Team:Calgary/Collaborations

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Collaborations

Canadian iGEM Newsletter

This year, the iGEM Calgary 2017 Team set a goal to achieve increased collaborativity of teams in countries throughout the world, starting with Canada. During our journey, we have reached out to many organizations as a part of our public outreach. For more details, please visit our Engagement and Education pages. To help promote communication between teams, we pioneered the first Canadian iGEM Newsletter. The main purpose of this project is to foster an avenue through which teams can share their project updates and seek collaborative assistance. Because this newsletter can be distributed by all participating teams, universities and public communities across Canada can be engaged. Additionally, we can also increase public awareness of iGEM, as well as genetic engineering in general.

Canadian iGEM Newsletter Volume 1 Issue 1

Wet-Lab Collaboration

Through the connections we made in the process of publishing the Canadian iGEM Newsletter, we were able to connect with the iGEM McMasterU team. One of their team members, Dhanyasri Maddiboina, had an internship in Calgary during the summer. Some members of our team was able to meet her and, together, we were able to bring a potential collaboration between the two collegiate teams to fruition. This year, the iGEM McMasterU team is working on a project called Glowzyme, a fluorogenic DNAzyme that cleaves RNA and detects pathogens. As a proof of concept, they synthesized a DNAzyme that generates a fluorescence when Escherichia coli is present. Because our bioplastic synthesis system utilizes E. coli on a Mars colony, the DNAzyme may be integrated into our containment system as a method for leakage detection. By assessing the possibility of incorporating the DNAzyme into our system, we can evaluate the properties of the DNAzyme and provide possible areas of improvement to iGEM McMasterU.

Collaboration Procedure

To carry out this collaboration, we followed the protocol provided by iGEM McMasterU. The purpose of this experiment was to act as a proof of concept that the DNAzyme will cleave specifically in the presence of E. coli and will not cleave in the presence of other bacteria.

Materials Used:

• 60mm plates
• M9 plating media
• M9 liquid media
• E. coli DH5α
• Bacillus subtilis WB800
• 8μM DNAzyme

As preparation for making the M9 plating media, 2.988g of agar powder was dissolved in 100mL of ddH₂O and autoclaved. 100mL of the M9 plating media was then made by combining 49.8mL of the agar solution, 49.8mL 2xM9 salt, 99.5μL 1M MgSO₄, and 9.95μL of CaCl₂. 398μL of filter sterilized 20% glucose was also added. The M9, MgSO₄, and CaCl₂ salts were previously autoclaved and the plating media was made using aseptic technique. 2.5mL of the media was pipetted into four 60mm plates. Eight 60mm plates were also made using higher amounts of the media (~5mL).

100mL of M9 liquid media for overnight inoculations were prepared.

Collaboration Results

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Collaboration Summary

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