Team:ETH Zurich/Attributions

"What I cannot create I do not understand."
- Richard Feynmann

Attributions

When we first met at the end of March, we had no idea how much time we were going to spend together this summer and how many amazing things we would learn and achieve. After extensive research, we came up with a project that soon caught our attention and we were eager to reach the many goals we had set ourselves for September. Long discussions with our PhD student advisors and supervising professors helped us focus on the best of our ideas and left us highly motivated to work. We designed every component of our genetic circuit, did our best to model all possible outcomes, and created this wiki to document our results. During this intense summer, we were lucky to be supported by a lot of people whom we would like to thank on this page.

Advisors

We were lucky to count on the support of six advisors who were always there to help us solve experimental problems, find bugs in our models, and reassure us about our progress during our weekly meetings.

  • Lukas Widmer advised us with the modeling and always managed to magically identifying our yet undiscovered bugs and typos.
  • Daniel Gerngross helped us take our first steps in primer design, introduced us to the power of Gibson Assembly and supported us with materials and helpful advice.
  • Sabine Österle gave us valuable advice when the data seemed to go nowhere and the wiki freeze was coming closer.
  • Margaux Gastor helped us find mistakes in our mammalian cell protocols and helped us with the operation of FACS and the microscope.
  • Christian Jordi patiently showed us how to keep mammalian cells alive and created the PDMS chip.
  • Janina Linnik helped us with our models and brought us in contact with some experts who offered us valuable insights into the world of medicine.

In addition, we would like to thank Lukas Widmer, Sabine Österle, Daniel Gerngross, Margaux Gastor, Janina Linnik, and Maximilian Bahls for generously providing us with accommodation in Basel.

Scientific support

Within the whole department a lot of people generously helped us out by offering either lab supplies or time and advise.

  • Prof. Sven Panke, Prof. Jörg Stelling, Prof. Yaakov Benenson, and Prof. Savas Tay critically reviewed our ideas and guided us throughout the process.
  • Erica Montani taught us how to properly operate the microscope and answered our many questions.
  • Verena Jäggin explained how to use FACS and to interpret the data.
  • Michal Stanczak kindly provided us with SK-BR-3 cells.
  • Markus Jeschek povided us with a last hope for a strategy to Annexin V display, sharing his knowledge, cryos and plasmids.
  • Matthias Mehlig, Tino Frank, Johannes Thoma, Gaspar Morgado, Michael Junkin, Bartolomeo Angelici, Max Endele, and Martin Etzrodt offered us advice and materials.

General support

  • Niels Bürckert emphasized the importance of safety during our stay in the lab.
  • Myriam Moisan improved our logo design and gave us some further ideas.
  • Maximilian Bahls, Sabine Österle, Lukas Widmer, Daniel Gerngross and Margaux Gastor offered us a place to sleep when nights were getting too short to commute back and forth from home to the lab every day.
  • We would like to thank of all the participants in our interviews for their collaboration!
  • The BSSE shop team kindly assisted us with the purchase of all the required materials.

We would like to thank our sponsors