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 quantifying mBBI in two important assays of our project. He helped us determine the concentration of mBBI in mouse blood (in vivo testing) and the levels of mBBI 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 to characterize mBBI. He trained members of the team in tissue culture and conducting clonogenic assays.

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 our Policy Brief, suggesting ideas for outreach, and collaborations with other teams.

Ainna Randwana

Ainna provided mentorship in the development of the chassis and Human Practices aspects of the project. Her artwork was used in some of our outreach efforts, such as the Adults Only Night: Hack It with TELUS Spark.

Technical Support:

Chassis:

Dr. Sui-Lam Wong

Dr. Wong provided the team with protocols for various types of growth media such as super rich medium, sporulation medium, and 2X SG medium. He also provided us with protocols for inducing the competency of B. subtilis and how to prepare effective glycerol stocks. Most importantly, Dr. Wong kindly provided us with B. subtilis WB800 cells to work with for our project.

Dennis Kim

Dennis assisted the team in troubleshooting for comK gene transformations and integration into B. subtilis.

Nic Sieben

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

Biotarget:

Dr. Susan Lees-Miller

Dr. Lees-Miller's ab kindly donated the mammalian cell line HCT116 that our team used. She also provided a few members of the team with access to her gamma cell irradiator, both of which were a great help to us in characterizing mBBI.

Dr. Aaron Goodarzi

Dr. Aaron Goodarzi helped conceptualize our project by introducing the team to soybean-derived radioprotective peptides. He helped us brainstorm the list of experiments we needed to conduct in order to characterize mBBI. Dr. Goodarzi also kindly donated the primary fibroblast cell line 1BR3 to us and trained members of the team in conducting H2AX foci assays. He was critical to the process of characterization of mBBI.

Shaun Moore

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

Karolin Klement

Karolin helped us with the execution of the clonogenics assay and provided us with advice when we switched our cell lines from HCT116 to 1BR3. Since primary cell lines have different requirements than cancer cells, she showed 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 us to various professor as possible mentors.

Dr. Colin Dalton

Dr. Dalton provided the team with an insight into microneedles and their inadequacy for our project's adjective. He advised us to change of design of delivery of our system from microneedles to a transdermal patch.

Dr. Uttandaraman U.T. Sundararaj

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

Robert Mayall

Robert offered counselling on our size-controlling permeable membrane experiment and suggested alternative materials that we could use for our delivery system.

Dr. Justin MacCallum

Dr. MacCallum mentored members of the team on molecular simulations of mBBI delivery through a lipid bilayer to simulate its transit through the layers of the skin.

Alina Kunitskaya

Alina mentored 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 us with the materials required for the production of our prototype for in vivo testing in mice models. The company also fabricated a prototype in their lab for the team to use as a demo.

Dow Corning

Dow Corning provided the team with adhesives for prototype manufacturing 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 assisted the team by submitting the ethics approval for in vivo testing of our patch, mBBI, and B. subtilis in three mice models. Members of the team filled out the ethics application but it was submitted under Dr. Jenne's name. Once ethics approval had been received, Dr. Jenne kindly donated 18 BALB/c mice for testing. Rachelle Davis (Graduate Student) and Mandy Tse (Lab Manager) handled all mice (adhering patches, regular check up on mice health and behaviour, blood extraction, and euthanization). Dr. Seok-Joo Kim (Post-Doctoral Fellow), Rachelle Davis, and Dr. Jenne performed mice tissue analyses (tissue fixing, immunohistochemical staining, and imaging).

Wiki:

Patrick Wu

Patrick provided the team with an iGEM Wiki design seminar. He also gave us valuable visual presentation tips.

Human Practices Support:

Outreach:

Eduardo Villarreal-Barajas and Nicolas Ploquin

Eduardo and Nicolas planned and executed a tour of the Tom Baker Cancer Institute for our team where we gathered data about the usage of ionizing radiation in a medical and therapeutic context. Here, the team learned where off target effects can be minimized through the use of radio protective drugs.

Minds in Motion

Minds in Motion is a camp run at the University of Calgary that runs during the summer months. The group provided our team with an outreach opportunity to interact and educate children between the ages of 8-14 years about the emerging field of synthetic biology.

Beakerhead and the Biological Sciences Graduate Association of the University of Calgary

The team was provided with an outreach opportunity to interact with children and adults through glow-in-the-dark and fluorescent painting with genetically-engineered bacteria.

TELUS Spark

TELUS Spark provided the team with an outreach opportunity to educate adults about synthetic biology and DNA extraction through their Adults Only Night: Hack It event.

Policy Brief:

Dr. Agnes Klein

Director, Centre for the Evaluation of Radiopahrmaceuticals and Biotherapeutic Products in the Biologics and Genetic Therapies Directorate

Dr. Klein helped us initiate and review our Policy Brief concerning the regulations of cell-based therapeutics in Canada.

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

Drs. Glennin, Hagen and Ting reviewed our Policy Brief on cell-based therapeutics in Canada, and provided us with suggestions and feedback that we used to improve our recommendations.

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 basics of synthetic biology.

Rice University, Houston, Texas

Members of the team contributed to their Humans of Synthetic Biology project by providing Rice University team members with the reason behind why they joined iGEM.

MindFuel

MindFuel provided the team with the opportunity to meet with international iGEM judges and receive critical feedback on our project. They also worked with us to plan and execute aGEM, a regional competition held for all Alberta iGEM high school and collegiate teams.

Team:

Dr. Mayi Arcellana-Panlilio

Adjunct Associate Professor, Biochemistry & Molecular Biology

Mayi was our Principal Investigator. She helped us conceptualize our ideas, obtained funding, and provided technical, administrative, 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.