Team:Imperial College London/test

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|colspan="2" style="font-family: Georgia, serif;font-size:2em;color:#A35200;"|Students
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|'''Atipat Patharagulpong'''
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Atipat is also known as Ming. (people sometimes call him ATP, which he finds a bit geeky) He is a third year Biochemist and responsible for collaboration, part registry, and Arabidopsis (and also drawing everyone's picture). Apart from Biochemistry, he loves playing the piano, drawing anime, gardening, and also cooking (and eating too).
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| style="width:150px; height:199px;"|[[File:ICL_CPChris.jpg|150px]]
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|'''Chris Schoene'''
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Chris is going into his 3rd year of Biochemistry at Imperial College London and our official head of parts characterisation. He has been interested in Synthetic Biology since the last year's team presented their project in October. His other interests include creative writing, martial arts, the classical guitar and traveling. He is German but was born in Colombia and has lived in the USA and Spain.
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| style="width:150px; height:199px;"|[[File:ICL_CPFrank.jpg|150px]]
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|'''Frank Machin'''
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Frank is halfway through his degree in Biochemistry at Imperial and responsible for the software and hardware. He has been a huge fan of Synthetic Biology ever since he watched The Andromeda Strain and The Day of the Triffids. When he is not working, he likes gaming, loud music, and making short films and he is going to try and include them all in this project!
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|'''Jiayue Zhu'''
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We generally call Jiayue Nina to make our lives easier since nobody can pronounce her name correctly. She is a 2nd year bioengineer and very glad to be here with the team and to do some amazing fancy stuff. She is in charge of all media-related issues.
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|'''Nicolas Kral'''
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Nick has just finished the second year of the Bsc Biology degree at Imperial. He has been attracted to synthetic biology because of the immense potential and creativity that is hidden in it, yet still following the strict scientific thinking. His hobbies include everything to do with Nature and the great outdoors, hiking, climbing, caving and just the joy of being out.
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|'''Nikki Kapp'''
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Nikki just finished her undergrad in Biochemistry and is responsible for cloning strategies and outreach/PR. She wants to try put what she's learnt into practice at iGEM. Her life isn't all about science, she is passionate about music and travel and hopes to do a round the world trip as well as complete the Mongol Rally.
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<h1>Overview</h1>
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<p>Our team has decided to go down a novel route in tackling the human practices issues surrounding not only our project but also iGEM in general. Instead of sticking to the established routes of either proposing complete containment or relying on "kill switches" to prevent spread of GM bacteria, we have decided to engineer a containment switch that will not kill our AuxIn bacteria but all other microorganisms that take up the auxin-producing plasmid. In addition, we have consulted many experts and will conduct experiments that demonstrate the safety our device. The true scope of many iGEM projects can only be fulfilled if release is possible and we will be attempting to take a first step towards making this possible for our project.</p>
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<p>Historically, iGEM teams have tried to control GM release via two mechanisms: complete containment and "suicide" mechanisms in which the bacteria kill themselves in the absence or presence of specific stimuli. However, when considering the eventual use of many projects – be it bioremediation (e.g. Peking 2010’s project), crop-enhancing projects (e.g. Bristol’s 2010 project) or other applications – full use of synthetic biology organisms will only be achieved by release and full containment is often not a realistic option. In addition, kill switches may be effective to an extent but they are easily selected against by evolution as they present a strong selective disadvantage. Stress defence mechanisms such as the SOS response in E coli add to this effect. In addition, transgenes can be transferred to other bacteria in the environment using naturally occurring mechanisms such as conjugation of plasmids. Finally, while it may be argued that engineered lab strains will quickly be outcompeted, bacteria with GM markers have been shown to become established in field trials (published in several papers, summary can be found on the <a href="http://ec.europa.eu/research/quality-of-life/gmo/02-plantgrowth/02-03-project.html">EU website</a>). In some cases, endurance of the bacteria in specific environments may even be desirable.
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<a href="https://2011.igem.org/Team:Imperial_College_London/Protocols_General"><img src="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2011/5/58/ICL_ProtocolIconDark.png" width="32px" /></a>
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<p>In light of these issues, we have decided to engineer Gene Guard, a containment switch that will lead to the lysis of natural soil bacteria that take up plasmid DNA from our engineered bacteria. We have consulted experts and the literature about the implications of our project and used this information to design an effective containment switch. However, we also tried to address all possible problems and complications arising from the impossibility of absolute control. Accordingly, we used the information we gathered to influence our release strategy and design.</p>
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<p>However, we also acknowledge that this containment switch is never going to be completely effective. Accordingly, we have consulted ecologists and other experts on auxin, plants and soil to ensure that our device is as safe as possible and we can justify release. We researched other organisms such as soil microbes and earthworms that may be affected by the AuxIn bacteria and, with the help of the experts we consulted, devised experiments to test the safety and impact of many aspects of our project. </p>
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|'''Rebekka Bauer'''
 
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Rebekka just finished a degree in Biology. She is responsible for human practices and has the job of looking after supplies and protocols in the lab. She likes the creative aspect of synthetic biology but also how useful it can be in tackling problems in all kinds of areas. Outside of Biology, she is interested in photography, travelling and cooking.
 
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| style="width:150px; height:199px;"|[[File:ICL_CPSi.jpg|150px]]
 
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|'''Si Chen'''
 
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Si just graduated from Biomedical Engineering Department of Imperial College London. She is responsible for modelling strategies. She is looking forward to delivering some solid solution that can be applied in reality in the future.
 
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| style="width:150px; height:199px;"|[[File:ICL_CPYuanwei.jpg|150px]]
 
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|'''Yuanwei Li'''
 
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Yuanwei just finished the 2nd year of his biomedical engineering degree. He is our wiki mastermind. He probably wants to specialise in the mechanical aspect of bioengineering, dealing with stuff like biomechanics and similar things. He is also quite interested about going into the area of biomedical imaging. In his free time, he likes to play his accordion and he loves to travel to different places and explore the world. He is looking forward to delivering something amazing on this iGEM project.
 
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Latest revision as of 23:13, 15 September 2011



Human Practice


Overview

Our team has decided to go down a novel route in tackling the human practices issues surrounding not only our project but also iGEM in general. Instead of sticking to the established routes of either proposing complete containment or relying on "kill switches" to prevent spread of GM bacteria, we have decided to engineer a containment switch that will not kill our AuxIn bacteria but all other microorganisms that take up the auxin-producing plasmid. In addition, we have consulted many experts and will conduct experiments that demonstrate the safety our device. The true scope of many iGEM projects can only be fulfilled if release is possible and we will be attempting to take a first step towards making this possible for our project.

Historically, iGEM teams have tried to control GM release via two mechanisms: complete containment and "suicide" mechanisms in which the bacteria kill themselves in the absence or presence of specific stimuli. However, when considering the eventual use of many projects – be it bioremediation (e.g. Peking 2010’s project), crop-enhancing projects (e.g. Bristol’s 2010 project) or other applications – full use of synthetic biology organisms will only be achieved by release and full containment is often not a realistic option. In addition, kill switches may be effective to an extent but they are easily selected against by evolution as they present a strong selective disadvantage. Stress defence mechanisms such as the SOS response in E coli add to this effect. In addition, transgenes can be transferred to other bacteria in the environment using naturally occurring mechanisms such as conjugation of plasmids. Finally, while it may be argued that engineered lab strains will quickly be outcompeted, bacteria with GM markers have been shown to become established in field trials (published in several papers, summary can be found on the EU website). In some cases, endurance of the bacteria in specific environments may even be desirable.

In light of these issues, we have decided to engineer Gene Guard, a containment switch that will lead to the lysis of natural soil bacteria that take up plasmid DNA from our engineered bacteria. We have consulted experts and the literature about the implications of our project and used this information to design an effective containment switch. However, we also tried to address all possible problems and complications arising from the impossibility of absolute control. Accordingly, we used the information we gathered to influence our release strategy and design.

However, we also acknowledge that this containment switch is never going to be completely effective. Accordingly, we have consulted ecologists and other experts on auxin, plants and soil to ensure that our device is as safe as possible and we can justify release. We researched other organisms such as soil microbes and earthworms that may be affected by the AuxIn bacteria and, with the help of the experts we consulted, devised experiments to test the safety and impact of many aspects of our project.

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