ATTRIBUTIONS

General Support

We would like to thank the Principal Investigators – Harris Wang, Virginia Cornish, Dana Pe’er, and Ken Shepard – for providing the support needed to establish the 2015 Columbia NYC iGEM Team.

Columbia NYC iGEM logos and related products were designed by team members Jacky Cheung and Hudson Lee, with production done by CustomInk.

Team member Kenya Velez kept track of laboratory experiments via a regularly updated electric notebook as well as taking minutes at project meetings with the junior and senior mentors.

Project Support and Advice

We would like to thank our junior and senior mentors – Harris Wang, Virginia Cornish, Sway Chen, Nathan Johns, and Sonja Billerbeck – for giving us feedback on and providing resources for initial project ideas and helping to polish our current project. We would like to thank our junior mentors – Nathan Johns and Sonja Billerbeck – for providing the plasmid backbones worked with.

All team members collaborated on collecting initial data for a database on gut peptides and signal peptides. Team member Sam Magaziner designed the quorum sensing and delayed lysis mechanism components of the project. Team members Jacky Cheung, Sam Magaziner, and Suppawat Kongthong designed and ordered the necessary G-blocks, oligos, and primers. All team members contributed wet-lab work necessary for the completion of the project.

Fundraising Help and Advice

We would like to thank our senior mentors – Harris Wang, Virginia Cornish, Dana Pe’er, and Ken Shepard – for coordinating with their respective departments to provide the funding necessary to carry out an iGEM team.

Furthermore, team members Jacky Cheung and Suppawat Kongthong collaborated to reach out to corporate and public sponsors which provided the team with tremendous support. We would like to acknowledge Integrated DNA Technologies (IDT) for providing the team with a $3,000 oligocard for the synthesis of primers, single-stranded DNA, and G-Blocks; Geneious for providing licenses for their software that allowed us to organize DNA files and sequencing results; and New England Biolabs (NEB) for providing us with reagents necessary for our project.

Lab Support

We would like to thank senior mentors – Harris Wang and Virginia Cornish – for providing their lab spaces, equipment, and reagents that allowed us to properly execute the experimental components of our project.

Difficult Technique Support

We would like to thank the members of the Wang Lab – Sway Chen, Nathan Johns, and Vitor Cabral – and Sonja Billerbeck for advising us on protocols.

Project Advisor Support

We would like to thank senior mentor Harris Wang for organizing the junior mentors Sway Chen, Nathan Johns, and Sonja Billerbeck.

Wiki Support

Our team member Jacky Cheung coded the wiki with everyone on the team contributing to write-ups displayed on the pages of the wiki.

Presentation Coaching

We would like to thank our junior mentors – Sway Chen, Nathan Johns, and Sonja Billerbeck – and senior mentor Harris Wang for their feedback on our presentation. In addition, we would like to thank all the PIs – Harris Wang, Virginia Cornish, Dana Pe’er, and Ken Shepard – for a formal practice run in preparation for the Jamboree.

Human Practices Support

Team members Kenya Velez, Suppawat Kongthong, and Hudson Lee designed the online survey portion of the team’s human outreach component. We would like to also thank junior mentors – Sway Chen and Nathan Johns - for proof-reading the survey drafts before distribution. All team members contributed to the distribution of the survey through the team’s various social media outlets and direct interactions with the public.

Team member Jacky Cheung, accompanied by junior mentor Nathan Johns, volunteered at the New York Hall of Science “Building with Biology” pilot exhibit that served as a platform for facilitating conversation between the general public, namely children and their parents, and those involved in the field of synthetic biology. Columbia NYC iGEM was even able to interact with the Stony Brook and Genspace iGEM teams at the exhibit.

Team member Kenya Velez maintained the team’s social media outlets.

Collaboration Support:

Team member Sam Magaziner coordinated with the UGA-Georgia iGEM team to help them with their characterization of archaeal ribosome binding sites. Team members Jacky Cheung and Hudson Lee carried out the necessary experiment.

Team member Jacky Cheung coordinated with the Genspace iGEM team to allow them access to equipment available to Columbia NYC iGEM. This was helpful in the characterization of their system and their additional collaborative efforts with UGA-Georgia.

Thanks and Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Wang Laboratory members – Vitor Cabral and Jimin Park – for providing advice despite not being directly involved in the project.

We would like to thank Business Services Executive Director – Honey Fishman – for approving the team’s usage of Columbia University logos for designs.