Team:RHIT/Collaborations

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patekm@rose-hulman.edu
5500 Wabash Ave.
Terre Haute, IN 47803

Click on the creative collaboration images below to learn more!

Collaboration with Michigan State University - MI, USA

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.

Skype Calls with Other Teams

We met with the University of Michigan iGEM team on video call to talk with them about their project. They were 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 followed up with an email with resources we used for our model and a presentation breaking down simple generic examples of genetics and enzyme kinetics.

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.

Fun and Creative Collaborations

Midwestern Meetup:

On June 30th, two members of our team traveled to Michigan State University for the Midwestern iGEM Meetup. We spent the morning on a tour of the university’s botanical gardens learning about a range of plants and the history behind the gardens. After lunch, each team gave a short presentation and answered questions about their project. Then, we went on a tour of the Michigan State University iGEM team’s lab and facilities. Through this meetup, we made connections with other teams and began our collaboration with the Michigan State team.

Trading Cards:

Every iGEM project is changing the world. We want to recognize the SUPER abilities of all the iGEM teams by creating a league of superheroes made up of superheroes designed by each team based on their project. All superheroes will be placed on a trading card, and each team will receive trading cards from all the teams that participated. We are gathering information on the name of the team, name of the superhero, the team’s contact info, the “home base” for the superhero, the superhero’s mission, and any special powers that the Superhero has.

Postcard:

Our team participated in a creative collaboration opportunity with the Düsseldorf iGEM team at Heinrich-Heine University in Germany. The goal was to bring synthetic biology closer to the public by designing a postcard showing an image related to synthetic biology on the front and a small informational text on the back. We will get to exchange our postcard with other participating teams so we can collect postcards from all over the world. We can also share the postcards with people in our community to raise awareness and understanding of synthetic biology.

Surveys:

Our team participated in a survey through the UNebraska-Lincoln team, located in Nebraska in the United States of America. Their survey tested our knowledge on different invasive species and native species, as their team is working on creating an effective bait for the Emerald Ash Borer Beetle, an invasive species to North America.

Our team also participated in a survey through the TecCEM iGEM team, located at Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education in the Campus Mexico State (Mexico City). They were organizing a survey to gather information about different treatments of burns around the world. They are looking to develop a new treatment for burned people that will reduce the time of hospitalization and help skin regeneration.