Mentors
- Dr. Danny Ducat: MSU-DOE Plant Research Laboratory, Associate Professor.
- Dr. Bjoern Hamberger: Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Assistant Professor.
- Dr. Masako Harada: Department of Biomedical Engineering, Assistant Professor.
- Dr. Michaela Teravest: Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Associate Professor.
Collaborators
- Dr. George Sundin: Dr. Sundin is a leading researcher in the feild of phage therapy aplication in agriculture. Through meetings with Dr. Sundin we aquired contacts in the field, general directions to take our project in, and a material transfer aggreement to aquire comercial agriphage from the OmniLytics company for our modifications.
Project support and advice
- Dr. Francis Trail: While still unsure what direction to take our project, Roxy met with Dr. Trail to discuss one of our possible projects. One of our ideas was to create a bioreactor to produce synthetic estradiol for transfeminine individuals, people going through menopause. Dr. Trail works with the genetic modification of microfungi, and informed us of the possible hurdles with the project, and that it would likely take more than six months. Due to the timescale of the iGEM project, this helped us decide our final project direction.
Fundraising help and advice
- Lyman Briggs College: Secured us project funding for our team members in the Lyman Briggs College. Thank you for supporting your students! We appreciate your donation.
Lab support
- Jen Kirk: Jen was our lab manager and set up our research space.
- Megan Gruenberg: Got us our initial materials for getting started.
Difficult technique support
- Katherine Ford Katie guided us at the start in bacterial conjugation methods.
- Dr. Jeff Gralnick: Through an email correspondance with our mentor Dr. Teravest, Dr. Gralnick shared with us his method for conjugating plasmids between bacterial species.
- Dr. Sundharraman Subramanian: Dr. Sundhar showed us the applications Phyre2 and Alphafold for predicting the folding pattern of proteins. He then taught us how to use UCSFChimera to visualize proteins and identify regions ideal for modification. During the next phase, Dr. Sundhar secured us access to the cryoEM facility so for imaging of our environmenal phages.
Project advisor support
- Lindsay Brown: Lindsay is a grad student working for Dr. Sundin who has worked previously with purifying and testing phage. She started meeting with us weekly to discuss methods, goals, and what advances need to be made in the field of phage therapy.
Wiki support
- Denisse Chacón Ramírez: Denisse was a team member of the Tec-Chihuahua team that reached out to provide answers to any questions we had in terms of website design, and code. We met with her over Zoom to discuss things.
Presentation coaching
Human Practices support
- Mark Forbush: Mark is the Outreach Specialist for the Michigan FFA advisor. We met with Mark to discuss the ways new technologies are accepted by first farmers, and later consumers.
- Kristen Poley: Kristen is the Research Manager for the Corn Marketing Program of Michigan; she advised us about the concerns of farmers and the issues they currently face. She also discussed the struggles in getting the public to accept GMO agriculture.
General support
The Team
- Anna Kim: Anna was instrumental in daily note keeping, and data interpretation. She made sure our schedules stayed on track, and no information was lost. Anna also took control of our iGEM social media to create an internet presence and to reach out to other teams for collaboration.
- Roksana Riddle: Roxy was in charge of website creation, and helped brainstorm project directions.
- Ram Sanath Kumar: Ram guided our work in the wetlab as he was the only member with previous experience on phages. Ram also made sure we had the background research available so that we all understood the science behind our goals and methods.
- James Suggitt: James spearheaded outreach setting up many of our meetings with professionals in the feild. He also took the lead on the computer modeling of our phage capsids. His most important contribution was teaching us the dangers of contamination.
- Jenna Thibideou: Jenna headed up securing funding for the team and designed our poster for MIDSURE.
Working in our own facility for the first time, our team included every member in each part of the project tackling goals with the mindset that many hands make light work, and we each wanted to gain experience in all parts of a project. That being said, here is what each member was in charge of.
Thank You
We also want to take time to acknowledge the mentors here at Michigan State University. They were an essential part of us getting our project done and motivating and challenging us to do more. We also want to extend the most heartfelt thanks to our friends and family for supporting us through this iGEM journey. We cannot wait to share how our experience is when we attend the Giant Jamboree!