Collaborations
Genspace Collaboration
A huge part of iGEM is working with other teams to further the research of both parties. This is exactly what we did when we collaborated with the 2015 genspace igem team. One of the major obstacles in research today is the high price of new lab equipment. Often times, an expensive device is needed to carry out a one time procedure. Buying the device makes no sense, but you still need to use it. We circumvented this by sharing equipment between our two teams. The Genspace iGEM team came to Cooper Union in early August. They had several samples of DNA whose concentrations they needed to determine. To help them achieve this, we showed them how to use our Nanodrop 2000 spectrophotometer. This device measures the absorbance of a small volume of liquid and then calculates the concentration of nucleic acid present in the sample. After a brief tutorial, they were quickly able to measure the concentrations of all of their samples. To repay this favor, the Genspace igem team helped us by lending us their vacuum oven. This device was necessary in the protocol for the silanization of glass slides. In order for our DNA synthesizer to work, the DNA must bond to a glass slide so that it is not lost in the wash steps. This was done previously by forming a disulfide bond between the DNA oligonucleotide and the glass. To test this ourselves, we ordered sulfonated oligonucleotides and made silanized glass slides. Genspace’s vacuum oven was useful because the glass slides need to be kept in an anhydrous environment for part of the procedure. With the vacuum oven, we completed this protocol and were able to yield results on the effectiveness of bonding DNA to glass slides.
Will Shindel and Marley Giddins using the Cooper Union team's Nanodrop 2000 spectrophotometer.
Tushar Nichakawade using a vacuum oven lent by Genspace.