cloning and eventual expression of BBI into both E.coli and B. subtilis. As well, he assisted with the layout and coding of the wiki.

Miriam Li

BHSc. Biomedical Sciences

Team Member

Miriam worked on HCT116 and 1BR3 clonogenics assays. She aided in the monitoring of the administration of patch and blood draws for the in vivo testing in mice models. Also, she worked on the research, writing and editing of the policy brief, set up meetings with professionals, and assisted in the organization of the aGEM competition.

Neliza Mendoza

BSc. Civil Engineering

Team Member

Neliza took charge of the analytical modelling for the diffusion of BBI through the skin using MATLAB, performed adhesive assays for patch laminates used in prototyping for in vivo testing in mice models, and compiled an information manual for our biotherapeutic device for potential user reference. Also, she set up meeting with professionals in the engineering field.

Nicholas D’Aleo-Sotas

BSc. Cellular Molecular Microbial Biology, Team Member

Nick worked on HCT116 and Fibroblast clonogenics. majority of the tissue culture for clonogenics and H2AX. Also, he performed Bacillus subtilis transformation protocols
and contributed to parts submissions work. As well, he acted as a back up Wiki
coder by assisting with the WikiFreeze coding.

Nilesh Sharma

BSc. Neuroscience

Team Member

Nilesh worked on the immunoflourescence assay (except counting), in vivo prototype testing in mice models by writing up content for the ethics approval, and observing patch application. Also, he worked on mathematical modelling of BBI diffusion through the skin.

Nishi Patel

BSc. Cellular Molecular Microbial Biology

Team Member

Nishi designed genetic constructs for BBI. Also, she headed the in vivo prototype testing in mice models, wrote up the content for the ethics approval, designed all the treatments for the prototype testing, oversaw the manufacture and administration of transdermal patches on mice, and worked with members of the Jenne lab to analyze mice tissue for any possible immunological responses. As well, helped design the policy brief, set up meeting with professionals in the medical field, and assisted in the organizing of aGEM with Miriam and Tiffany.

Noshin Karim

BSc. Mechanical Engineering

Team Member

Noshin took charge of the numerical modelling of diffusion of BBI through the physical delivery system using MATLAB. She led discussions on the design process for the physical delivery system, researched into materials, helped with developing SolidWorks model of design of the delivery system. Also, she combined mathematical models and lab experiment results to determine the functionality of the transdermal patch.

Rachelle Varga

BSc. Cellular, Molecular, and Microbial Biology

Team Member

Rachelle determined the growth rates of Bacillus subtilis at varying temperatures and using different media.
Also, she worked on developing usable ComK genetic construct and cloning it in E. coli and B. subtilis. As well, she organized outreach events and ran all forms of social media (Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram).

Shalpinder Dhothar

BSc. Biological Sciences

Team Member

Shalpinder arranged and conducted meetings with professionals, planned outreach programs, assisted with collaboration work, and worked on the research, writing and editing of the policy brief.

Siddhartha Goutam

BHSc. Biomedical Sciences

Team Member

Sid worked on the clonogenic assay with HCT116 cells, the double strand break assay using immunofluorescence, and the initial planning and research of the diffusion mathematical modeling.

Syed Jafri

BHSc. Bioinformatics

Team Member

Syed coded the Wiki, and worked in immunofluorescence assays using γ-H2AX and 53BP1 antibodies to visualize double strand breaks.

Tiffany Dang

BSc. Chemical and Biomedical Engineering

Team Member

Tiffany collaborated on the design process for the physical delivery system, created Solidworks model of the design, and performed material testing. Also, set up meeting with professionals, consulted on the policy brief, helped with outreach programs and organized collaboration, and helped organized aGEM with Miriam and Nishi.