Team:OLS Canmore AB CA/Collaborations

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Collaborations

This year we have participated in 3 collaborations. All three of our collaborations were focused on seeing what other teams thought about our project, soliciting advice about the best usage for our project, and getting insights into ethical concerns for our project.

We have also been interviewed by the local radio station, mountain FM, where they asked us many questions about our project, IGEM, and the upcoming competition. The interview allowed us to get the word out about our project and connect with not only Canmore, but also the surrounding communities such as Banff, Exshaw and Lake Louise.

Two collaborations were with the two universities that have worked on this project in the past. The University of Chicago 2013 IGEM team worked on a project aimed at breaking down feathers with the goal of turning the products produced by the keratin waste into useful products. The University of Sheffield 2014 IGEM team worked on a construct that will break down hair as a side project to their main “fatburger” project. Our collaborations with these teams was centered around the sharing of information regarding their past constructs, as our project is based on troubleshooting and debugging those issues. Further, we hoped to characterize these parts, get input on ethical and safety concerns, and plan the future tests and implementation of our project.

Our third collaboration was with a high school IGEM team based out of Consort, Alberta. Their project for the past three seasons has been working to detect oil spills by first detecting xylene in soil, as xylene is a good early biological indicator. We collaborated with them in order to receive feedback on what they thought about our project as well as to give them feedback on their project. As geographically close high school teams, it was nice to have some face time at the mini Alberta jamboree we hosted in May 2015 at our school. We shared a lot of initial feedback about the pros and cons of our presentations, and continued to be in close contact with the Consort team as we prepared for the Giant Jamboree!

The University of Sheffield 2014 Collaboration. Our first collaboration was made with the the university of Sheffield, we connected with them with the goal of hearing their thoughts on our project and getting any advice that they were willing to give concerning our project, as one of our constructs is based off their construct that was created as a side project to there “Fatburger” project, a project which was started as a solution to fats and oils build ups, which are caused when fats and oils solidified in the drains. The side project to break down hair was intended “To solve the build up of hair that becomes trapped in plugholes in basins, baths and showers. Hair attracts grease and dirt particulates which build up in drainage systems and restrict the flow of water through pipes. Our project has focused on development of constructs that produce lipase and keratinase enzymes to degrade FOGs and hair. These constructs are designed to sit within a small, under-sink bioreactor that will produce and feed them into the waste system as the sink is drained.”(https://2014.igem.org/Team:Sheffield/Project) , There construct was disigned to break down hair by useing a karitanaze that would break down the karitan protine, how ever there project was unsuccsessful. We started by using the University of Sheffield's construct and then optimized it by (how we optimized it) this fixed the known cleaving issue. Our collaboration with the University of Sheffield 2014 IGEM team allowed us to receive some input into our project and what we could do to make it even better.

University of Chicago Our second collaboration was also with a team that our project is based off of and that is the team of the university of chicago. The university of chicago created a construct to degrade feathers in the pulpary industry and use the wast made bioreactors for useful products. “By developing an efficient process for the digestion of keratin, we would not only drastically reduce the cost of disposal but also allow the keratin to be used in products like animal feed, fertilizers and biodegradable plastics. Our final product would be a one-step continuous process in which feather waste could be continually added to B. subtilis cultures.” -University of chicago. From the collaboration with the university of chicago we hoped to get advice from them concerning our project and the issue we are tackling.

Our last outreach mission is still in progress. One of our teachers, Ms. Puurunen, will present a Ted Talk at TedX Canmore in October 2015. Her presentation will spread the word about iGEM, our team, the project, synthetic biology, and elevating science education in general. Ideally, her talk will reach a global audience!

Consort iGEM Team Our third collaboration has taken place with our friends, the Consort IGEM team from Consort Alberta. We have also been able to present in front of them and talk to them one on one about our projects meaning that we both have a lot of information regarding each other’s projects. For this reason consort contacted us and asked us if we would right a short report talking about their project, concerns that we have with their project, ways to address these concerns, general advice and more.

Contact us at alinaarvisais@isidore.redeemer.ab.ca or taliadixon@isidore.redeemer.ab.ca, or even send a message to our facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/OLeSsence