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From 2011.igem.org

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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 helped us in one way or another, and without whom the project would not have been possible.

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Students

	Atipat Patharagulpong 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).		Chris Schoene 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 travelling. He is German but was born in Colombia and has lived in the USA and Spain.
	Frank Machin 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!		Jiayue Zhu Jiayue, or Nina, is a 2nd year bioengineer and does a lot of the modelling work as well as the design of our poster. She is best known for being an unflinching reservoir of calm and playing with her phone in all situations, except, possibly, her death.
	Nicolas Kral 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, while 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.		Nikki Kapp Nikki just finished her undergraduate studies in Biochemistry. She is our team leader and is glad to use the knowledge she has obtained from her course into practice in the iGEM competition. Her duties in the iGEM team include cloning & assembly strategies and outreach/PR. Nikki's life isn't all about science, she is passionate about music and travel and would like to have a taste of different cultures by completing an around-the-world trip.
	Rebekka Bauer Rebekka just finished a degree in Biology. She has taken the role of human practice coordinator and has done mostly plant biology in the lab with some super cool imaging. She likes the creativity of Synthetic Biology as well as its potential application in solving world problems. Outside of science, she is interested in photography, travelling and cooking some tasty food.		Si Chen Si just graduated with a degree in Biomedical Engineering. She joined the Imperial iGEM team with the intention of delivering a solid solution that can be applied to reality in the future. She is one of our modelling whizzes and can do scarily impressive things on Matlab. She is also the most fashionable person on the team.
	Yuanwei Li 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 things like biomechanics. He is also quite interested in 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 in this iGEM project.

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

Dr. Stephan Guettinger

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 Dendra and gave us some great data.

Chemotaxis support

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

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

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

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.

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 of bacterial uptake into plant roots and chemotaxis imaging.

Human practices support

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.

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.