We, the iGEM 2022 team from IISER TVM, are beyond grateful for the support of all those who have made the project what it is today. On this page, we would like to acknowledge the contributions of everyone who has mentored, guided, and helped the team throughout this incredible journey.
We are extremely grateful to the Prof. J. N. Moorthy Director (IISER TVM); Col. Robinson George (Retd.), Registrar (IISER TVM), and the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Thiruvananthapuram for providing us with the monetary support and approval required for carrying out the project.
We would like to thank the entire School of Biology (SoB) of IISER TVM for providing us with reagents, lab space, and guidance throughout the course of the project. We would also like to extend our gratitude to Prof. Hema Somanathan (HoD of SoB), Ms. Sarika and Ms. Sandhya (PA SoB) for being instrumental in helping us obtain several permissions.
Primary PI: Prof. Srinivasa Murty Srinivasula, School of Biology, IISER TVM
Prof. Murty was instrumental in mentoring and supporting us throughout the iGEM journey. He helped us obtain approval for our project, acquiring funding and accessing research lab facilities at our institute. His valuable insights in troubleshooting various aspects of our project has been of immense help throughout the course of the project.
Secondary PI: Dr. Sandhya Ganesan, School of Biology, IISER TVM
Dr. Sandhya was extremely generous and offered us lab space and reagents to work with. She helped us brainstorm, design and troubleshoot experiments along with keeping us on track to meet our deadlines. Her consistent support enabled us to achieve our goals from project ideation to project completion.
The Team Members: The team can be found here. Contributions of each member are described here.
Prof. Dipshikha Chakravortty, Indian Institute of Science: External Mentor
Prof. Dipshikha was an incredibly important advisor to our team. Her vast experience in mentoring past iGEM teams came in handy on several occasions. She constantly looked in on our work progress and offered valuable advice that has positively impacted the project.
Delvin K. Pauly: Delvin was instrumental in standardizing our OMV isolation runs, helped us handle the ultracentrifuge and mentored us through all our cell culture work and confocal microscopy.
Krishanu Dey Das: Krishanu helped us immensely in performing our Western blots and confocal microscopy. He was also integral to the development of our experimental plan and design.
Tejas T.M: Tejas was key in all our troubleshooting for cloning. He helped us set up numerous PCRs and digests.
Abhishek Raghunathan: Abhishek helped us right from the start of the project. From training us in basic experimental techniques, to giving suggestions on our presentation and wiki, he has done it all.
B V Ramesh, The finance registrar at our institute assisted us in the initiation of the fund transfer process and oversight, payments towards iGEM and handling the team account.
Prof. Suresh Das, an emeritus professor at our institute, and former Executive vice President of the Kerala Council for Science Technology and Environment. He advised us on our approach towards sponsors, making a budget and brochure to present to potential sponsors.
The sponsors, specifically, Gopikrishna Patibanda, MD Phoenix Group for supporting our team.
Impact Grant Comission and Fredrick Cotrell Gardner Foundation for awarding us the Impact Grant.
Friends, families and well-wishers that contributed to our crowdfunding.
Our reagent sponsors, Dr. Sudhirdas Prayaga and Dr. Muthukumaran, Prayaga Antibodies. They provided us with rabbit anti-OmpA antibody and anti-rabbit HRP conjugated secondary antibodies, both of which were key to our research work.
Shradha Goenka, T Prabha, and Arun Prasanna from Biotech Desk, in providing us free genes pertaining to our project.
Sunil Kumar, Managing Director of Crescent Labs, for supporting the team yet again this year.
Team iGEM IISc, Bangalore for sharing their Promega Grant reagents.
IDT, NEB, Beckman Coulter and Twist Biosciences for their iGEM team promotional offers.
Dany, BioSys Trivandrum, for providing us with dry ice.
We thank all those that supported us through out crowd funding campaign. They were instrumental in providing us the financial support we needed to achieve all our goals during the project.
Ruchi Arya, helped the sponsorship team with finding contacts, and promotion of our crowdfunding campaign.
Rohit Menon provided us contacts for sponsorship and assisted us with tech support at the crucial stage of wiki freeze.
Ms. Nithya Rani NM: Ms. Nithya was instrumental in training us in many basic lab techniques. She was always around to troubleshoot and help us find reagents in the advanced biology laboratory.
Ms. Lincy Varghese: Ms. Lincy helped us design our sequencing primers and conduct Sanger sequencing.
Mr. Jijith S S: Mr. Jijith guided us while using the ultracentrifuge and sourcing compatible rotors and tubes.
Mr. Alex: Mr. Alex operated the 120kV transmission electron microscope to image our OMV sample.
Dr. Somnath Dutta: Dr. Dutta was instrumental in performing cryo TEM imaging of our OMV samples. His prompt response and guidance helped us achieve phase 1 of our project.
Surekha Padmanaban: Surekha arranged the cryoTEM imaging of OMVs. She prepared the samples for imaging, performed imaging and processed the images.
Dr. Annapoorni Rangarajan: Dr. Annapoorni kindly provided us with SK-BR-3 cells.
Sayoni Maiti and Shraddha Mohanty: Sayoni and Shraddha guided us through the packaging and transportation of SK-BR-3. They provided us with other information about culturing conditions.
Sathish Kunagahalli: Sathish cultured and packaged SK-BR-3 and provided us with our test cell line.
Dr. Ramray Bhat: Dr. Ramray helped us choose a cell line suitable for experiments. He briefed us about different cell lines and their advantages. He directed us to Dr. Medhavi Vishwakarma.
Dr. Medhavi Vishwakarma: Dr. Medhavi kindly provided us with MCF-10A cells.
Sindhu M: Provided us with maintenance protocols for the MCF-10A cell line.
Prof. Dipshikha Chakravortty: Prof. Dipshikha guided us in obtaining SK-BR-3 and performing cryo-TEM. She introduced us to Dr. Dutta, Dr. Vishwakarma and Dr. Rangarajan at IISc who subsequently helped us.
Abhilash Vijay Nair: Abhilash helped us with packaging cell lines and provided dry ice for transportation.
Dr. Rakesh S Laishram: Dr. Laishram helped us about the available options for cell lines and quantification of the amount of OMVs and fluorophores (for internalisation).
Dr. Harikumar K.B: Dr. Harikumar kindly provided us with SK-BR-3 cells.
Shirley James: Shirley packaged and transported SK-BR-3 cell line.
Dr. Santhosh Kumar T . R: Dr. Santhosh Kumar generously provided us with SK-BR-3.
Prakash R: Prakash packaged and transferred SK-BR-3 cell line
IISER Thiruvananthapuram faculty who helped us on formulation our project idea are given here.
We interacted with various experts to get their inputs- it helped in improving our project such that it has become more useful to the stakeholders. The attributions for them are given here
The following people helped us with translating the survey, pamphlet and project promotion video into the various regional languages.
Siva Subramanian, Shivam Barnwal, M. Gomathi, Anagha J, Pradip Bhattacharjee, Aditi Das, Ashutosh Kumar, Jaya Raj R, (Malayalam teacher NSS KPT HSS Ottapalam), Sudha (Hindi teacher NSS KPT HSS Ottapalam), Madhavi M , Harsha T.N, Mrs. Sarika Chowdhury (teacher Cygnet Public School).
The following people helped in breast screening camp:
Dr. Hemalatha Goldwin, Dr. Kavitha Ravi, Technicians from KIMS Health center, Service team of IISER TVM, IT Support of IISER TVM and Aan Ruth
Following people helped in conducting Drama at Mall of Travancore, Thiruvananthapuram:
For the hair donation camp, 'She Saloon' at IISER Thiruvananthapuram.
For survey preparation: Dr. Harilal Madhavan, Dr Sreekala Sreehari, Mr. Akshay J
Dr. Rahul Roy: Played a key role in providing us with the attenuated ClyA sequence (fusion protein).
Dr. Nisha N Kannan (IBSC coordinator): Helped us in getting approval for our project and provided safety guidance to the team members whenever required.
Dr. Poonam Thakur (Institutional Biosafety officer): Played an instrumental role in educating and guiding the team members on aspects of lab safety, project safety and biowaste management.
Priyadarshini Baidya: Provided valuable advice on safety and check-in forms.
Dr. Aektha Agarwal: Dr. Agarwal provided us with guidance in applying entropy stable schemes to our project
Prof. Philip Maini, University of Oxford; Dr. Nagaiah Chamakuri, IISER Thiruvanathapuram; Prof. Dipshikha Chakravortty, IISc Bangalore; Dr. Dond Asha Kisan, IISER Thiruvanathapuram; Prof. Apala Majumdar, University of Strathclyde for their priceless advice and guidance on modeling
Udit Kumar Tyagi: He contributed significantly to docking and protein production estimation and guided us throughout the project.
Abhinav Yukth, Niranjan Jayaprakashan, Nishil Mehta and Joel Sleeba helped us immensely with writing equations and running simulations in modeling
Dr. Shantala Hari Dass: Dr. Dass provided insight on diverse audiences for education outreach and our priorities in doing effective science communication.
Mall of Travancore Marketing Manager:
Gave us permission and necessary equipment to stage the breast cancer awareness drama in the mall.
Vidya Mandir Senior Secondary School: Allowed us to take classes regarding experimental design and hypothesis testing.
Brindavan Vidhyala ICSE School: Allowed to take class on Application of Genetic Engineering.
Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya, Trivandrum: Facilitated conducting the lab on wheels program for the students.
Science and Technology Council: Collaborated with us to conduct the lab on wheels program.
There were various other people who helped in all the events we conducted during the duration of our project. The attributions for them are given here.
Synbio on Wheels: Aadhra Santhosh, Sandra Aan Litto, Hruidya C Babu, Devika Sunil helped with the designing of the infographic self explanatory charts that were put up in the Synbio on Wheels vehicle
Synbio Book: Eeshani Umesh Abhyankar, Priyadharsinee Kumar, Meenakshy A S
Monopoly - Synbio Edition: Kore Kalyani Vinayak, Vibhavari Medepalli, Nandana Rajeev Nair
Track your Waste Short film: Shreyas R, Ajmal P.M., Vishnu Prasad
Synbio Conclave 2.0: Samyukta Anand, Shreya Venkatesan
Shreya Venkatesan: Co-author of 'Bacterial Outer Membrane Vesicles: Review and Resources', a handbook on outer membrane vesicles. Contributed in writing the team wiki and articles for social media platforms.
Samyukta Anand: Contributed in writing the team wiki, articles for social media platforms, the OMV handbook and invitations for the SynBio Conclave 2.0.
Jacob G Kurian: Looked into the various methods of administration and limitations of our drug delivery system.
Renuka Manoj: Contributed in designing of the Wiki, our social media posts and helped us with the other design elements of our project.
Meenakshy A S: Created illustrations for our social media posts, the wetlab and outreach teams.
Nandana Rajeev Nair: Created illustrations for our social media posts, the human practices and outreach teams.
We thank Padmanabhan Kannan for helping us with our wiki.
We are grateful to Joel Sleeba, Adithya A, Roshin Nazeer, Adithya Jayaraman and Mohan Sai for their help with the technical aspects of the iGEM wiki.
We would like to credit iGEM IISER Kolkata 2021 for code for the wiki and inspiring our design.
We are extremely thankful to Renuka Manoj for helping our team with animations and making logos.
And also thanks to Siva Subramanian, Harsha T N, Aditi Das , Ravikiran Hegde, Abhirama N ,Tirthonkor Saikia ,Ritu Yadav, Samapita Sahu , Runu Rani Gayary and Akshay Kulkarni for their help in translating script in different languages for easy communication.
We also would like to extend our gratitude to Sreejith K, and Ganga Visual Creative Media for shooting videos of our campus.
We thank the iGEM teams of The University of Barcelona, IISER Tirupati and IISER Berhampur, for being wonderful partner teams throughout the course of the project.
We are incredibly thankful to the iGEM 2021 team from IISER TVM. Being the first team from the institute they paved the way for us. They also guided the various subteams on various aspects offering valuable advice along the course of the project.
We would like to thank the IT department of IISER TVM for providing us with a premium Zoom account and setting up our Google workspace.
We want to extend our appreciation to the general public, who took part in our events, interviews and surveys.
Last but not least we would like to thank the entire student body of IISER TVM, our friends and families for supporting and cheering us on along the way