Attributions

Our team is proud to state that we conceived the idea for SMORE and subsequently designed and carried out all experiments ourselves. We also developed our model, fluidic device, and human practices section independently. That said, there are many advisors who we would like to thank for helping to provide continuous advice and support, because, without them, we would not have been able to have achieve our goals.

Prof. Chris French – Gave feedback on all parts of project, in particular lab work, experimental design, and modelling. Also gave us lab space once we could no longer use a teaching lab during the semester.

Dr. Louise Horsfall – Helped facilitate discussions within the team, particularly regarding Human Practices and gave our team more information to improve experimental design and strategy. Also provided us invaluable advice on preparing for the presentation.

Dr. Heather Barker – Lab supervisor who was always there to train us to use lab equipment and help troubleshoot when things went wrong.

Holly Robertson-Dick – Gave feedback on human practices and our ideas of presenting the project.

Miguel Cueva – Always willing to lend the team a helping hand, double-checking primers are correct and giving ideas to troubleshoot things that went wrong in the lab.

Prof. Susan Rosser – Helped the team by allowing her lab to share various materials and plasmids that would be incorporated into the project, including Serine integrases.

Prof. Peter Swain – Assisted the team by meeting with members involved in modelling and allowing whole lab to give feedback to current modelling project.

Dr. Andrew Bunting – Gave team access to materials to build the fluidic device and training on how to use them.

Dr. Patrick Cai – Allowed members of his lab to share plasmids containing recombinase parts that would form the backbone of our toolkit.

Dr. Jane Calvert – Helped the team in several meetings where she gave feedback on our approach to human practices and how likely our team was to achieve the various medal criteria.

Dr. Wei Liu – Personally assisted the team in obtaining Tyrosine recombinases and also gave feedback regarding design of our constructs that were targeted by recombinases.

Dr. Filippo Menolascina – Helped starting from day one with design and implementation of the microfluidic device.

Dr. Christine Merrick – Gave advice to the team about the best strategy for chromosomal integration and helped the team by providing plasmids that would allow for chromosomal integration.

Sebastian Jaramillo-Riveri – Supported the modelling efforts of the team by constructively criticising the then-current model developed by the team and giving advice on how to incorporate the modelling fully into the project in a way that would be exciting to researchers.

Chris Mellingwood – Assisted the team during a very productive meeting regarding human practices, where we got a lot of feedback on how our plan for human practices could integrate into the project.

French lab members: Dr. Dariusz Abramczyk, Marcos Valenzuela Ortega, Paulina Kanigowska, Felipe A. Millacura, and Andreas Andreou – Helped the team during September to October, taught the team on using the equipments in the French lab, and helped troubleshooting and provided feedback for the wet lab. Also kindly provided us with reagents and enzymes for cloning.

Team member attributions

Zsoka – Zsoka worked extensively in the wet and dry lab. She was responsible for designing most of our primers, oligos, and assembly methods. Furthermore, she conceived of various experimental plans and techniques that the team implemented. Also contributed significantly to work in wet lab, particularly the verification of recombinase target sites and recombinases.

Teri – In the dry lab Teri helped with modelling, design of the overall project and experimental procedures, and also contributed by designing some ordered DNA. Furthermore, Teri helped the team work and troubleshoot in the wet lab.

Ted – Ted was one of our wet lab experts. He made sure everything stayed organised within the lab, both the materials required and the work schedule of each team member. Of course, he further contributed by performing hundreds of experiments himself.

Jack – In the dry lab Jack helped the team work on human practices. He also helped brainstorm ideas for the project and catalogued parts. Jack also contributed to wet lab work, often focusing on the randomiser construct.

Helena – Helena worked in both the wet lab for biology and the clean room where she and Joe built the microfluidic device. She also helped design this device. Outside of the labs, she contributed to the teams research for human practices.

Nuoya – Nuoya was the team’s human practices expert, shouldering most of data collection responsibility as well as analysing all of the data and drawing conclusions. She also helped the team in the biology wet lab, helping clone our constructs and transform and screen our cells.

Pepe – Pepe worked extensively in the wet lab. He was involved with effectively all biological experiments, from creating the recombinase target sites to purifying protein to aid with modelling. Furthermore, he helped raise funding for the team and contributed to our public outreach.

Joe – Joe was involved in nearly every aspect of the project to some capacity. He helped design and build the microfluidic device and also helped design our scoring system and analyses of for human practices. Furthermore, he helped design the wiki and all material released on behalf of the team.

Cynthia – Cynthia was crucial to the success of the modelling of the project, developing the software that helped the model be visualised and applied to other research contexts. She also, of course, helped develop the model itself. Beyond this, Cynthia helped develop certain aspects of the wiki.

Mihai – Mihai helped the team develop the oligo designer software to make it easier for other scientists to design constructs containing recombinase target sites. He was also instrumental in creating the wiki.