Team:UChicago/Attributions
Attributions
Undergraduate Summer Team Members
Undergraduate Summer Team Members did all the project design, Biobrick design, novel protocol procedures, and data collections although we received advice from our graduate student advisors.
Benjamin Hsu is a full-time researcher and financial officer, and was involved with the project from the start. As financial officer he helped lead fundraising efforts and managed the research budget. Over the summer his work focused on constructing the KaiABC oscillator with Mansi and designing the applications (AANAT expression and secretion) part of the project. Some of the procedures he conducted were PCRs, Gibson Assemblies, Gel Extractions, MiniPreps, Transformations, Inductions, Western Blots, and miscellaneous basic lab protocols. He also arranged the outreach with Dr. Cauter.
Mansi worked on Biobrick designs specifically for the KaiABC oscillator with Kevin as well as Biobrick designs for the read-out system constructs. Along with Benjamin, she was one of two full time members during the summer so she played a large role in the wet lab work including running PCRs to clone out gBlocks, conducting Gibson reactions to put together the Biobricks, setting up induction experiments using different concentrations of Rhamnose, and conducting western blots to assay the Kai proteins.
As an adviser to the team who worked on the team last year and as president of the student organization, Kevin was only involved in wet lab work for a little bit, but instead mainly helped out with Biobrick design, devising specific experimental methods, helping with troubleshooting at weekly meetings, and technical/logistical support to the new members this year working in the wet lab. He also helped with the measurement calculations, Western blot densitometry, and taking 1-2 odd-hour time-points for one of the induction time course experiments. Together with Benjamin, he also helped identify and communicate with potential sponsors.
Ryan and Annie helped with troubleshooting at weekly meetings as well as with taking time-points for the induction and oscillation experiments. We had shifts set up for the induction experiments, since they often required taking quick time points in person at odd hours (such as 3AM).
Shiva helped with basic lab procedures during the final two weeks of experiments.
Ethan helped with some of the formatting for the website.
Graduate Student Advisors
We want to thank our graduate student advisors for their help. They all volunteered their time at weekly lab meetings to help us troubleshoot and they were all very responsive to our frantic emails asking for tech support. We couldn’t have done it without them.
Danny helped us with making competent cells, and Aaron ran us through our first Western blot. Kristen came onto the project later in the summer and is primarily helping us with giving us feedback on our poster and presentation.
We want to thank Justin Chew in particular, because he was unfortunate enough to have his bench next to ours. He provided on-the-spot troubleshooting, often late into the night when our experiments were running late. He was our go-to guy when we can’t find reagents, ran out of pipette tips, or when our gel was blotchy.
Thanks to our remaining advisors for providing us with so much support:
-Prof. Mike Rust and the Rust Lab for kindly providing us with lab space over the past two years.
-Also thanks to Prof. Jared Lewis and Dr. Jennifer Moran for their timely advice and support when we requested it.
… And thanks to all our university and company sponsors for generous donations of lab reagents, software (Snapgene was really useful for Biobrick design!), and money to make our project possible!!!
Like our team Facebook page, Genehackers@UChicago!
Questions? Comments? Send us an email!