Team:Sydney Australia/Attributions
Supervisors
We had the following supervisors aiding our project.
Nicholas Coleman
Nick Coleman is a microbiologist with an interest in environmental microbiology and biotechnology. He completed a PhD at the University of Sydney studying explosives-degrading bacteria, and in his work as a postdoc at Tyndall Airforce Base in Florida, USA he isolated the first and currently only bacterium able to grow on dichloroethene as a carbon source. He then returned to Sydney to study mobile genetic elements in Pseudomonas stutzeri, leading to a new method for quantifying integron activity, and now runs his own lab in the School of Life and Environmental Sciences. Nick’s research spans across metagenomics, microbial ecology and diversity, and agricultural microbiology, but is focused on molecular genetic analysis of bacteria capable of degrading pollutants, and the role of mobile genetic elements in bacterial adaptation to hostile environments. He has lectured to students across many degree programs and co-ordinated courses and practical classes for multiple microbiology units. His work has been supported by ARC Discovery grants, a NSW Environmental Trust Grant, and collaborations with industry partners such as Orica.
Nick helped us design the sequence for Winsulin 2.0, and developed our insulin expression system as well as instigating the project. The amount of work Nick did for this project cannot be quantified. From troubleshooting endless gels, digestions, ligations, transformations, PCRs, more gels, protein extractions, inductions, purifications, and even more gels, to replying to our many panicked emails about upcoming events and looming deadlines, to giving us the space to work in his lab and organising a great deal of our outreach events, Nick has given so much to our project and we absolutely could not have done it without him.
Jacqui Mathews
Our biochemistry genius
Jacqui Matthews is a protein biochemist with an interest in the regulation of protein-protein and protein-DNA interactions in disease. She uses techniques such as molecular biology, biophysical methods and structural methods to investigate protein interactions in diseases including T-cell leukemia, beta-thalassemia and breast cancer.
Jacqui assisted with the design of the Winsulin 2.0 sequence, and advised the development of our insulin expression systems.
Ed Hancock
Ed Hancock is a mathematician and engineer who is interested in systems and synthetic biology. He completed a BE and BSc at at the University of Sydney, and a DPhil at the University of Oxford. He was subsequently a post-doc at the University of Oxford, and has been a visiting researcher at Imperial College and Caltech.
Ed gave Ruby weekly tutorials and advised us on the development of our modelling.
