Attributions
The 2022 iGEM Evry Paris-Saclay team is composed of master's and bachelor's students, but the project would not
have been possible without the help of many other people whom we wanted to thank.
Acknowledgments
Host institutions
The Systems and Synthetic Biology Lab (iSSB) of the UMR8030 Genomics Metabolics, headed by Patrick Wincker, hosted us. Jean-Loup Faulon kindly allowed us to carry out most of our experiments in his laboratory. We would like to thank the researchers and the administrative staff for their accessibility and kindness, as well as for their help when we needed it and in particular to Sylvie Bobelet and Laurent Jannière.We thank Genopole, the University of Evry and the University Paris-Saclay Graduate School in Life Sciences and Health and the MICROBES Interdisciplinary Center for providing the main financial support.
Material support
New England Biolabs (NEB) kindly supplied enzymes and kits for our molecular biology experiments.SnapGene supplied free licenses of its software for molecular biology which was essential for the design of our project.
IDT and Twist Bioscience offered DNA synthesis.
Special thanks
A special thanks to Ioana Popescu, who has encouraged the creation of our team and who has been there at every step of the project. In addition to being a supervisor she also provided help and emotional support to us. She supported our team leader in all the administrative tasks. The success of this project is largely due to her.We are grateful to Anna Niarakis who has helped us with the bioinformatics analyses as well as bibliographic research. She played an important role in the modeling part and in reviewing the last wiki edits.
A special thanks to Manish Kushwaha and Andrew Tolonen too for their help during the designing steps of the project. Their knowledge of synthetic biology has been a real help for the team. We thank Manish Kushwaha for the invitation he sent us to participate in the 2022 BioSynSys Symposium.
We thank Kamyar Keshavarz-Farajkhah and Hadi Jbara, who supported us and gave us advice all over the year.
External advice
We would especially like to thank all the people who took the time to answer our questions and give us advice.We thank Dr. Ricardo Louro, Dr. Jeffrey Gralnick and Dr. Benjamin Keitz for both their advice and knowledge on external electron transfer regarding our project.
We thank Prof. Thomas Heams for his help with the ethical aspects of our project and to Dr. Vincent Sauveplane for helpful discussions.
We would like to thank Prof. Fariza Tahi who shared her knowledge on lncRNAs and her point of view on our project.
We acknowledge Fabricio Cravo Gomes for helpful discussions on our hardware design and Mr. Mickael Bouhier, who kindly welcomed us at Telecom Paris and aided 3D printing our MFC apparatus.
We thank Nadia Ghache who helped us in the wet-lab by providing usefull advices.
We would like to thank the entire Toulouse_INSA-UPS team for both their warm welcome and advice during the two-days-meeting they organized.
We thank Ms. Valérie Lerouyer for helping us with the organization of the “Fête de la science” event.
We are greatly thankful to Dr. Véronique Leboulc’h who supported us throughout the year. It was thanks to her that we got in contact with Ms. Delphine Trançois (biology teacher at “La Cappelle” secondary school) and Ms. Clara Fruchon (association “L’Arbre des connaissances”) and thus participated in a popularization event as part of our Education and Public Engagement work. Together with Dr. Victoria Del Angel, Dr. Véronique Leboulc’h helped also by giving us contacts of French researchers for our Human Practices work. We also acknowledge her and Ms. Aude Brianto-Escande for their precious help in communicating our project in the regional press.
We thank the Scissors in the Plug team, who assisted us in improving our BioPuzzle game.
We would like to thank the brave cancer survivor who agreed to speak with us, and Me. Karine Chrunyk who gave us legal advice.
Distribution of the tasks
Paul Weimer is our versatile team leader, who conceptualized the team and took care of recruiting its members. While managing the administrative part of the project (financial aspects, search for sponsors, and ordering of materials) with the help of David Gilardot (treasurer), he was involved in almost all the aspects of the project (not just in the hardware part) carefully coordinated the different parts of the team to allow the project to progress smoothly. In addition, he led the Human Practices work by establishing contact with professionals and organized collaborations.Georges Sainte-Rose, the team leader of iGEM Evry Paris-Saclay in 2021, helped Paul a lot in starting and managing the team by passing on to him all the tips and tricks of the job.
Teimurazi Gochitashvili was in charge of the hardware development, team meeting organization and was instrumental in developing the initial project idea.
Wet lab
David Gilardot, Hanine Kaddour and Paul Weimer were in charge of plasmid design, with the help of Kamyar Keshavarz-Farajkhah.Most of the experiments were performed by Paul Weimer, Doriane Blaise, and David Gilardot. They were assisted by Hanine Kaddour, Chloé Seyman, and Raphaëlle Petit.
Human Practices and Education and Public Engagement
Paul Weimer managed these aspects of the project with elegance. He represented our team during both the BioSynSys Symposium and the “Fête de la science” event. He attended meetings and explained our science to the public.David Gilardot, with the assistance of his friends in the Scissors in the Plug team, helped developed our BioPuzzle game.
Modeling and Wiki
Adèle Collin, Ivana Rondon (who created our logo) and Teimurazi Gochitashvili took charge of the computational aspects of our project. Paul Weimer was in charge of the story line and gave them advice concerning the previous iGEM models related to our project.Georges Sainte-Rose was our web designer. He created our team website and our wiki structure and he introduced the other members to HTML. He managed to support all the requests from our biologists, some of whom did not have the requisite computer skills. He helped us with his skills in HTML, CSS, and JS. He made for us a tutorial on how to upload our Google Docs text directly into our iGEM website.