Sponsorship

We are very grateful to all of our sponsors. Without them, we would not have had the opportunity, or the means, to take part in the iGEM competition.

Departments

iGEM is a multidisciplinary endeavour and members of our team study a wide range of subjects. The Biochemistry Department has contributed towards the cost for the five biochemistry students on our team, as well as providing lab space and equipment for us to use over the summer. We are also grateful to the Engineering Sciences, Zoology, Chemistry and Medical Sciences departments for their financial support.

Colleges

Our team members are all based at different colleges. We are very thankful to our colleges for providing us with accommodation over the summer as well as awarding a number of travel grants, that have allowed us to travel to Boston for the iGEM jamboree. So, we would like to acknowledge the following colleges for their support:

• Balliol College
• Lady Margaret Hall
• Magdalen College
• Oriel College
• St Anne’s College
• St Catherine’s College
• St Hilda’s College
• St Hugh’s College
• University College

Equipment and software

Biochemistry experiments require a large amount of equipment and resources. We really appreciate all the help we have received with the provision equipment and software and instruction on its use.

Biochemistry Department: The Biochemistry Department have been particularly generous in giving us permission to use a lot of their equipment, for example, thermocyclers, plate readers and gel visualisation equipment. They have also provided us with chemicals, glassware and other crucial materials.

Snapgene: This was an incredibly important piece of software for us to use when we were designing plasmids and our parts. Snapgene were very generous and gave us 12 licenses which allowed us to operate the software for free.

Eppendorf: Eppendorf very kindly gifted us personalised P10, P100 and P1000 pipettes for us to use over the course of our project.

Integrated DNA Technologies: Our project required the creation of tailored DNA gBlocks and primers. IDT were extremely kind in synthesising all the DNA we required for our project for free.

New England BioLabs: New England BioLabs were very helpful in providing us with enzymes, DNA ladders and dyes, which were exceptionally important to our experiments.

Source Bioscience: Source Bioscience generously supplied us with 75 free E-vouchers for DNA sequencing. This was vital to the success of our project as it allowed us to determine if we had successfully inserted our parts into the shipping vector.

BMG Labtech: BMG Labtech gave us supplied us with plates which we were able to use for our fluorescence and absorbance assays.

Financial sponsors

Taking part in iGEM incurs a lot of costs- equipment, lab space and chemicals as well as travel and accommodation over the summer and for the jamboree. We are extremely grateful to the British Bioscience Research Council (BBSRC) and the Wellcome Trust for their generous financial support.