Team:Kent/Collaborations
Collaborations
Cooperation between different teams is in the core of the iGEM ethos. We decided to embrace said philosophy by initiating an association with UNITN, a team from Northern Italy. Their project, focusing on Microbial Fuel Cells, focuses on the same issue as ours: sustainability and renewable energy. This relationship has been reciprocal. They have contributed to our Human Practices by completing our questionnaire and they have provided thorough feedback on our wiki. We coached them with their presentation and most importantly, we developed a mathematical model to describe their system.
Modeling
James helped the UNITN-Trento team with their modeling. Their project has a protein called proteorhodopsin (PR) which is a light driven proton pump that can be used to produce ATP molecules. The team asked James "what is the number of ATP molecules that can be produced per second as a function of light irradiance that hits the bacterial membrane?" James found that the reaction was based on Michaelis-Menten kinetics as the PR must complete its cycle before it can absorb another photon and at high light irradiance this leads to saturation.[1][2]
References
[1]Béja, O., Aravind, L., Koonin, E. V., Suzuki, M. T., Hadd, A., Nguyen, L. P., ... & DeLong, E. F. (2000). Bacterial rhodopsin: evidence for a new type of phototrophy in the sea. Science, 289(5486), 1902-1906.
[2]Walter, J. M., Greenfield, D., Bustamante, C., & Liphardt, J. (2007). Light-powering Escherichia coli with proteorhodopsin. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 104(7), 2408-2412.
Presentation Coaching
During this summer, we were invited to participate to two national meetups to prepare for the Giant Jamboree. One was organised by Birkbeck and one was organised by Westminster; both have been wonderful opportunities for us to improve and perfect our project thanks to the feedback received from the other teams. Unfortunately for UNITN, they are the only Italian team participating in iGEM this year, and therefore they did not have a chance to participate to any national meetup. One of our team members, Anna, flew to Italy in order to offer feedback on their presentation and offer precious insights acquired during the meetups. The presentation was well executed, with the exception of the order of topics discussed. They welcomed the feedback and made appropriate changes.