This journey would have been incomplete without the constant support, mentoring and guidance of everyone who contributed to our project in every way possible. The IISER Tirupati iGEM 2022 team would like to acknowledge the contributions of all those who helped us in our project with help and support in whichever way possible. We owe you all a big thanks, for making this journey possible and successful.
We thank Prof. Ramesh Sonti, Dr Hussain Bhukya and Dr Sanjay Kumar for their consistent guidance as our lead investigators. Since the project's inception, they have all been a huge support and have shared a wealth of knowledge on everything from brainstorming to experiments. Their constant direction and advice has helped us shape our project
Prof. Ramesh Sonti
Dr Hussain Bhukya
Dr Sanjay Kumar
PROJECT ADVISORS
We would like to express our gratitude to the faculty members at our institution who have supported us steadfastly and without complaint.
Prof. K N Ganesh for his essential suggestions on how to make our project better and for providing us with the resources we needed to make our project a vision within our grasp.
Prof. G Ambika for helping us in the initial ideation of our project and even advancing the modelling team
Dr Ashwani Sharma for his constant advise and help on practically all elements of the project and for providing a solution each time we encountered a hurdle.A special thanks for providing access to his lab
Dr Tapan Chandra Adhyapak for his valuable inputs and suggestions in modelling along with the verification of our modules.
Dr Vijayalakshmi V Subramanian for your counsel and passionate participation in each and every event the team has held.
Dr Suchi Goel for helping us with the ethical aspects of our project.
Dr Dileep Mampallil for giving us the constant support in the development of hardware. A special thanks for giving access to his lab.
Dr Shibdas Banerjee for helping us with the biomarker analysis
Dr Kanagashekaran T for guiding us through the hardware parts and experiments. A special thanks for giving access to his lab.
Dr Nirmala Krishnamurthy for your direction and participation in the situation, regardless of the time we contacted.
Dr Jatish Kumar for verifying our project modelling modules and developing goals.
Dr Nibedita Pal for giving us valuable inputs in project design.
Dr Harikrishna S for helping us in the structural biology of G-quadruplex and siRNA.
Dr Prosenjit Sen and Dr Manoj Varma for your contribution in designing our hardware.
Dr Vaibhav Bhatia for helping us understand the entrepreneurship aspect of our project and helping us with the market analysis.
STUDENT ADVISORS
All through our journey, there have been multiple people, including iGEM alumni and PhDs whom we have been in constant communication and have helped the project reach its current stage. We value the time and effort they have put in for us. We are grateful to
Mr Bhabesh Kumar Tripathy, for his crucial contributions throughout the project's development. His criticism and inquiries led us to a destination we are proud to be a part of and a journey worth embracing.
Miss Komal Pati, for the consistent insights and support she has provided and for her encouragement and assistance during this journey. She was an ever-present participant in every project facet, offering constructive feedback and assistance whenever required.
Miss Lochan Chaudhari for helping us modulate our project at crucial times, verifying the modules and the equations
Miss Shubra Singhal, for her motivation to increase our commitment to environmental responsibility and security and her feedback on the human practices.
Mr Akshay Tawale, for his help in troubleshooting our experiments and timely interruption that helped us correct our mistakes.
Mr Ashwin Pillai, for so much for giving us insights into the modelling of our project.
Mr Ashwin Sharma, for his assistance regarding correcting our mistakes and guiding us through the competency of cells and transformation.
Miss Fathima Aslaha T R, for sharing her expertise in E. coli competency, transformation and advicing us on the stakeholder analysis.
Mr Sahil for helping us with mdp files and Gromacs.
Mr Prameya Garge, for his honest feedback and suggestions on how to improve our strategies and tenacity. He has been an invaluable resource to us as we conduct experiments, guiding us through several of them and helping us successfully complete them.
Mr Uddeshya Pandey for helping us with biomarker analysis.
Mr Amogh Desai, for helping us with the pdb preparations and other bioinfo-related activities.
Miss Arya George for supplying us with the direction we required for our experiments and for remaining consistently present with us throughout the process of identifying and rectifying the errors we have committed.
Miss Debosmitha Ghosh for being an invaluable resource throughout the entirety of the protein purification process.
Mr A Murali Krishna,for the vital insights you provided in the process of designing the aptamers that are specific for our system and for the consistent advice you provided through the experimental testing of the same.
Mr Jothi Basu, for your assistance in synthesising the sequences that we required for our wetlab and for being a calming influence throughout our experimental effort.
Miss Rashi Soni, for helping us with the purified broccoli aptamer and protocols.
Miss Nida Fathima, for assisting us in many of the tests and providing invaluable assistance in resolving our questions and concerns.
Mr Ankush Kaushik, for guiding us to build the wiki.
STUDENT VOLUNTEER
A big thanks to Mr Sasi Mitra for his timely support on the wiki pages. He has been an integral part of our project.
FRIENDS, FAMILY AND SUPPORT
Animations
Mr Harshit Johari (Main Animator for our promo video)
Miss Akansha Srivastava for helping us with the animations for the promo video.
Translations
Mr Kalai Selvan M for translation of the literature in our project
Mr Yatharth Saxena for translation of the literature in our project
Mr Sai Praneeth, Mr Lokesh Subramanyam, Miss Mudavath Pravallika, Miss Sayee Srihari Deepika, Miss Srivani Daravath for helping us time and again with the translation of slogans to the local language, and help us in the outreach of our project to the audience during the rally.
Software
Miss Smriti Priya, for helping us with the source code for MAWS
Mr Arijit Saha, for helping us with Gromacs installation, code optimisation and bio info-related help.
Mr Suranjan Das for helping us with coding
Miss Nanda Krishna PU, for helping us with the codes.
Photography and videography
Mr Pranav Gopalan RK, Mr Faizee Ali Khan, Mr Nachiketh Sudharshan for helping us with the images and videos as and when needed.
Design
Mr Shivam Kumar for helping our designing team throughout this journey
Miss Rukmini P Harale for helping us with the illustrations
Framework for our illustrations were taken from freepik, Canva, Biorender and edited.
LAB SUPPORT
Mr Anup Chandra Pal M, Mr Mohan Mukesh Malviya, and Mr Tharachand for helping us with the orders and constant check-ins on the same
Ms Leelawati for helping us set up the autoclave every day
Members of Dr Vijayalakshmi Subramanian’s lab, Miss Arya George, Miss Safa Nasrin, Miss Jinsha, Miss Angana, Miss Spoorthi Gowda for helping us with the reagents, teaching us with the handling of apparatuses and educating us about basic lab techniques
Members of Dr Ashwani Sharma’s lab, A Murli Krishna, Jothi Basu, Nida Fathima, Rashi Soni for their constant assistance in planning and troubleshooting of our Aptamer designs and experiments.
Members of Dr Hussain Bhukya’s lab, Siddhant Sharma, Arpita Das, Rachith Patil for being a constant part of our journey, assisting us with protein purification and for being our pillars of support and motivation
Members of Dr Sanjay Kumar’s lab, Mr Wani Rahail Ashraf, Mr Gaurav Ingle, Mr Kalpana Tankey, Miss Anjali Kumari Singh and Miss Manita Raina for helping us with the troubleshooting of our experiments and all the support
Members of Dr Raju Mukherjee’s lab, Miss Saniya Patil, Mr Tejan Lodhiya, Miss Akanksha Agrawal, Mr Rohit Satardekar, Miss Annesha Adhikari, Mr Pankaj Maurya for guiding us with the transformation experiments and helping us with the storage of our reagents/parts.
Members of Dr Soumit Sarkar Mandal’s lab, Miss Debosmita Ghosh and Dr Pakala Suresh Babu’s lab,Miss Namita Chutani for their constant mentorship and guidance
Members of Dr Nibedita Pal’s lab, Miss Priya Agarwal, Mr Sahil for educating us on CD spectroscopy and other spectroscopy methods
Members of Dr Ramkumar Sambasivan, Miss Krishna Sameera, Mr Kathan Munshi, Miss Shraddha Bire
Members of Dr E Balaraman Sir’s lab, Mr SivaKumar G, Dr Jatish Kumar’s lab, Dr Vasudharani Devanathan’s lab , Mr Arulventhan M and Miss Sapana Sharma, Dr Suchi Goel’s lab,Miss Adrita Das,Mr Bijayeeta Deb, Miss Shukla Madhavi Sanjay and Miss Neelima K and Dr Kiran Kumar’s lab for helping us with the reagents needed for our experiments.
Dr Sivakumar Vallabhapurappu’s lab for guiding us in SDS PAGE experiment.
Members of Dr Dileep Mampallil’s lab,Dr Manjoosha, Mr Mahesh and Miss Akansha Agarwal
Members of Dr Kangasekaran’s lab for helping us with our hardware parts
Mr Sivaraju Donempudi for always lending your helping hands in our electrical experiments; Mr. Vankara Pradyumnu and Mr. Alastin V P for helping us with the hardware codes
Mr Rajat H S for helping us with lab resources.
PROJECT DEVELOPMENT
Dr Shunmathe K R for giving insights about PCOS and its diagnostic techniques
Dr Surbhi Singh for giving the idea about the symptoms and suggesting the team about expansion of our stakeholders
Dr Archana Arijili for explaining about the prevalence of the syndrome and also about the existing technician techniques
Dr Rasna Kishor for helping us understand about our stakeholders and suggested modulating our approach for our outreach.
Prof. Padmanaban Govindarajan, retired faculty IISc bangalore for verifying our modules involved in our project.
Dr Vijayalakshmi Subramanian, Dr Nirmala Krishnamurthy, Dr Mayank Sharma, Dr Sivakumar A for being a part of of ethics in syn-bio podcast series.
Mr Parth S Menghal help in developing the 3D model of our hardware system
Dr Vibha Ahuja, helping us understand the importance of safety in our project
Dr Sindhu Ann Korah for helping us with the answers of the frequently asked questions regarding PCOS from our stakeholders and Dr Sameena Khalil for making us realise the prevalence of PCOS in India and helping us find medical journals containg information on PCOS.
EVENTS
Dr Ashwani Sharma, Dr Banani Chakraborty, Dr Sarah Shigdhar, Dr Tarun kumar Sharma , Dr Simon Chi Chin Shiu for helping the team organise Aptalition with full enthusiasm.
Additional SP E Supraja along with the police force and Tirupati municipality for helping the team organise the 3k Rally for PCOS awareness.
The participants of the awareness rally, String science with pride event, yoga day celebrations.
Dr Vijayalakshmi Subramanian, Dr Nirmala Krishnamurthy, Dr Mayank Sharma, Dr Sivakumar A for being a part of ethics in syn-bio podcast series.
SOS children’s Village managers and volunteers for helping the team organise the summer science sessions.
The management of Atlantis world school for their constant support in conducting syn-learn session.
TEAM
Neha Adarsh - Co-team leader, Wetlab, Design, Human Practices, Fundraising
Sanskriti Saxena - Co-team leader, Wetlab, Design , Bioinformatics, Human Practices
Pratik Bathigowda - Mathematical Modelling, Hardware, Human Practices
Namitha J.P - Wetlab, Design, Human Practices
Asma Shirin T - Mathematical Modelling, Hardware, Bioinformatics
Diya Raj N - Wetlab, Hardware, Bioinformatics, Human Practices
Shreyas Samir Parkhie - Wetlab, Collaborations, Partnership
Selva Bharathi K - Hardware, Wiki
Sejal Khanna - Wetlab, Hardware, Human Practices
Arijit Patra - Wetlab, Bioinformatics
Manasa N S - Mathematical Modelling, Hardware, Human Practices, fundaraising
Manali Damodar - Wetlab, Design
Shivangi Batish - Wetlab, Human Practices
Shreyathaa P - Mathematical Modelling, Hardware, Design
Jhagan R- Wetlab, Human Practices
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We would like to express our sincere gratitude to the IISER Tirupati family, for being the pillars of our project. Their constant motivation and guidance helped us sail through this journey. A heartfelt thanks for helping us at every step of our project. A big shout out to the mess committee, cafeteria, house keeping staff, volunteers for the PCOS rally, lab technicians, adminstration of IISER Tirupati, Ethics committee of IISER Tirupati (for the ethical clearance of our surveys), security staff, IT department, Travel desk of IISER Tirupati, carpenters and electricians for supporting us with long night stays, cleanliness and troubleshooting technical and laboratories issues.
SPONSORS
We would like to express our gratitude to Twist Biosciences, AddGene, MathWorks, IDT, SnapGene and New England BioLabsfor providing us with the financial and material support required for successfully completing our project. We also like to express our gratitude to the Impact Grant Commission and Frederick Gardner Cottrell Foundation for their support of the project by providing the Impact Grant 2022, which has been of great assistance. Also deserving of praise is our institute, which provided us with the funding required for our resources and the successful project completion.
