Here, we present the achievements of each team member, and thank all other people that have helped us with our project. All work presented in the Wiki was performed by iGEM Montpellier 2022 students, unless stated otherwise.
iGEM Montpellier 2022 calendar:
For the brainstorming and the lab experiments, we were hosted by the Centre de Biologie Structurale (CBS) (CNRS UMR 5048 - UM - INSERM U 1054). We are very thankful to the institute for welcoming us over the whole summer and for providing a great work space, lab experiments advice, basic supplies and instruments.
Meet our team
The iGEM project was introduced to the majority of us in February. Luca Ciandrini, one of our PI is responsible for the qbio master’s degree on which the majority of us belong to. He presented the competition to us and we were enthusiastic to participate in it. After several personal reflections, 5 of us decided to meet the challenge. In March, we started brainstorming on potential project ideas. Shell’lock eventually emerged at the end of this process as the fusion of different propositions.
Being part of the iGEM Montpellier team rhymes with:
- Multitask: Because we are a small team, all of us are working on different domains of the competition.
- Multidisciplinarity: As we attempt to merge different domains (from molecular biology to bioinformatics, from biochemistry to modelling) to tackle a practical problem.
- Multi Language: Because we are not all francophones, English is our spoken language but if we gather all the team, we are also able to speak French, Arabic and South-Korean.
The students
Along the entire project, we decided to split the tasks and to focus ourselves on 2 or 3 different domains. However, as we are only 5 we are all able to discuss the entire project.
He had to use his biochemical background to realize the experiments all along the summer. Ali participated in all steps of the experiments with Christelle and Hye-Rin. Ali was also in charge of the human practices and communication part. Responsible for the Instagram and Facebook accounts he did publications to explain our project.
She was responsible for the lab experiments during the project. Christelle realized, with advisors, the Cas13a purification and she was in charge of modifying the protocol purification. Christelle realized all the experiments we did, with Ali and Hye-Rin. She also participated in the Wiki page by writing the results page.
She was in charge of our entrepreneurship plan, she conducted several business analyses to realize the best business plan. In addition to dimensioning the project, she took care of the human practices and communication part with Ali. She also wrote several pages of the Wiki and learned how to code to be able to do some modification on the website. With Nessim, Emilie was in charge of the global project management.
She was in charge of the bioinformatic part with Nessim. Hye-Rin participated in the design of the guide RNAs. Moreover, she did all the ordering needed for the experiments. In addition, Hye-Rin did laboratory experiments with Christelle and Ali. She actively participated in the redaction of the protocoles.
The main “job” of Nessim was the modeling part. He used his strong coding skills to develop from scratch a kinetic model for the Cas13a enzyme. Moreover, he developed a python script to analyze the data. Nessim also participated in the bioinformatic part by developing a blast pipeline to identify the best guide RNAs. He wrote pages on the Wiki especially on his model and learned how to code HTML to be able to modify the wiki. He was also in charge, with Emilie, of global project management.
The work we have done would not have been possible without our principal instructors, advisors and other researchers, engineers, PhD…
Principal Instructors
We would like to thank all our principal instructions for the help they provided to us.
He is the team leader of the synthetic biology team the “Centre de Biologie Structurale” of Montpellier. Him and his team hosted us at their bench and helped us realize experiments with special instruments. By being present during the brainstorming sessions, he helped us to choose the easiest project to set up on the field.
He is the team leader of the “Synthetic, Functionnal and Evolutionary Genomics” at the “Centre de Biochimie Structurale” of Montpellier. By working with molecular biology and RNA, Guillaume helped us to correctly realize some experiments that require an expert like him.
Lecturer at the University of Montpellier and team member of “Multi-Scale Molecular Modeling”, Luca drove the team creation by presenting the iGEM competition to his master students. He followed all our meetings and helped us on the modeling part of the project.
Diego is a researcher in the Synthetic biology team at the “Centre de Biochimie Structurale” of Montpellier. He followed all our meetings and had a precious help in the fundraising and the team motivation. He also helped us to think and evolve our project through the weeks.
Advisors
Elsa helped us with the experimental part of the project and always had good advice to produce the best for the iGEM competition.
With his experience in the iGEM competition, Jocelyn helped us to orient our project and was very helpful with the Wiki production.
Specialists
Julien was our molecular biology specialist: he helped us for the DNA sequence design and for different lab experiments.
Angelique was key for the success of protein purification.
Pauline was always present to help us in any domain of the project. She especially helped with the ordering processes of lab products.
Researcher at the IFREMER in marine ecology and modelization, Romain is part of the SMBT (Syndicat Mixte du Bassin de Thau). He brought us knowledge about the Thau lagoon and oyster farming. He also guided us to develop a deployable in the field project and invited us to meetings called “Recherches et Conchyliculture”.
Caroline is researcher at the IHPE (Interaction Hôtes-Pathogènes-Environnements), with Marie-Agnès Travers, she was a key to choose our pathogenic target.
Researcher at the IHPE, Marie-Agnès is specialist of the vibrio aestuarianus bacteria and she helped us in the design of the lab experiments.
Oyster farmer at Bouzigues, Yannick Desplats welcomed us at his farm all day. We sailed around his oyster tables. This patient person made us discover his work with great enthusiasm. Yannick has kindly agreed to be filmed for our promotional video. In addition, through a long exchange it allowed us to better understand his profession, the feelings of oyster farmers towards the research carried out on the pond of Thau. His advice was invaluable to us in advancing our project and allowed us to focus on communication with oyster farmers.
Beyond the people who helped us, we want to thank the companies or institutions that provided the lab material to us.
IDT’s and Twist’s sponsorships of iGEM allowed us to obtain free oligonucleotides, double-stranded DNA and fluorescent probes.
We won 2500$ of Promega products and we ordered different kits through this company.
We ordered free kits through Promega France.
To give a brand image to our project, we decided to call some artists.
Valentin Caissial. He is the one who made the logo. He listened to us to return what we wanted.
Peter Voyvodic and Gabriel and Gabriel Alejandro Ávila Quintana. They accompanied us on our adventure in Bouzigues to film the promotion video and came to the laboratory to finish this work.
Student in software engineering, Tatiana Jamous did a great work to produce an attractive wiki and she knows how to be a nice sister.
Funding
We would like to thank all of our sponsors, who have made our project possible.