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 of São Carlos (IFSC) is located in the USP campus of São Carlos. The institute wes created in 1994 and at the moment offers four courses: Bachelor in Biomolecular Physics, Physics, Computational 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.

Founded in November 2008, by the merge of Invitrogen Corporation and Applied Biosystems Inc., and bought in 2014 by Thermo Fisher Scientific Corporation, Life Technologies became a brand name for biotechnology products and service renamed Life Sciences Solutions. Company's products are found in nearly every life science lab as reagents via its InvitrogenTM and as instrument systems. Life Tehnologies provided our huge reagents list, being fundamental for the project.

Life Technologies has supported our team with products

Braskem operates in the chemical and petrochemical industry and is now the largest producer of thermoplastic resins in the America, the largest producer of biopolymers with green polyethylene and largest producer of polypropylene in the United States. The set of Braskem products also includes other basic inputs and it has industrial plants located in Brazil, United States and Germany. Also, Braskem is also included among the fifty most innovative companies in the world.

Braskem has supported our team financially.

In 1943, the engineer Bertold Suhner founded Metrohm - a swiss company that first entered the market by building technical instrumentation such as radios, oscilloscopes and phameters. During its history, Metrohm was always a pioneer in developing important laboratory tools, such as the first piston burettes, in 1956; and the first automatic polarographic device in 1954; among others products. In 1987, Metrohm entered the ion analysis area and, nowadays, it is the only company in the world that develops all the main technologies in this field, becoming a worldwide reference. In early 2000s, Metrohm developed a partnership with Pensalab, a Brazilian company founded in 1996. After 5 years, a joint-venture created Metrohm Pensalab, a company that provides services and solutions in laboratory and processes. Since 2010, Metrohm Pensalab is a reference for all Latin America for Metrohm products and solutions.

Metrohm has supported our team financially.

Exxtend is a Brazilian company born in 2011, created to produce great quality custom oligonucleotides with a quick delivery, supporting Brazilian researchers on their projects and contributing to the development of national sciences. Exxtend was created from a partnership between Proteobras – a biotechnology company that develops new molecules for basic research, human health, biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry – and K&A Laborgeraete, a german company pioneer in the production of DNA and RNA synthesis equipment. Exxtend maintains its high quality and recognition by using excellent starting materials, having great specialized teams and focusing on the relation customer/company. Besides that, Exxtend contributes to Brazilian science by supporting the formation of young professionals through internships program, developed in partnership with several technical schools and universities.

Exxtend has supported our team financially.

Genau Idiomas started its activities in 2012, offering German, English and Spanish classes for students in São Carlos/SP (Brazil). Today, 3 years later, the school has also expanded its courses to French and Portuguese for foreigners. Genau Idiomas’ staff is highly experienced and trained, and is ready to prepare the students for diverse situations, such as daily challenges or more formal conversations, as a job interview or presenting a lecture. With classes highly dynamic and with no more than 5 students, the learning becomes fun and a highly student/professor relationship is created, improving the students learning rate. Also, the school provides a great quantity of didactic material, with more than 500 books, 20 DVDs, CDs and games that the students can use to learn a new language even faster. Furthermore, Genau Idiomas offers discounts to UFSCar and USP students, allowing a more accessible language education.

Genau Idiomas has supported our team financially.

New England Biolabs (NEB) was founded nearly 40 years ago to offer innovative solutions to the life sciences industry, having experience in designing and producing reagents. Besides their high quality products, the company also offers many scientific tools available for free in their website, such as the NEBcutter, NEBcloner and Enzyme Finder. NEB is also an iGEM sponsor and offers materials to help the students in their projects, such as troubleshooting guides and educational videos.

New England Biolabs has supported our team with products, mainly gBlocks assembly kits.

BMA Ambiental is a Brazilian company that seeks to mitigate environmental impacts using natural effective solutions. Valuing quality services, BMA Ambiental provides solutions for dust suppression and bioremediation, also offering a specialized team to perform environmental analysis, treatability test of effluents, gathering and transportation of oily and non-oily effluent and environmental consulting. With a highly qualified staff, the company also offers assistance in projects development and in a variety of environmental issues.

BMA Ambiental has supported our team financially.

As the leading developer of mathematical computing software, Mathworks employs over 3000 people. Its products are widely used by scientists and engineers for algorithm development, data analysis and visualization, numeric computation and also for modeling and simulation in increasingly technical fields, such as financial services and computational biology. Co-founded by Jack Little and Cleve Moler, the company is guided by the principle “Do The Right Thing”, seeking to do what is best for staff members, customers, business partners and communities for the long term.

Mathworks sponsors the 2015 iGEM competition and provided complimentary software and technical support to all iGEM teams for use in the competition.