Michigan State University is working on showing the effect of ACC deaminase engineered endophytes on plant growth in drought and high salinity conditions. We worked with the team to build a kinetics and genetics model that described their system. We were able to make simulations in MATLAB that returned graphical data on how their system acted over time.

Click here to go to their modeling page and see the work we did for their team.

We met with the University of Michigan iGEM team on video call to talk with them about their project. They are working with a Cas9 system and had questions about how it could be modeled. We were able to give them initial steps on approaching the problem and explained mass-action kinetics to them. After the meeting, we have kept in contact emailing resources we used for our model, a self-made presentation breaking down simple genetics and enzyme kinetics generic examples, and offering advice on overall model development. In return, they reviewed our wiki and gave us some pointers on the aesthetics and organization of the material.

We skyped with the Yale iGEM team to talk about our projects. Both of our teams are making cells that secrete the enzymes PETase and MHETase to break down PET plastic. They have had more success in the lab than we have, so we were able to ask some questions about how they got their plasmid working. They also suggested we try Gibson Assembly and ligation independent cloning for our plasmid. Additionally, they told us they were finding more success with the yebF secretion tag than some of the others they had tried, like our pelB secretion tag. We were able to answer some questions for them about the modeling we had done, our outreach plans, and other work on our wiki.