Team:Harvard/Judging

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Wiki Highlights

HARVshield logo.png
  • Read our project description and summary on our Project page: more details on how team members completed work for the three sections of our project are on Design, Synthesize, and Test pages, respectively.
  • Please be sure to stop by our poster during the poster session with any questions.

Accomplishments

Experimental Results:

Researched zinc finger proteins and choose 6 novel, clinically relevant target sequences
Generated 55,000 zinc finger protein sequences using bioinformatics
Used three recently developed technologies together for the first time: a foundational advance
Expressed those 55,000 sequences in E.coli, with a sub-library for each target
Created a genomic one-hybrid selection system sensitive enough to detect one hit in a million
Found up to 15 novel zinc finger proteins

Biobricks and Protocols:

Submitted 5 Biobricks to the registry, including our one-hybrid selection strain
Created several chassis for our Biobricks, including our one-hybrid selection strain
Used and shared our easy-to-follow protocols
Made protocols, Biobricks, and source code freely available, so that others can adapt them for other projects

Human Practices

Interviewed zinc finger researchers Dr. Keith Joung and Dr. George Church
Researched intellectual property and how it applies to zinc finger proteins
Created a timeline and case study of zinc finger intellectual property
Handed out IP pamphlets and chassis data sheets at our poster presentation
Educated local high school students about synthetic biology to provide accurate information from sources other than the media.

Foundational Advances

  • Brought together novel technologies to create a pipeline that allows scientists to engineer novel interactions with DNA:
    • A new way of making new parts - with selection from a computationally designed library
  • Provided detailed protocols on using lambda red and MAGE so that future iGEM teams will be able to use these new techniques to directly edit the genome
    • The genome is the next frontier in synthetic biology.