Team:Carnegie Mellon/Collaborations
A core value of iGEM is collaboration. A core value of the CMU team is to help others in whatever capacity we are able to, whether it be with our equipment, knowledge, or friendly faces. In the spirit of this, we’ve collaborated with several iGEM teams. Read about our efforts below.
Interlab Study
The interlab study is an international collaboration across all iGEM teams who chose to participate in the study. The goal is to obtain fluorescence data for three different genetic devices expressing GFP. We want to see the correlation between the values obtained for the genetic devices expressing such GFP and whether the measurement for such a synthetic biology protocol is consistent across all iGEM teams since the same samples were used.
iGEM Teams
University of Pittsburgh
We provided the data from last year’s estrogen sensor. They wanted to use an estrogen-sensitive T7 RNA polymerase which the CMU iGEM team designed in 2014 in order to activate transcription of a reporter gene in a cell-free extract. They want to generate freeze-dried cells on paper for easy transportation and detect presence of estrogen in water after freeze drying the cells. In the presence of estrogen, the synthetic T7 RNA polymerase will initiate transcription of a reporter construct. In addition, we met up with each other to give a short presentation to the TEC-Bio team at the University of Pittsburgh. After detecting the estrogen, we assisted them in modeling their freeze-dried system allowing them to produce a useful system.
University of Georgia
The University of Georgia invited us to a collaboration effort to obtain mCherry fluorescence readings for an archaeal RBS (ribosomal binding site) library they prepared. They studied this in order to control protein expression. Since there are not many tools involved in studying archaea, they wanted to collaborate in order to promote the utilization of methanogenic archaea modeling this behavior after interlab in order to analyze their measurements obtained from the study. In addition, they want to add on to the E.coli Interlab by adding another specimen to be used. The collaboration allowed them to assess the reproducibility of the data in various labs around the world and develop a network of labs with a common interest. Our team gained experience with working with archaea and a partner in research. We received their samples and measured the fluorescence of this mCherry archaea specimen.
University of Eindhoven
We participated in TU Eindhoven’s collaboration where they wanted to make a cloning guide for new iGEM teams to use and make a clear choice on what cloning method is best to use when working on their project. We chose to write up procedures for the Classical Cloning guide and added onto their project. We gave general information about the cloning method, points of interest, disadvantages and advantages in non-specific terms so that the iGEM teams can indicate how much used for each step.