From 2011.igem.org

Latest revision as of 02:38, 29 October 2011

Team

The Imperial iGEM 2011 team consists of a group of biochemists, biologists and bioengineers. On this page, you can find out about everyone who has contributed to the project. We would like to thank all our advisors who have assisted us throughout the project, and without whom the project would not have been possible. We would also like to thank all everyone else who has helped us realise this project, be it through invaluable advice or providing DNA, seeds, or other materials. These contributions have helped us enormously. All work on this wiki was carried out and all data collected by us unless stated otherwise. For a full list of acknowledgments, please see the bottom of this page.

Students

High school/ college interns

Kiran Patel

Poppy Field

CSynBI advisors

James Field	Dr. Geoff Baldwin	Dr. Guy-Bart Stan	James Chappell	Kirsten Jensen
Lisa Goers	Prof. Paul Freemont	Prof. Richard Kitney	Dr. Tom Ellis

LSE advisors

Dr. Claire Marris

Susanna Finlay

Alex Hamilton

RCA advisors

Charlotte Jarvis

Koby Barhad

Pei-Ying Lin

Acknowledgement

General support

James Chappell, Dr Travis Bayer and others helped us during our brainstorming.

Dr Geoff Balwin is letting us use his lab for some experiments.

Timothy Wilson helped us characterise Dendra2 and gave us some great data.

Chemotaxis support

Prof Xiaodong Zhang at Imperial College London, got us into contact with Dr Juan Luis Ramos in Spain.

Dr Juan Luis Ramos at Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas provided us with the mcpS gene on pRK415.

Dr Ben Blount & Chris Hirst have helped us with the utilisation of the BD FACScan during data collection.

Jack Turton helped us with manual tracking during data collection for behavioral analysis.

Auxin support

Dr Colin Turnbull and his team ran our LCMS samples, providing critical data for this module

Arabidopsis support

The Arabidopsis thaliana team was kindly supported by Dr Thorsten Hamann and Dr Colin Turnbull's labs at Imperial College. In particular, Issariya Chairam and David Charles helped enormously with designing and setting up plant experiments.

A number of Arabidopsis seeds were supplied by labs from all over Britain:

DR5: GFP seeds were supplied by Samantha Fox from Dr Enrico Coen's group at the John Innes Centre, which focuses on plant development in A. thaliana. Permission to use the seeds and publish results was kindly granted by Dr Jiri Friml at the VIB Department of Plant Systems Biology, UGent.

DR5: GUS seeds were supplied by Dr Gerard Bishop at Imperial College.

DR: 3XVENUS seeds were supplied by Dr Darren Wells at the University of Nottingham. Dr Wells is a research fellow at the Centre for Plant Integrative Biology.

William Rimington is a recent graduate of Warwick University with expertise in Arabidopsis and land degradation. William kindly traveled to Imperial to share his knowledge with the team.

Modelling support

Dr Robert Endres is a Senior Lecturer in Systems Biology at Imperial College. He is an expert on chemotaxis modelling and kindly helped our team with their model of cell movement.

Prof. Malcolm Bennett from Nottingham University provided us valuable support on our modelling of auxin production, and he also directed us to Nathan Mellor, a modelling expert in his research team.

Dr. Jennifer Siggers is a lecturer in fluid mechanics in Imperial College London, she advised us about modelling non-steady state chemoattractant distribution.

Luke Tweedy is a PhD student specialising in chemotaxis modelling; he helped us with the modelling of chemotaxis animation.

Dr Diego Oyarzun is a postdoctoral researcher in the group of Dr. Guy-Bart Stan, at the Centre for Synthetic Biology and Innovation, Imperial College London. He helped us with developing the modelling strategy for the Gene Guard module.

Imaging support

Dr Martin Spitaler and Mark Scott of the Facility for Imaging by Light Microscopy (FILM) at Imperial College London helped with the setup and execution of imaging and image processing of bacterial uptake into plant roots and chemotaxis.

Human practices support

Alex Hamilton from the London School of Economics participated in our human practices panel.

Dr Stephan Guettinger from the London School of Economics participated in our human practices panel.

Dr Alexandru Milcu at Imperial College London advised us on above/below ground interactions and rhizosphere ecology.

Dr Robert Griffiths at the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology advised us about soil microbial ecology.

Prof Stuart Dunbar, Dr Torquil Fraser and Dr John Paul Evans at Syngenta kindly advised us on the applicability and implementation of our project.

Dr Mathijs Wuts, a seed coat expert from Syngenta, was an invaluable resource for informing us on the technology behind seed coating.

Dr Janet Cotter, a scientific advisor from Greenpeace, attended our human practices panel and provided valuable insight into the regulatory protocols behind GM release.

Deborah Pearson, live artist, playwright and producer, helped Chris with his short story via a workshop.

Kerri Hall, actress and comedienne, helped Chris with his short story via a workshop.

Rodney Portman and Louise Cooke of the Berkeley Reafforestation Trust advised us on implementation strategies and the intricacies of making charitable engagement work

Dr Frans Tetteroo from the Incotec Group provided us with the knowledge of how to incorporate bacteria into a seed coat and the essential parameters to consider for storage and shipment as well as providing images of real seed coats.

Margarita Kopniczky, first year Biologist and iGEM enthusiast, did research on and helped to write the section on plant growth promoting bacteria on our Ecology page.

And last but not least

We would like to thank all the people who came to our progress presentations and gave useful feedback and input:

Arturo Casini, Jen Samson, Jon Smith, Tim Weenink and Alex Wray.