Attributions

iGEM Leiden 2018 would like to acknowledge the invaluable contributions of all those who have helped to advance our project over the past months. Without their support it would not have been possible to successfully perform our experiments in the laboratory and promote or fundraise our project. Not only did they help in making this iGEM project possible, they have also contributed to making this experience incredibly fun! This page is dedicated to all these wonderful people and organisations.

Our special thanks goes to:

Principle Investigators

• Dennis Claessen
• Han de Winde

Advisors

• Charlotte van de Velde
• Sjoerd Seekles
• Vincent de Bakker

General Support

• Laura van Achteren
• For her help in creating the invoices for our sponsors
• Hestia Tamboer & Sandra Jansen
• For their tremendous dedication and help in booking our flights to Boston
• Kick Moors
• For his guidance in the team role formation process
• Anne Maren Kruse
• For her efforts in securing working space and funding at Leiden University
• Marc Fluttert
• For sharing his knowledge about safely working with GMOs with our team members
• Gerda Lamers
• For allowing us to use the DinoLite ocular for making microscopy images and for helping us with the microscopy experiments
• Harald van Mil
• For kindly providing our programming manager with office space

Experimental Support

• Kees Koops
• For his help in setting up our lab space and his readiness to help us in all our (minor) crises
• Lizah van der Aart
• For her invaluable advice on the overlay technique as well as her efforts in 3D printing keychains for our crowdfunding campaign
• Ellen de Waal & Ilja Bekker
• For their help with ordering our lab materials from various suppliers
• Thomas Bakkum
• For generously allowing us to use the flow cytometer of his department
• Paul van Heusden
• For his patient explanation of the flow cytometer
• Gerben Voshol
• For his advice on fixating bacteria for flow cytometry analysis
• iGEM Groningen 2018
• For providing us with the pNZ8040 and pMK4 plasmids for our bacillus subtilis subproject
• iGEM Delft 2018
• For providing us with the transformed E.coli DH5α for the InterLab

Fundraising

• Annette Heijn
• For supporting us before and during our crowdfunding campaign, for her indispensable advice and her continuous assistance
• Milou van Leeuwen
• For her dedication in making our crowdfunding video absolutely perfect
• Corine Hendriks
• For her article about our project and crowdfunding campaign on the university website
• Wendy Persson
• For her general assistance during the crowdfunding campaign and for troubleshooting when required
• Roy Zitman (PLNT)
• For providing us with contacts within Leiden and leads on where to secure funding for our project
• The Science Meets Business Foundation, in specific:
  Max Green, Max van 't Hof, Vincent van der Wel and Coen Breedveld
• For providing the team with general advise regarding fundraising, project management and crowdfunding

Societal Outreach

• Danny Rozen
• For allowing us to present our project at This Weeks Discovery, a university platform where scientists gather to present their current research
• Federico Muffatto
• For providing us with the M. roseus and M. luteus strains to use for bioart in our societal outreach
• Margot Duesmann
• For allowing us to organise a workshop during Night at the Museums in Leiden
• Frédérique de Paus
• For coordinating our team’s involvement in Dutch festival Werfpop
• Maureen Land
• For helping us with spreading the word of our Escape Room during Night of Discoveries
• Wytse Bakker and the Da Vinci College Kagerstraat High School
• For arranging our workshop Escape the Resistance to be held at the high school
• Rowen de Jong
• For allowing us to present our workshop at the IFSMA public health workgroup and for accepting our workshop for further promotion by the IFSMA

Human Practices

• Coen van Hasselt
• For his feedback on our project and visions on product design
• Gilles van Wezel
• For his insights on antibiotic research and feedback on our screening system
• Kees van den Hondel
• For his incredibly detailed and comprehensive feedback on our detection system
• Giel Hendriks
• For his insights into stress detection start-ups and feedback on our project
• Frits Fallaux
• For his feedback on our entrepreneurship plans
• Willem Heijblom
• For his insights into his experiences with a resistant bacterial infection
• Jeroen van Gorkom
• For teaching us about the current situation of resistant-tuberculosis in the Netherlands and the world
• Kees de Joncheere
• For sharing with us his tremendous experience with antibiotic resistance research, fundraising and outreach
• Cecile van der Vlugt & Mirjam Schaap
• For helping us with the biosafety and biosecurity considerations of our project
• Zoë Robaey
• For helping us consider the ethical sides of our project
• Timo Koopmans
• For sharing his visions on product design
• Peter Nibbering
• For his insights into current antibiotic discovery research, feedback on our project and for providing us with his antimicrobial peptide for testing
• Robert Zwijnenberg
• For sharing his opinions on connecting art and science
• Marcel de Kort & Maria Le Grand
• For sharing with us the stance of the Dutch ministry of Healthcare and European Union regarding antibiotic resistance and for providing information regarding antibiotic resistance worldwide

Team Contributions

This project was designed, organised and executed by members of our team. The initial idea for our project was the result of an internship completed by our Science manager Marjolein Crooijmans under our PI Dennis Claessen. Although everyone had their own role to play within the team, we helped each other in all project aspects. We credit this willingness to help each other as the most important factor in our successes.

Experimental Work

In our lab we benefited from a very free working atmosphere, and even though people were assigned to a specific subproject we all pitched in and helped each other where needed.

Before our project started, Marjolein worked on isolating our first 30 stress promoters and coupling them to GFP constructs to enable testing.

• Charlotte de Ceuninck van Capelle and Germaine Aalderink
• Charlotte and Germaine were responsible for the selection of the bacillus subtilis promoters as well as transforming bacillus with a chromoprotein.
• Daphne van den Homberg and Mees Fox
• Daphne created all our new promoter constructs using PCR. As a team, Daphne and Mees focussed on coupling these new promoters to GFP.
• Maaike de Jong and Lotte Weel
• Maaike and Lotte occupied themselves with the construction of our composite plasmid.
• Tim de Jong and Carli Koster
• Tim and Carli were responsible for the validation of our system using fluorescence-activated cell sorting.
• Jazzy de Waard and Marijke Grundeken
• As antibiotics are traditionally discovered with the overlay techniques using streptomyces and E.coli, Jazzy and Marijke learned to perform this technique as well as disk diffusion.
• Laurens ter Haar and Marjolein Crooijmans
• Laurens and Marjolein were concerned with enhancing our system so we could obtain a clear read-out. To this end they used T7.

Furthermore, we want to thank exchange student Paula Regal Alonso for creating our constitutively expressed chromoprotein strains.

In addition we would like thank Julia Mullink, Nienke van Noort, Mike Johnson en Jo-Anne Verschoor for their contribution in the demonstration of our system.

Fundraising and Finances

Tim de Jong and Jazzy de Waard functioned as our Fundraising team and were mainly responsible for approaching sponsors and managing our crowdfunding campaign. Our treasurer Maaike de Jong safeguarded our finances and managed our budget with occasional help from Charlotte de Ceuninck van Capelle.

Design

Our secretary and design manager Daphne van den Homberg designed all of our promotion materials, including flyers, banners, postcards et cetera with help from Laurens ter Haar and Chiel van Amstel.

Collaborations

Carli Koster was responsible for the countless collaborations that we did with teams from all around the world, such as the postcards from team Düsseldorf, the Instagram Challenge for July and Moves Like iGEM amongst others. Charlotte de Ceuninck van Capelle managed the collaboration between Leiden and Rotterdam HR as well as the Dutch Meet-Up and BBQ.

Programming and Statistics

All of our wiki programming and statistics were performed by Chiel van Amstel.

Outreach and Social Media

Our PR team, Carli Koster and Marijke Grundeken, managed all of our social media accounts and our monthly newsletter, while Mees Fox arranged for us to be present at local events to give workshops and talks about our project.

InterLab

Charlotte de Ceuninck van Capelle arranged for iGEM Leiden to be able to use the transformed InterLab strains from team Delft. All InterLab experiments were performed by Chiel van Amstel and Jazzy de Waard.

Lab Safety

Naturally, all of our team members took lab safety extremely seriously. However, Germaine Aalderink was responsible for arranging the GMO course everyone needed to complete in order to work in the ML-1 lab and for completing our safety form.

Presentations

Laurens ter Haar presented our project at events like This Week’s Discovery and the Science Meets Business Cafe.

Wiki

As our programming manager Chiel designed and programmed the entire wiki. All team members contributed to writing the wiki but the final content was managed by Laurens ter Haar.