THE IOD BAND IDEA is really a mix of two amazing concepts used by nature to engineer new cells: sexual conjugation and pheromone based signalling. Starting from the very first iGEM discussions in winter, the team has been fascinated by these systems and from the get-go wanted to use them to do amazing engineering. It so happened that during some unofficial yet regular beer-meetings with students and researchers from the Biomedical centre the problem of CTC diagnosis was raised. It did not take long before input-output blocks from engineering courses became IODs that work together to solve complex problems, such as diagnosis of CTCs.

THE TEAM includes a mix of complementary expertise. In the end the work was naturally split between the members. It goes without saying that these wiki pages are primarily the work of all team members with constant language corrections and comments on content clarity coming from the advisors and instructors. Below each member of the larger team is linked to their identifying tasks.

Jan Bejvl is a student at the Faculty of Medicine. He brought to the group a wealth of information regarding medical practice. In the lab he started off with the Interlab study and then played an integral role in Module 2 recloning plasmids and setting up the final assays.

Martin Cienciala is a bachelor student at the Charles University in Prague in the Molecular Biology program. He co-developed the idea behind location tags in Module 3 and designed as well as performed all the microfluidic experiments. Martin led the assembly, induction, and experimental validation of surface receptor antibodies.

Hynek Kasl was responsible for modul 1. He designed and assembled MATa and MATx synthetic loci, reporter plasmids and 3 biobricks, performed validation experiments and assays. He was in charge of mathematical modeling and found, prepared and explained the models used by the CeCe simulator for their implementation. Hynek made the presentation for young engineers and assisted during the Interlab Study experiments.

Veronika Kolejáková studies Molecular Biology at the Charles University in Prague. She co-developed the idea behind location tags in Module 3 and assisted with our Human Practices progress. Veronika performed experiments to ensure yeast surface antibody production and assisted with experiments in other Modules.

Jiří Louda performed search of provided literature for modul 2 and fabricated the microfludic chips.

Filip Nemčko is a student from the Faculty of Sciences, Charles University in Prague.

Václav Pelíšek extended the CeCe simulator by features crucial for IOD simulations: stochastic reactions, cell-cell communication and agglutination. He did all work on coding wiki design into HTML and CSS and fabricated the microfludic chips. Václav assisted during the Interlab Study experiments and with the lab's maintenance.

Anna Sosnová was responsible for modul 2. She performed cloning, BioBrick construction and validation of the constructed parts. She was also responsible for performing the Interlab Study including construction of devices, measurements and processing of data. Anna was coordinator of collaboration with team Chalmers Gothenburg and responsible for collecting surveys.

THE ADVISORS kept the work on track and helped answer the tough questions. They also checked wiki pages related to their field of expertise.

Jiří Fatka is the original author of the CeCe simulator. He helped with understanding of the simulator architecture and extensions implementation. Jiří was also helpful in solving some complex HTML and CSS problems on wiki.

Pavel Fikar tought students the basics of microfludics and showed them how to use specialized equipment. He is author of team pictures.

Kateřina Pěchotová was advisor of module 2. She helped with the experimental setups. Kateřina also taught students how to operate with measurement devices. She is the person responsible for the lab's maintanence.

Tereza Puchrová was advisor of modul 1. She helped to answer all question related to yeast mating pheromone pathway, synthetic loci and reporter plasmids design and performance of validation experiments.

Pavel Zach was advisor of module 2. He provided literature and advices regarding chimeric receptors and synthetic pheromones. Pavel also supervised the Interlab Study experiments and the BioBrick contruction.

THE INSTRUCTORS

Assist. Professor Daniel Georgiev as our leader he keeps the great mood in the lab and his accurate questions leads everyone to the result without any need for explanation.

Assoc. Professor Eduard Janeček provided tremendous organizational support for our team throughout the duration.

The project would not have been possible with a little EXTERNAL HELP.

We would like to thank the 'Biomedical Centre, Faculty of Medicine in Pilsen, Charles University for first of all participating in our GMO survey. Namely we would also like to thank Assist. Prof. Lucie Vištejnová' for letting us use the centre autoclave when ours went bust, for spotting us some ligase when ours was backordered, and for helping us collect all the surveys. We would like to also thank Dr. Pavel Pitule and Dr. Pavel Ostašov for sharing their experience with CTC diagnosis and for giving us helpful advice on how to improve our experiments to get better data.

Thanks to all our colleagues at the Faculty of Applied Sciences for their support during our research.

Special thanks belong to

• Prof. Ing. Miloš Schlegel, CSc. for enabling us to present our project and synthetic biology at his lecture

We want to thank team Chalmers Gothenburg for initiating the GMO survey, processing and evaluating the data and useful advice they provided us during our collaboration.