Attributions

The Team

The iGEM USP-BRAZIL team is composed for engaged undergraduate and graduate students from different areas of science. In our university there are few ways of learning about synthetic biology, in general students get to know about it from other students or by yourself, so anyone who wants be part of the team is welcome to join, to learn and make a whole project happen! In this way, the students are constantly in touch with different knowledges from different members and they are encouraged to learn and to do different tasks during the development of the project. So every member had the freedom to work in differents areas of BioTROJAN, but of course each member was more active in certain functions which are show below:

The beginning of BioTROJAN was in February, in a meeting run by participants of the iGEM 2016 and with the presence of new students interested in knowing the competition. On following meetings the brainstorming came up with the brute idea of the project and after it the BioTROJAN was evolving. Around May we started the experiments in the laboratory, when the development of other areas like human practices, funding and market had already been initiated.

Beyond the students, BioTROJAN was only possible with the support of PI professors, the sponsors, researchers and people that gave us support, confidence and motivation.

Principal investigators (PIs)

The team really appreciate all the confidence and support that our PIs gave to us. Most of the experiment were conducted in our PIs' laboratories, using their equipment and some reagent needed. Thank you Farah and Rocha:

Shaker Chuck Farah
He received his PhD in Biochemistry from Universidade de São Paulo (1994) where he is now a Full Professor in the Department of Biochemistry. His research interests focus on understanding the structural basis of important biological and behavioral processes in bacteria using the phytopathogen Xanthomonas citri as a model. (Source: Lattes Curriculum)

Rafael Silva Rocha
He received his PhD in Molecular Biology from Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (Madrid, 2011). Since 2015 works as Assistant Professor at the Cell and Molecular Biology department at FMRP-US, working on Systems and Synthetic Biology, Computational Biology and Bioinformatics. (Source: Lattes Curriculum)

Advisor and Instructor

This year we had in our team two very experienced guys. Cauã, our Advisor, has already participated of previous iGEMs and has been accumulated experience on the event. William , our instructor, is a post-doc at the professor Shaker Chuck Farah’s laboratory and he has a thorough knowledge of microbiology and molecular biology. We are grateful for all the theoretical and experimental support that both have shared with us in the laboratory.

Crowdfunding

A stimulant support came via crowdfunding on-line on kickante.com.br, individual people believed in the idea of ​​the project and trusted the team to do it. We are grateful to for the support, a list with each name of them is show below:

Special thanks

In our journey, we needed and effectively we had support from many researchers and other professionals, either in a conceptual way, helping in the correct development of BioTROJAN (see the Human Practices Integrated section) and our wiki or in a structural way, with reagents, machines and equipment, besides allowing us to use their laboratories for some experiments (see the Proof of Concept section). The team thanks you all of them:

• Prof. Margareth de Lara Capurro Guimarães, Ph.D, Institute of Biomedical Sciences, University of São Paulo
• Prof. Gerhard Wunderlich, Ph.D, Institute of Biomedical Sciences, University of São Paulo
• Prof. Welington Luiz De Araújo, Ph.D, Institute of Biomedical Sciences, University of São Paulo
• Prof. Marco Antônio Stephano, Ph.D, Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of São Paulo
• Julio
• Edgar
• Tia da Natalia
• Helena Araújo, Ph.D and Rafaella Sayuri Ioshino

Sponsors

The development of scientific initiatives in Brazil still remains a big challenge to the researchers, especially when it comes to students. Getting financial support is one of the most difficult step to be overcome, so facing a scenario like that the iGEM USP-BRAZIL team is grateful to all sponsors and supporters for the financial and structural support that made possible the BioTROJAN. We were able to count on the financial support of our university (USP), through its pro-rectors and institutes, and with the pharmaceutical company Cristália. Structural support with softwares from SnapGene and MatLab and finally, Invitrogen and IDT supported us with some reagents and DNA synthesis.