Created in 1934, the University of São Paulo (USP) is a public institution maintained by the State of São Paulo. It is composed by 7 campi in different cities of the state, offering more than 90 courses. USP is internationally recognized by its scientific productivity, achieving great positions on several world rankings. The Institute of Physics is located in the USP campi in São Carlos. The institute wes created in 1994 and at the moment offers four courses: Bachelor in Biomolecular Physics, Physics, Computaional Physics and also Exact Sciences.

IFSC/USP has supported our team financially, besides providing the infrastructure to project development and a great faculty disposed to guide us.

The spectroscopic techniques are some of the various physics tools that enable the knowledge of the biomolecules structures at the atomic level. Studies on development in the Molecular Biophysics research Group are trying to interpret molecular structures due to interactions in different bands of the electromagnetic spectrum. Electronic spectroscopy, circular dichroism, fluorescence, FT-IR, EPR (electron paramagnetic resonance) allow monitoring conformational changes of biomolecules in the presence of ligands, chemical or physical agents, action of different organic solvents, and molecular mechanisms involved in functional processes and denaturation and refolding of proteins.

Created in 2013, the Nanomedicine and Nanotoxicology Group (GNano) is part of Sao Carlos Institute of Physics, University of Sao Paulo. Under the supervision of Professor Valtencir Zucolotto, GNano has as its main focus the application of nanotechnology in medical and biomedical areas. Synthesis and characterization of nanomaterials, nanotoxicology studies in vivo and in vitro and development of devices such as biosensors are commonly performed. Experiments of flow cytometry and fluorometry related to our iGEM project were performed at this laboratory.

IDT (Integrated DNA Technologies) is one of the main custom oligonucleotides manufacturers in the world and, this year, it has formed a partnership with iGEM – providing 20,000 bases free of charge to most of the teams in the competition. The company was founded in Iowa in 1987 by Joseph Walder, through a partnership with Baxter Healthcare Corporation. IDT grew very rapidly – in its first 10 years, the synthesizing machines number grew from 10 to 500, with a shipping an average of 44,000 custom oligonucleotides per day. IDT is recognized worldwide due to its highest standards of quality, service and technical know-how, providing services for academic research, biotechnology, and pharmaceutical development communities. The company offers diverse products, such as qPCR assays, gBlocks, siRNA duplexes and platform-independent next generation sequencing materials.
IDT has supported our team providing 20,000 bases of custom oligonucleotides.