UNL 2018 Improving Early Detection of The Emerald Ash Borer

Collaborations

Our team understands that iGEM is supposed to be a fun experience to have. That is why we participated in a light-hearted collaboration while also hosting our own. Another collaborative activity we did was ask other iGEMers to take a nine question survey about invasive species and GMOs.

RHIT Collab

The RHIT Team wanted to recognize all the SUPER things iGEM teams are doing so they put out a call to assemble a league of iGEM superheroes. We created our own superhero and his trusty sidekick to represent our project. The RHIT Team designed trading cards for all the superheroes. The cards are super rare but there is a chance to grab a copy or two from us at the Giant Jamboree!

UNebraska-Lincoln’s Worst Gel Contest

Our team was inspired to create a contest for the worst gel electrophoresis after having one of ours unfortunately not turn out the best… We wanted to find the worst gel from this iGEM year and believe us when we tell you that we found it! We will start with our honorable mentions and work our way to 1st place.

Honorable Mentions:

We feel UPF CRG Barcelona’s pain. After obtaining their gene construct, several clonings were attempted. The team performed colony PCR to get amplified product that was promising. But alas, the electrophoresis was blank following miniprep and digestion. They've said this happened at least four times.

Barcelona

NEU_China_A was happy to share their blunder with us. In this gel, they were trying to extract the total RNA from a target plant. The resulting “bands” look like tiny cotton balls! Their team says they still joke about it in their lab.

Neu-China

3rd Place:

Tec CEM is a team we have gotten along with for multiple years. Their submission is as fun to look at as they are as fun to talk to. They said they were trying to take measurements of RFP from a different strain of E. coli. Obviously, this gel put a damper on such things. Their team attributed this mishap to degradation and rookie sample loading.

Tec Chem

2nd Place:

One of TJU_China’s gels really messed with our eyes. Their team leader said he tried to tweak a protocol to get better product outcome. He upped the amount of plasmid and he upped the amount of restriction enzyme (4 µL). As you can see, the resulting gel has a super blurry band. If you stare at it long enough, it looks like it is vibrating!

TJU-China

Winner Winner, Chicken Dinner:

Looking at Stony Brook’s gel will definitely make most people say “WUT”. This was their team’s first time using Diamond Dye, since they grew wary of ethidium bromide (Jarek understands). They left their gel running for an hour, but their gel fell apart before they could even soak it in the new Diamond Dye. Fighting through the tears, they went ahead and soaked it anyway. When they went to view it on the UV imager, the gel shattered again! Our heart goes out to Stony Brook for staying strong through tough lab times.

Stony Brook

UNebraska-Lincoln’s Survey

Who doesn’t like an old-fashioned survey? We were able to get 43 responses from other iGEM teams. The results gave our team an idea on how the current iGEM community feels about invasive species and GMOs. The graphs can be fun to look at, however no significant conclusion can be made from this small and diverse sample size. We still encourage you to interpret some of the data for yourselves!

Table of Survey Respondents

Main Collaborations

Missouri Rolla

Early in the summer, we were happy to learn another iGEM team was working to stop the spread of Emerald Ash Borers. We were fortunate enough to eat with Ryan Baumann, Rolla’s lab daddy, at Noodles and Company in Lincoln. At Noodles, we had fun getting to know each other and talking about our projects and possible collaborations. We had lots of ideas such as hosting a seminar or educational video together (which is still a future possibility). We ended up deciding to create an informational brochure together that we will hand out at the Giant Jamboree. Our goal is to spread awareness, to both foreign and domestic teams, about the EAB and its detrimental impact on North America.

One thing our team would have really liked to have done was assist Rolla in characterizing their BioBricks, however both of our projects were in their early stages of development. We hope to continue both projects and have wet lab collaborations with Rolla next year.

UIUC Illinois

Last year, our team was nominated for the Safety Commendations for our work with a concept we call “Safety Cases”. Safety Cases is a proactive technique that use an organized combination of structural units to help build arguments that prove the root goal of a project is safe. This year we tried to further develop Safety Cases by launching a website to help other iGEM teams build their own Safety Cases. Promotion of our online tool was difficult since it was released late in the iGEM season. However, we were able to get our friends from UIUC Illinois to try out the website. They created their own general Safety Case and gave us helpful feedback. You can read more about it on our Safety page.

Team:UNebraska-Lincoln/Collaborations