Attributions

An iGEM project like this could not be completed, had it not been for the collective efforts of a great number of people. In this part of the wiki, we name the people who have contributed to our project, and we describe what they have contributed with.

The team

Our team has had many different tasks to complete during our project. To get an easy overview of contributions to the project of the different team members, the following table has been created.

Part of project	AMH	AFT	CAL	CMP	DV	FBF	ID	KK	LMA	MEL	PHS
BioBrick Tutorial planning	x		x	x				x		x
InterLab study		x									x
BioBrick design			x	x		x		x			x
BioBrick assembly		x	x	x		x		x			x
Wiki framework	x								x
Wiki content		x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x
Funding application				x		x			x
Modelling											x
Team building				x	x	x		x			x
Integrated human practices										x	x
Prototype							x		x
Substrate screening		x	x								x
AMC experiments	x	x	x					x			x
Biosensor	x			x		x		x
Public Engagement				x			x			x	x
Experimental design	x	x	x	x				x			x

Further information on each team member can be found on the team page.

High school member

DTU Biobuilders has a tradition of getting high school students to participate in the team’s project. This is done to give them a unique hands-on experience with iGEM. As the previous years, the team had an open application round to select high school members that are interested in learning more about synthetic biology.

Minh Greulich (Nærum Gymnasium, 3rd year)
During the summer period, Minh has contributed to both the InterLab study, and the Biosensor project. She was especially helpful in the testing of the Biosensor protocol, for which no noteworthy experience in the lab was actually an advantage.

Support from DTU Bioengineering

We have had some great help from our supervisors, who have guided us throughout the whole process of making this project a reality.

Christopher Workman has been the primary supervisor of our team. He has dedicated a lot of his time to consult us, and has been great in representing us internally in our department. Besides helping us with practicalities, general management of the team and giving scientific advice, he has helped with design ideas for our prototype as well. He came up with the idea of using biotin/avidin interactions to attach our detection protein device to a surface in the incubation chamber of our device.

Rasmus Frandsen, our secondary supervisor, has provided feedback on our cloning techniques. He was also involved in designing USER-primers for USER cloning of our BioBricks, however, we opted not to use the designed primers, as it was easier for us to order de novo synthesized composite parts as gBlocks from IDT, thereby making USER cloning obsolete.

Martin E. Kogle, our residential lab technician, has helped us a lot with getting familiar with the lab, and he has lended us both equipment and chemicals crucial to our experiments. He has also been of great use with helping out when we were unfamiliar with a technique. His apprentice, Sofie L.K. Jensen, has helped us prepare buffers and solutions etc. on a daily basis.

Soumya Kannan provided valuable feedback during the idea generation.

Acknowledgements

Beside people directly associated with our team, we have had some great support from people within and outside of our university

Snake venom

Andreas Hougaard Lausten (Ph.D., postdoc, co-founder of Biosynthis, co-founder of VenomAb, on Forbes 30 under 30) have provided some great feedback on the feasibility of our diagnostic tool, and he has contributed with ideas to improve our project in general. He has also helped us with our BioBrick design, as he inspired us to construct a composite part using β-galactosidase, to amplify the output signal of our detection device.

Clara Guerra Duarte (Ph.D., Fundação Ezequiel Dias) has helped us design and optimize our BioBricks, by giving us feedback on the different fusion proteins we designed. As an expert in venomics, we have been able to get a lot of feedback on how we should expect venom to affect our constructed fusion-protein.

Manuel Giménez (Graduate student, Boston University) is a former participant and instructor in iGEM, who helped form the very first iGEM team in Argentina. He has given us general feedback on our project management, and has helped us get into contact with both iGEM teams and researchers from South America.

Angela Alice Amadeu (Ph.D., Instituto Butantan) has given us advice that has led us to test our BioBricks in the presence of blood thinners such as heparine, as this reagent is often used in the treatment of snakebite victims, and as this reagent often hinder the effect of serineproteases. Being an expert in the venom of Bitis arietans, she has been able to help us gain more knowledge in the venomics of the Bitis sp.

Lotte C.G. Høgberg Pharmacist (Ph.D. Anæstesiologisk Department, poison control line Bispebjerg Hospital) for advising on treatment procedures and antivenoms in Denmark for keepers of illegally imported tropical snakes and for sending list of potential contacts in sub-saharan africa.

Hardware and Software

Associate professor Christopher Workman and associate professor Martin Dufva has provide valuable help and input for the design of the prototypes.

Simon Skjøde Jensen for giving us input on blood filtration.

Sammy Steffensen Benomar helped us with the development of the technical drawings for the prototypes.

Mihai Gurei helped us with the development of the app used for analysing the output from the spectrophotometer.

Art and Design

Mads Møller Madsen from PF photo took pictures of the team.

Cecilie Thystrup helped us create illustrations and an uniform design for our wiki, poster, and presentation slides.

Cleavable peptide screening and identification

Grith Miriam Maigaard Hermansen (Ph.d., MCE-Infection Microbiology) has helped us setup the 96 well plate reader for the measurements of both our AMC substrate and our substrate screening set.

InterLab study

Morten Lindqvist Hansen (M.sc, DTU Biosustain) has helped the Interlab study group by giving a tutorial in how to use the different settings for the plate reader used in the interlab study.

BioBrick assembly and expression

Viktor Hesselberg-Thomsen (B.sc. in Biotechnology, 2015 iGEM DTU-Denmark team member) has provided the laboratory team with feedback on their lab protocols, and has helped the team in the creation of the cloning strategies. He designed and instructed us in the exercises used in the BioBrick tutorial.

Modelling

Maher Abou Hachem (Associate professor, DTU Bioengineering) has provided us with valuable feedback on modeling enzyme kinetics for the β-galactosidase activity of our prototype.

Carsten Knudsen (Associate professor, DTU physics) has helped out with formalising our model into differential equations, and has helped us to identify central parameters in our model.

Economy and Fundraising

Malene Bonné Meyer (Head of Recruitment and Talent Development, Department of Bioengineering, DTU) has helped us with managing the budget and funding applications.

Outreach and human practices

James Reid (Instructor of the “Minutes to die” documentary film) for discussion on challenges that lies ahead on creating awareness of this issue, and supplying and giving permission to use footage from his documentary film: Mintues to die

Dr Bernadette Abela-Ridder (Team Leader, Neglected Zoonotic Disease Department of the Control of Neglected Tropical Diseases) for showing interest and potentially adding our incentive to the WHO Roadmap of snake bite management 2020.

Jeppe Mølgård (Journalist and media design student) for shooting and editing a documentary film about our team and our work.

Tina Naja Berg (Communications partner, Department of Research and Relations, DTU) has facilitated the opportunity for publication of our results and research, by bringing up our request at the DTU Avisen board editors meetings. This further enabled for a documentary to be published about the team.

Sylvain Menetrey (Journalist at Double Magazine and The Technologist a scientific magazine) for writing a piece on the issue of snake envenoming and our detection device (to be published in January issue)

Maria Louise Larsen (InnoAid NGO with international outreach based in Copenhagen, Denmark) for supplying contact to The Red Cross, Unumed and Flemming Konradsen from Globalhealth.

Stine Junge (UNDP Denmark officer and partnership analyt: private sector) for giving insight into impact investment

Gernot J. Abel (Science manager, Discovery at Novozymes and UNICEF team representative) gave us valuable input on our prototype, the assaying principle employed and what we would have to improve in order to make our detection device a feasible option for the market.

Mikael Engmark (Postdoc: antibody cross-reactivity and toxin expression Tropical pharmacology team and cofounder of VenomAb) gave his opinion on the future challenge of problem in relation to our device. He also gave valuable input on the life and struggles as a researcher pursuing a career within the area of snake venom and -envenoming.

Ben Schwetz (M.sc Biotechnology, honors programme ) for helping out during the BioBrick Tutorial by contributing a lecture and an exercise on prototyping during the BioBrick tutorial at DTU in addition to giving valuable advice as an iGEM alumni.

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