Team:INSA-UPS France/Achievements

Croc'n Cholera
iGEM UPS-INSA Toulouse 2017

Team

• Members
• Supports
• Attributions
• Collaborations

Strategy

• Description
• Design
• Parts

Model

• Overview
• Simulation
• Analysis
• Interface

Realisations

• Overview
• Notebook
• Clonings
• Results
• Contribution
• Protocols
• Safety

Human Practices

• Overview
• Silver
• Gold
• Public Engagement
• Microbioworld

Application

• Applied Design
• Testimonies
• Entrepreneurship
• Device Conception

Bronze medal

#1: We successfully registered for the competition, had an awesome summer and proudly attended the Giant Jamboree!

#2: All the required competition deliverables were met in time for the due dates:

• We documented our project on the maximum pages possible on our wiki.
• We thanked all the people that helped us in our Attribution page.
• Our poster and prezi presentation were more than ready for the Giant Jamboree.
• We proved that we made responsible experiments thanks to our Safety Form.
• We successfully filled out 5 Judging Forms to compete for the corresponding awards.
• We documented 11 BioBricks on our wiki and on the Registry.
• We followed the DNA Submission Guidelines to submit our DNA samples.

#3: We created an Attribution page entirely designed to thank all the people that helped us throughout our adventure.

#4: We successfully characterised 5 existing BioBricks:

• BBa_J04450, an RFP coding device, in a new iGEM chassis: Vibrio harveyi. Characterisation was made thanks to Petri dish plating and microscopic fluorescence observation.
• BBa_K431009,the pGAP promoter, in the chassis Pichia pastoris, thanks to RTq-PCR experiments.
• BBa_K1800001, an Alpha-Factor Secretion Signal, in the chassis Pichia pastoris thanks to toxicity assays.
• BBa_K1072010, an Odr-10(diacetyl) receptor in the chassis P. pastoris, thanks to fluorescence essays in a microplate reader.
• BBa_K1072023, the pFUS1 Promoter, in the chassis P. pastoris, thanks to fluorescence essays in a microplate reader.

Silver medal

#1: Out of 19 Parts, we obtained 6 new BioBricks compatible with the Registry. We successfully validated 3 of them:

• BBa_K2278001, V. harveyi C8-CAI-1 (quorum sensing inducer) generator, with bioluminescence essays.
• BBa_K2278021, coding for the D-NY15 Antimicrobial peptide with an Alpha-Factor Secretion Signal. Our favorite Part was validated thanks to sequencing, RTq-PCR experiments and toxicity assays on Petri dishes.
• BBa_K2278011, pTet driven Diacetyl generator, validated thanks to NMR analysis.

#2: We are proud of all of the collaborations we made with teams around the world:

• For Purdue Team, we determined the Lactobacillus spp resistance at -20°C in a sucrose and milk mix.
• Thanks to Vienna Team, we obtained the Part pGAP-RFP in P. pastoris.
• We participated to the Postcard Project organized by Gröningen Team and in exchange received postcards from all around the world.
• We tested the maze tool coming from NAWI-Graz Team to help them improve it.
• Greece Team translated our survey on cholera and shared it in their country, helping us to gather more data.
• We participated to the European Meetup organized at TU Delft and to the French Meetup organized by Pasteur_Paris Team. In each of these meetups, we obtained helpful feedbacks for our project.
• We skyped with 5 teams around the world (Greece, Singapore, Purdue, Boston, Gröningen). Talking with teams from different backgrounds, tackling their observation on our project and trying to understand theirs was very enlightening.
• We filled out 19 surveys on various subjects.

#3: We carried out an ethical reflexion throughout all of our project, doing bibliographical research and meeting professionals and members of NGOs. Our major discussions and decisions are listed in our Human Practices Logbook.

Gold medal

#1: We performed an Integrated Human Practice reflexion on three levels to surpass the scientific achievements and use synthetic microbial consortium to real society profit. Upstream of the project we had many contacts with NGOs (Unicef and Doctors Without Borders) and industrials working with the impacted populations. Next, we gathered invaluable knowledge about our chosen microorganisms thanks to insights from scientists all over the world. Downstream of the project, we thought about an actual solution against cholera. We carefully analyze the lifecycle of our solution through the building of 7 ethical matrices and engaged in a concrete business plan which required us to meet industrials and startup leaders.

#2: The proposed synthetic microbial consortium is complex, with many biological entities interacting in a dynamic way. Modeling was thus vital to simulate its behavior, understand its properties, and ultimately support its design. We represented the different entities and processes using a standard graphical notation (SBGN). Following an iterative approach, this model was feed with parameters gathered from the literature and exploited to verify ab initio the feasibility of the project. In turn, it helped us to design experiments that we performed to refine some key parameters. Different mathematical tools were used, including Ordinary Differential Equation and Metabolic Control Analysis, to evaluate the robustness of our consortium, identify key parameters and driving rational optimizations. Finally, a user-friendly interface was developed for non-specialists..