Attributions

The lab work, wiki design and development, poster design and any images or diagrams were done by team members except where otherwise attributed.

Special thanks goes to the following amazing people:

Biology technicians: We’d like to thank the brilliant biology technicians at our school for sourcing and setting up the equipment we used in our lab work.

Physics department: Alexander Wood, head of physics at CLS, kindly allowed us to use his soldering equipment. He and the physics technicians put up with us coming early in the morning on several days to build the fluorometer in his lab - without them our hardware would not exist!

Dr Thomas Ouldridge, Imperial: We met with Dr Ouldridge twice, both times at Imperial where he helped us out with modelling. The [http://imperialchemthermo.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/working-with-city-of-london-school-on.html first meeting] we discussed the basics of modelling toehold switches, how to get started using MATLAB for biological modelling and specifically modelling strand displacement. The second meeting we talked about removing unneeded complexity, making the model easier to understand and to narrow it down to have just 4 main parameters which we could then try changing around to see how it would affect the GFP output. Without him our mass-action kinetics model would not have been nearly as accurate and useful to the wetlab team.

Professor Laurence Lovat and his UCL team: Professor Lovat has helped with several aspects of the project. He helped us design our questionnaire and distribute it. He helped us think about what criteria our system needs to meet in order for it to be clinically viable e.g. cutoff values for sensitivity and specificity and how sample collection could be done (especially with spit). Professor Lovat also suggested how we could use a thermostable cell free system in a saline solution by using a cell free system stuck to the bottom wells. Lastly, he highlighted the importance of creating a multiplexing assay. His team at UCL helped us to choose the best pieces of equipment for miRNA extraction and helped us with our cost analysis.

Kirsten Jensen, Imperial: Kirsten helped with troubleshooting whenever OpenWetWare and other forums did not yield useful info. She also helped us secure sequencing vouchers from Eurofins, as well as allowed us to store our competent cells and cell-free extracts in Imperial’s labs. Lastly, she rescued us when we urgently needed more pSB1C3 plasmid with some miniprepped BBa_J04450 that they had from last year. She has been our go-to person whenever we “hit the wall” and has we have used her as the fountain of all knowledge. Her continuous encouragement was much appreciated throughout the project.

Keith Pardee: Keith Pardee looked over our plans from cell free system and confirmed that it was all in order.

Alex Green: Alex Green reviewed our toehold switch design, telling us that our design should work, but also suggested investigating using the Zika virus switch as an alternative method.

Alleyn’s School: Alleyn’s kindly laser-cut the casing and 3D printed the cuvette holders we needed to build our spectroflorometer.

Denver Biolabs iGEM 2016: Denver Biolabs shared their designs for the spectrofluorometer housing and cuvette holders and allowed use their code as a starting point. This design was adapted from the original Aachen design. We improved the hardware further by simplifying the circuit, and making it work off a Digispark so it was significantly cheaper and could output to any phone or computer.

Aachen iGEM 2014: Aachen created the initial guide to building a spectrofluorometer including a useful component list and an initial circuit diagram which we later simplified. They also helped us troubleshoot our device via email.

Sujal Desai: Sujal Desai helped us create the human practices survey and helped distribute it to medical professionals

Justin Daniels: Justin Daniels gave us valuable feedback on the clinical implementations of our project

Doctors: We’d like to thank all the doctors who helped us with our efforts in integrated human practices by responding to the survey we sent out. Your responses had a genuine impact the direction of our project, especially the open-ended fields where many of you suggested improvements or considerations we’d have to take.

Dr Daniel Pregibon, Abcam: Dr Pregibon took the time to give us feedback on our project, relating specifically to the use of miRNA in diagnostics. He helped shape our ideas regarding the applications of the project in a medical context.

Team:CLSB-UK/Attributions