Attributions
The 2017 WPI iGEM Team would like to thank many people, and acknowledge everyone involved in making our project possible. The team started working in C term, or late March, of 2017. Goals for the team's project and specific roles for each student were decided by the end of May. The work continued into the summer and fall as an internship and a class. Many experiments were conducted from May to October.
Team Members
This is an outline of all of the work that was done by each team member throughout the project.
Aylin Padir:
Catherine Sherman:
Edith Sawyer:
Haylea Northcott:
Locke Bonomo:
Michael Savoie:
Faculty:
A special thanks to the WPI faculty who have facilitated, assisted, and encouraged the ongoing research of iGEM and helped make the project possible.
Dr. Natalie Farney:
Advisor of WPI iGEM. Assisted heavily with cloning of vectors for pBRr backbone and chromoproteins into E. coli.
Mr. Mihail Bocka:
WPI Lab manager. Provided lab equipment and supplies for experiments. Assisted with Autoclave troubleshooting.
Dr. Scarlet Shell:
WPI teaching staff. Provided guidance in design of growth curve experiments and probiotic research.
Dr. Lou Roberts:
WPI teaching staff. Assisted in electroporation of E. coli.
Dr. Mike Buckholt:
WPI teaching staff. Provided assistance in culturing B. subtilis.
Dr. Jill Rulfs:
WPI teaching staff. Provided assistance in troubleshooting media preparation.
Project Inspiration:
The idea for the initial project was derived from the project proposal from the Synthetic Biology Capstone course. The original project and proposal title At-Home pH Based Lead Detection was submitted by Eric Borges, Zahra Khazal, Shelby McQueston, Allison Van Fechtmann.
Additional project inspiration was derived from past iGEM teams working with heavy metals. Teams researched are listed below:
2015 Teams
Bielefeld
Gaston Day School
LZU- China
Nanjing- China
SCUT
2014 Teams
Cornell
HUST-China
INSA-Lyon
Minnesota
Nagahama
NEFU China
Penn
2013 Teams
Edinburgh
Gaston Day School
Supporting Research
The backbone for the plasmid was developed from a construct originally found in “Development and Application of Synthetically-Derived Lead Biosensor Construct for Use in Gram-Negative Bacteria: published in Cell. The construct was used with permission by Dr. Ashley Franks.
The DIY lead assay was developed from “A Fast Colourimetric Assay for Lead Detection Using Label-Free Gold Nanoparticles (AuNPs)” and “ A Portable Lab-on-A-Chip System for Gold-Nanoparticle Based Colorimetric Detection of Metal Ions in Water” published in Micromachines and Biomicrofluidics, respectively.