Prof.dr.ir. Luc Brunsveld, prof.dr. Maarten Merkx and dr.ir. Tom de Greef helped us with brainstorming, by asking the right questions at the right moment and by advising us on problem solving.
Lab Support
Lenne Lemmens MSc is a PhD student at our university in the Chemical Biology group of Luc Brunsveld. Her research involves heterodimerization the 14-3-3 scaffold protein following two directions: orthogonal and human heterodimerization. For the application in synthetic signalling systems and a better understanding of the human heterodimerization respectfully.
During the whole project she has been a big help in the lab. She has also had an advisory role in both planning and troubleshooting throughout the project.
Simone Wouters MSc is a PhD candidate in the Protein Engineering research group of prof. dr. Maarten Merkx. Her research focuses on the controlled activation of antibodies for therapeutic antibodies such as Cetuximab. She has been helpful in the lab, open for questions and in Lenne Lemmens' absence she was available to provide advice where needed.
Ir. Rens de Vries is a PhD candidate under the supervision of prof. dr. ir. Luc Brunsveld. In his research, he studies heterodimerization of nuclear receptors and explores their potential as a drug target for Parkinson’s disease. Especially in the final stages of our project he has been helpful with troubleshooting and further steps for the protein purification.
In the perspective of this project and any project going on in our biolab the experience from these people mentioned and other people working in the lab can not be missed.
Safety
Dr. Moniek de Liefde-van Beest is the biosafety officer at our university, informed us about GMO regulations and checked our Safety Forms before submitting them.
Ing. Peggy de Graaf-Heuvelmans gave us a lab tour and granted us lab access.
Financial Support
Leon Luwijs and Boukje van’t Hoff managed our bank account and made sure we received all the money from our sponsors.
Human practices
Cécile van der Vlugt (RIVM) helped us with our assignment ‘Think Before Doing’ by having discussion sessions with us about how to fill in this assignment.
Zoë Robaey helped us with our application scenario, by having brainstorm sessions via Skype and via the meeting at SYNENERGENE.
Pim de Vink is a PhD student at our university in the group of dr. Lech Milroy and prof. Luc Brunsveld working on the interface between supramolecular chemistry and chemical biology. He helped us with our application scenario by brainstorming about MMPs.
We also talked to stakeholders for our Human Practices, more information about these talks can be found here.
Modeling
The first contact for modeling was with René Verhoef BSc, who was the modeling captain of TU Eindhoven 2016 and they got nominated for the best model. He gave us some code that wasn’t useful for them, and later on, it appeared that it also wasn’t useful for us.
Dr.ir. Tom de Greef is one of our advisors and sent us many papers that described the modeling of similar systems. He was the one that advised us to use NFsim and gave us the contact information of Tim Paffen MsC, a PhD student who has used NFsim himself and will receive his degree while we are in Boston.
Furthermore, we were very glad with the feedback we received from Dr. ir. Bart Markvoort about our 2D simulation and how he helped us to run NFsim on windows. Bart Markvoort also suggested to investigate more about the Gillespie algorithm (this was before we knew about NFsim) and therefore we contacted Dr. ir. Huub ten Eikelder, and he told us that Gillespie wasn’t the way to go.
Collaborations
With iGEM team Potsdam we had a nice collaboration including a model, the WIKI and Human Practices. We thank them for their teamwork with us!
We thank iGEM Cologne-Duesseldorf to set up the postcard exchange. It was really nice to see what every team was working on in their project depicted on a postcard.
The iGEM Waterloo team had a questionnaire about lab costs and lab materials. They had a plan for 3D printing lab materials which also could be customized for the different iGEM teams.
The iGEM UNebraska-Lincoln had a questionnaire about methane production in cattle.
WIKI and animations
We built the WIKI and animated the movies on the WIKI ourselves.
