As the head of the dry lab subgroup, Aaliyah contributed significantly to in-silico modelling within the project. She explored the utility of PK-Sim and other PBPK modelling software to produce possible estimates for bioavailability, as well as discussed this with experts in order to decide whether or not the team should pursue this modelling medium. Within the dry lab subgroup she developed constitutive gene expression models, which were able to justify the wet lab’s choice regarding the effect of L-tyrosine and promoter strength on pterostilbene yield. She also was able to produce a deterministic kinetic model that suggested the ideal plasmid copy number.

Aaliyah was also a core member of the education team who spoke to schools regarding synthetic biology concepts. She acquired translations in both Korean and Mandarin for the promotional video and transcribed subtitles for the English script of the video. Moreover she represented the team at several UK meet-ups. She was a member of the Wiki development team and assisted with coding elements of the Wiki page including the projects attributions table, Engineering Cycle page and Modeling page. She also assisted the science communication team with ideation, specifically regarding the Chroma Campaign. Furthermore, she assisted the science communication team by helping to write and storyboard the promotional video. She also was significantly involved in education and outreach and was a core speaker Aaliyah also contributed significantly to the project’s funding by successfully applying to the KCL Student Opportunity Fund for an amount of £1000.

 

Special mentions: Collaboration, dry lab, Wiki development, funding, science communication, promotional video, education.

As a member of the wet lab subgroup, Daniela played a prominent role in different aspects of the wet lab work, while continuously supporting the design and execution of our methodologies. Firstly, Daniela provided crucial support in our proof of concept through the design of protocols, namely HPLC-UV, for the detection and quantification of pterostilbene produced by our system based on the extensive literature review conducted on pterostilbene biosynthesis. Moreover, she played a major role in the framing of our rationale and wet lab work into relevant engineering cycles, while organising the team’s participation in the 2022 iGEM InterLaboratory study. Daniela conducted important research on one of the enzymes of our system, VvROMT, as well as on future cost-effective approaches to tackle major metabolic bottlenecks in our pathway. Overall, Daniela provided an invaluable role to the wet lab subgroup throughout the duration of the project both in the preparation and implementation of our protocols.

 

Special mentions: Protocol for pterostilbene theraputic potential,interlab,HPLC-UV protocols,integrated human practices.

As co-head of finances alongside Hannah, Dima discussed and determined informed financial decisions that were integral to the project, including cost analysis, Gantt chart and break-even analysis. A vital member of the entrepreneurship team, she connected with CEOs and companies to gain a deeper understanding of our project and how it can be implemented in the real world. Additionally, she played a crucial role to the development of a comprehensive business plan illustrating the financial aspects of the project, IP strategy, future growth and exit plan among others. Furthermore, she valuably contributed to the proposed implementation where she formulated realistic goals for the project within a timeline including patenting and market research. She has also participated in coding many of the Wiki page functions by applying her HTML, CSS and JavaScript coding skills. This includes the website footer, team page and slideshow in addition to other vital features of the website.

 

Special mentions: Proposed Implementation, Wiki Development, Business Plan, Pitching, Finance, Entrepreneurship.

Emmeline was an invaluable member in the science communication team for the Alzheimer’s disease subgroup. Rebranding the design plan for the entire Instagram feed, the forefront of the KCL iGEM Team’s engagement, Emmeline helped increase public engagement on a global scale. Not only did she design all the team’s presentations, used in every meeting and pitch when collaborating with others, but Emmeline also spearheaded the Chroma Campaign. Centred all around accessibility, Emmeline was determined to make not only our feed accessible to everyone, regardless of disability, but also encouraged other iGEM teams around the world to participate as well, making the iGEM competition more inclusive to everyone more than it has ever been before. Furthermore, in addition to increasing accessibility on Instagram, Emmeline also made guides and mentored other teams into how to use certain programmes to increase their engagement, as well as make their feeds more inclusive. This included mentoring team members from NYCU Formosa team to use Adobe After Effects, creating easy to understand guides for Wordpress, Canva, how to create reels and more. In addition to designing the Cellular Space blog, Emmeline also led the Wiki-design team, constructing an accessible but stand out colour scheme for our Wiki, as well as designing vectors and layouts for all the pages, important skills she picked up from here Co-Director role of the Promotional Video, alongside Nicola Allen.

 

Special mentions: Design, Wiki development, instagram, blog, animation, accessibility, engagement

As co-head of Entrepreneurship, Hannah has coordinated reaching out to companies to seek advice on how to implement our project in the real world and secure potential partnerships. By spearheading meetings with CEO’s and individuals involved in the biotechnology and synthetic biology sector, we have been able to tailor our entrepreneurial goals accordingly. We have generated interest in future partnerships and collaborations with a range of companies, which has also led to the production of our industry outreach division in entrepreneurship. Hannah played a fundamental role in devising our company's business plan, including producing the majority of our market-related strategies and analyses, and was also integral in executing our proposed implementation. Through Hannah’s devotion to entrepreneurship through extensive research and outreach, we have been able to build an extensive entrepreneurial company profile with realistic goals both inside and outside the scope of iGEM. As co-head of Finances, Hannah has also organised sourcing and distributing of finances throughout iGEM and conducting financial analyses. This has been crucial in the current funding of our project and for the realistic implementation of our project in the future. Hannah has also been a key member of the Wiki development team through researching elements of website building. By way of implementing her HTML, CSS and JavaScript skills, she contributed to coding multiple features of our project website, namley, the menu bar, providing a optimised user-interface to showcase our work.

 

Special mentions: Implementation, business planning, wet lab research, Wiki development, entrepreneurship, finances

Kalyan was co-leader of the wet lab team of KCL iGEM 2022. Spearheading many of the initiatives within the subgroup, Kalyan guided wet lab in many aspects of the project including the development of the 3A assembly protocol, developing characterization protocols for the At4CL enzyme, troubleshooting and reviewing protocols and research papers, as well as liaising between subgroups and other iGEM teams. Kalyan initially proposed the wet lab x dry lab collaboration on using in silico modelling for determining plasmid copy number and promoter strength. He remained as the primary point of contact between the two subgroups in this regard. Additionally, Kalyan also helped in constructing the plasmids used for the expression of genes involved in pterostilbene synthesis and acted as the primary liaison between Personal Investigators, iGEM teams and companies in regards to wet lab. Importantly, Kalyan wrote a comprehensive guide for future teams on the variety of applications of JUMP assembly in synthetic biology. Kalyan has also aided the team in other aspects of the project, most notably writing an article on codon deoptimized attenuated vaccines for the King’s College London science magazine “ScienceMind”. Additionally, Kalyan has represented the team in multiple speaking events including the UK-iGEM meetup held by Imperial College London as well as aiding in the public speaking workshop featuring Elaine Powell.

 

Special mentions: JUMP plasmid guide, science communication, laboratorial work.

As a co-lead of the team's human practices, Karin’s role mainly consisted of looking for researchers, professionals and charities relevant to the topic of our project to ensure that our work has the potential to help our community as well as the rest of the world and that every part of it is ethically sound. She aided in the design and later on data analysis of the public survey, thanks to which we learnt more about common understanding of Alzheimer's disease and synthetic biology. Later on, she participated in the development of a guide focusing on the creation and analysis of a qualitative survey. Furthermore, she contributed to the literature research of the pathophysiology of Alzheimer’s disease and helped find the molecular target of our proposed therapeutic. Karin was also part of the dry-lab team, where she researched possible ways of calculating and translating bioavailability from animal models to humans.

 

Special mentions: Human practices, Alzheimer's disease pathophysiology, and dry lab research.

As co-head of entrepreneurship and finance, Laura spearheaded and managed general tasks within the subgroup, ensuring all deadlines and criteria were being met in addition to keeping the whole of the team up to date, by being the spokesperson for entrepreneurship in meetings. Mainly focused on implementation, she extensively researched the potential stakeholders of Symemco Therapeutics and analysed the risks and challenges specific to bringing our therapeutic to the current market. This research aided in building the business plan, where Laura heavily contributed to the competition and risk sections and foresaw the completion of the document, ensuring every component came together to build the company profile she envisioned. By participating in collaborative calls with many companies throughout the summer she gained an insight to the industry and was crucial to the discussions regarding partnerships. In particular, Laura took an active role in creating and improving the pitch deck and went on to develop a guide to creating a pitch deck for future iGEM teams to utilise. Alongside her entrepreneurship responsibility, Laura also contributed to the Dry lab team, investigating the bioavailability of pterostilbene and developing an understanding of possible modelling systems used to translate animal bioavailability data to human data, although this modelling did not go ahead she contributed to the decision and justification behind this. Moreover, she participated in the coding of the Wiki, specifically the content for both the implementation and entrepreneurship pages, and initially helped draft the intended layout on figma for those pages, including their graphics.

 

Special mentions: Implementation, Business planning, Business pitch, dry lab research, HTML coding.

Melbrina was co-lead of the team’s human practices subgroup, ensuring that the project is ethically sound. Starting with aiding the wet lab team with initial research on building protocol, she completed the team’s safety form and check-in forms, some of the team’s first deliverables, before moving on to focus on human practices. She engaged with many academics and experts throughout the season. The team discovered some important information regarding the safety of the usage of our therapeutic and worked to address this in the future. In addition, her research and discussion with a research and ethics facilitator validated the safety of the team’s activities. She collaborated with Karin on conducting a public survey to view the public’s understanding of Alzheimer's disease (AD) and reception to synthetic biology, confirming the importance of educating audiences on these topics through our project and its presentation. Additionally, she did in-depth research into the pathophysiology of Alzheimer's disease and pterostilbene’s role in it through literature research and outreach to relevant experts. Melbrina was one of several members to develop this Wiki, implementing features such as downloading PDFs and “read more” buttons, as well as contributing to building several pages on the site.

 

Special Mention: Alzheimer's disease pathophysiology, Pterostilbene's theraputic relevance, integrated human practices, Wiki development.

Miriam spearheaded the wiki development by overseeing the timeline of the wiki development, splitting tasks between code contributors, providing continuous technical troubleshooting support to the rest of the team and closely collaborating with the wiki design team to help make optimal user interface decisions. She provided the rest of the team with guidance on how to navigate on GitLab platform, about Git system and using Git commands from local machines, as well as setting up and using local integrated development environment such as VS Code. Furthermore, she provided extensive and beginner-friendly wiki coding training to members with no prior experience in coding. She made a guide on getting started with using Gitlab as a reference point for future iGEM teams.

In the early stages of the project Miriam researched Dry Lab opportunities within the project and prepared overviews of possible oral bioavailability and blood-brain barrier modelling approaches. She also looked into factors relevant in pterostilbene dose determination based on literature available, researched AD drug market landscape currently and in the future and helped in identifying our product’s unique selling points.

She contributed to Dry Lab by collaborating with the Wet Lab team to define steps of modelling gene expression in E. coli through a deterministic model providing our Wet Lab team with a justification as to what would be the optimal plasmid copy number and promoter strength to achieve the highest possible pterostilbene production rate and overall lifetime yield considering the E. coli’s metabolic needs for L-tyrosine.

 

Special mentions: Wiki development, Dry lab.

Sarah was an indispensable member of the KCL iGEM 2022 wet lab team. Sarah led the ‘Improvement of an Existing Part’ section of our project, whereby using YASARA docking simulations, she was able to obtain crucial mathematical values that further justified our enzyme choices. Furthermore, Sarah was constantly involved in contributing to our project design such as conducting extensive research regarding plasmid copy number, promoter strength, feasibility of E. coli in the gut, and overall justification for our project choices. Crucially, Sarah identified the main papers we used in designing our expression systems. Sarah was also involved in the initial stages of engineering cycle design, helping the team narrow down the crucial cycles that underpinned our wet lab work. Sarah continuously supported the design of protocols and methodologies by providing feedback and aiding in the completion of all lab safety forms. Sarah dedicated many hours to perfecting her understanding of all aspects of the project such as the novel assembly method using JUMP plasmids. All in all, Sarah was a vital member of the wet lab team and its success during the project design and execution.

 

Special mention: improvement of existing part modelling, safety forms, and interlab.

Tomás was co-leader of the KCL iGEM 2022 wet lab team. Contributing greatly to the overall knowledge on pterostilbene, Tomás became the primary individual to approach regarding pterostilbene production and applications. Tomás identified the optimal pathway and the four enzymes necessary for pterostilbene production, further proposing the insertion of literature-based mutations to optimise catalytic efficiency. He aided significantly in all aspects of the subgroup, reviewing the vast majority of literature that was put out by the team. Additionally, he displayed significant leadership and scheduling skills, liaising with both team superiors as well as researchers to further our wet lab goals and tasks. Tomás contributed significantly to the engineering process of the KCL iGEM 2022 wet lab team, ensuring a robust and well thought methodology, encouraging the consideration of plasmid copy number, promoter strength, and the final expression system. Importantly, Tomás elucidated the principles of JUMP type IIS assembly and how to adapt our sequences to this assembly standard. He further contributed to multiple general aspects of the iGEM team including providing kinetic parameters for dry lab, aiding in interlab as well as assisting in the experiments conducted by the wet lab team.

 

Special mentions: Metabolic engineering, proof of concept, sRNA-target interaction.

Dr. Anatoliy Markiv served as the Primary Instructor of Symemco Therapeutics, and has been indispensable to the successful completion of this year's iGEM project. Dr. Markiv provided unconditional guidance and mentorship from his previous iGEM experiences pushing the team to its maximal potential. Dr. Markiv allowed our team to work in his laboratory throughout the duration of the project, providing all required supervision and wet lab training. Most importantly he provided continuous guidance, insight and the exceptional opportunity of learning from him.

Dr Alison Snape was our Secondary Instructor, providing logistical and pastoral support throughout this iGEM season. In regards to securing our funding, she played a pivotal role in critically analysing our grant applications and finding external funding opportunities. Additionally, within her Biochemistry expertise, she provided insight into our polyphenol of interest, pterostilbene. In preparation for the Grand Jamboree in Paris, Dr Snape also orchestrated a mock Jamboree presentation with over 70 invitees for our team to receive analytical critiques by Professors and students at KCL.

Alya served as an Instructor this year following her role as Co-Team Leader of KCL iGEM 2021. At the beginning of the season, she helped orchestrate a biohackathon for 2022 team formation and assisted in recruitment by hosting interviews and assessing over 50 applications. Throughout this iGEM season, she helped provide guidance, support and training to the team members and team leaders. Particularly, she worked closely with the Entrepreneurship subgroup to support the development of their Business Plan, following her involvement with iGEM EPIC. In addition, she was in constant, close communication with the team leaders to provide essential pastoral care and advised them in navigating the iGEM competition landscape.

As an instructor, Luke provided integral, continuous support for the team throughout the iGEM season by offering detailed feedback and direction on the work completed by the team. He planned and conducted the interviews to assemble the new 2022 KCL iGEM team. Additionally, Luke advised the team when deciding and evolving their project idea, highlighting the components necessary to create a successful iGEM project. Specifically as an iGEM Judge this year, Luke imparted his knowledge of the iGEM medal criteria to ensure the team was on keeping on track. Luke also aided in the development of the Wiki by giving a presentation on website development and design, providing feedback on code and Wiki structure, and monitored and advised team progress throughout the year.

Additionally, throughout the season we have had the strong support of our Mentors, members of KCL iGEM 2021 team: Aditya Shirode, Dimitar Dimitrov, Emily Kostina, Harsh Bumia, Milan Singh, Sichun Yao, and Thurga Navaseelan.