Team:Ionis Paris/Attributions

Project history

IONIS Paris is composed of 10 students from 3 different schools : ESME Sudria, EPITA and Sup’Biotech, who dedicated their last 9 months to create COBATECT! IONIS Paris has been participating in iGEM since its creation 7 years ago. Sup’Biotech teaches synthetic biology in its 4th year program at the same time as the iGEM competition but the course materials and the syllabus aren’t available online.

The story of our project began with a first idea, predicting an epilepsy crisis before thanks to VOC, through a biosensor or a bio-electronic sensor.

Sadly our idea was too ambitious and not feasible as the system would have been too long to react in comparison with the short span of time between the apparition of the VOCs and the crisis to detect. Therefore, we had to abandon the idea, but we kept the bio-electronic sensor in mind during our research.

In May, Camille and Viktoriia saw a documentary on food supplements and needs in vitamins, which gave them the idea of working on vitamins, and more particularly vitamin B12. We chose to work on vitamin B12 because of its importance for vegeterian and vegan people.

We started to be interested in the subject and to search more in depth on vitamin B12, its properties, its specificities,...

We then noticed that self-home-tests did not exist, which gave us the idea to create our own.
Then followed bibliographic research, interviews with professionals, many hours to conceptualize the synthetic biology behind our ideas.

Once all our theoretical parts were solved, we started the practical part in the laboratory, at the beginning of July.

Description of the team

Wet lab:

We would like to acknowledge the dedication of the Wet Lab team, Marie Guillaume, Casilda Hitier, Julian Leduc (our lab head) and Quentin Naudin, and their implication on the laboratory experiments during all the project. For this we would like to gratefully thank them.

We also want to thank Matthieu Da Costa and Charlotte Duteil for helping us and responding to all our questions about our experiment. But also our primary PI's, Thomas Lemonnier, and Ambre Leleu for having supervised us.

Special thanks to the teams Istanbul Tech, and U Paris BME, for working with us on bettering our projects through collaborations and meetings.

Hardware/software team:

We would like to thank all the hard work of Quentin Naudin and Morgan Vaterkowski for their work on the electronic device to measure our signal made by Shewanella oneidensis and the 3D modeling of our prototype.

We also want to thank Julien Grimaud and Christian Chabrerie for guiding us with the electronic part and the coding of Arduino.

And Amélys Desbiol for her advice and her time helping us realise the 3D model.

Wiki

We would like to thank Benjamin Decreusefond for his effort in creating our wiki page from beginning to end. He worked hard and was helped by Marie Guillaume, Quentin Naudin, Casilda Hitier and Julian Leduc! We are proud of the results since it wasn't their speciality... at all. Finally, a real pro, Maxime Marchand (student in ESGI), helped us at the very end for the final design.

Human practices

A huge thanks to Camille Zany, the head of Human Practices for her hard work in organizing several interviews of professionals such as vegan associations and doctors, to collect their opinions and insight on vitamin B12. And also for participating in the organization of different presentations such as the French Meetup, “Cité des Sciences”, the iGEM Week in the campus and the initiation to biology in a Elementary School. Thanks also to Jeanne Daubigné for her help at the "Cité des Sciences".

We would also like to thank Arrya Jayasundara and Viktoriia Ovchinnikova for their participation in the iGEM Thrace ERASMUS exchange.

Sponsorship Team:

We would like to thank Viktoriia Ovchinnikova for her dedication to finding sponsors which helped make the laboratory work easier.

Communication Team:

We also would like to thank the communication team Casilda Hitier and Camille Zany for relaying our project on all our social media (Instagram, Facebook and Linkedin), to launching our gofundme and also participating in the organisation on several events such as the iGEM Week in the campus, the iGEM France MeetUp, ...

Team Leader, Secretary and Treasurer:

We would like to express an immense thanks to our team leader Quentin Naudin for always encouraging and motivating us during the project. Marie Guillaume for her incredible sense of organization, which made her the best secretary, and Casilda Hitier, our treasurer, for handling the budget.

Advisor support and advice:

Thomas Lemonnier, (PhD) our Primary PI, for his supervision during the project, for all his suggestions to improve the project, and his help.

Matthieu Da Costa, our Secondary PI, for always taking the time to respond to all our questions, to finding solutions to our problems, checking our constructions and presentation coaching.

Charlotte Duteil, for her kindness and motivation, for taking the time to always be there for the lab team when needed, for checking our construction.

Ambre Leleu, for teaching us the basics of synthetic biology and how to use SnapGene, and also for providing us with Shewanella oneidensis and presentation coaching.

Julien Grimaud, (PhD) for having initiated us with the electronic part and lending us an arduino to do our measurements.

Amelys Debiol, for guiding us how to use the 3D printing and making us cute keychains.

Maxime Marchand, for all the help and advice for the creation of the wiki.

General support and advice:

ESME Sudria, EPITA and Sup'Biotech.

Vanessa Proux, Sup’Biotech Executive Director, for financial, logistical and personnel support.

Christian Chabrerie, Head of the Major health at EPITA, for helping us coding the Arduino.

Olivia Aubertin, Agathe Brajou and Maeva Houri, the communication department at Sup’Biotech, for their support in communicating our project in the campus and in the social networks. Especially, Maeva for her help during our diverse events on the campus during the year to raise money for our project.

Romain El Andaloussi, Head of the Culinary Biotechnologies laboratory at Sup’Biotech, for allowing us to use the kitchen during our events and for his support.

Albane Mabro, former president of iGEM IONIS 2021, for helping us getting started with this adventure.

Tam Tanguy Tran, for helping us with the wiki.

Lucile Gros and Baptiste Guepin, for making us our incredible logo Cobatect.

Lab support and advice:

Sophie Mothre (PhD), Marine Mercier and Johann Habersetzer (PhD), the Sup’Biotech Innovation Project departement team, for allowing us to use their laboratory during all the summer and their help.

Patrick Gonzalez (PhD), Agnès Saint-Pol (PhD), and Valentina Gligorijevic (PhD), the LRPIA department team, for letting us enter your lab to make our agarose gels for the electrophoresis and their multiple help during the year.

Estelle Mogensen, (PhD) and her technician team, the laboratory department team at Sup’Biotech, for letting us enter their laboratory for several weeks and for using their equipment.

Frank Yates, (PhD), Director of research at Sup’Biotech, for advising us during the project.

Julien Brillard, (PhD), researcher at INRA Univ Montpellier, for helping us with our conjugaison of Shewanella oneidensis and giving us E.coli WM354 for doing our conjugaison.

Brecht De Paepe (PhD), PostDoc at U Ghent University in the department of Biochemical and Microbial Technology, for helping us better understand the conjugaison of Shewanella oneidensis.

Human Practice support and advice:

Dr Blanchet-Mazuel, Dr Maginot and Badariotti, volunteer at ONAV, French Vegetarianism Association and National Observatory, for their responses and interest to our project.

Dr Valdes-Socin, doctor specialized in blood tests and in vitamin B12 detection, for his responses on vitamin B12 and the different types of test existing.

Paul Lubrano, former iGEMer, for his talk during the iGEM Week about the “Conversion of E.coli to generate all biomass carbon from Co2”.

Ida Bost, Social sciences teacher in Sup’Biotech, for giving us advice in scientific popularization.

Romain El Andaloussi, Head of the Culinary Biotechnologies laboratory at Sup’Biotech, for allowing us to use the kitchen during our events and for his support.

Innov’Eat and BD2S, the food and sport association of Sup’Biotech and EPITA, for helping us during our various events on campus and for teaching us how to cook delicious meals or how to win in a beer pong competition.

Ephemere, the photography association of Sup’Biotech, EPITA and Epitech, for covering all our events and for taking beautiful pictures.

All the teams we worked with for the collaborations: Istanbul Tech, UParis BME, Bettencourt, GO-Paris Saclay, Sorbonne, Bielefeld, Duesseldorf, Toulouse, Aix Marseille, Nantes, Evry, Darmstadt, Tudelft and Nothern BC.

We would also like to thank all the following people who supported us in our crowdfunding campaign:


  • Michelle Caberlin
  • Marie-Espérance Mathieu de Vienne
  • Marine Pasquier
  • Elliot Coquerel
  • Emma Sicherre
  • Stephan Clement
  • Quentin Naudin
  • Lionel Hitier
  • Emma Anquez
  • Maureen Maillard
  • Julie Collis
  • Quentin Laurent
  • Matteo Carducci
  • Vanessa Proux
  • Michelle Caberlin
  • Marlène Caire
  • Maria Caberlin
  • Valerie Leduc
  • Michelle Caberlin
  • Isabelle May
  • Monique Michellet
  • Aldo Carberlin
  • Mario Palazzo Oddo
  • Sylvie Nedonchelle
  • Martine Cougourdan
  • Marc Stanord
  • Henri-Paul Martin
  • Isabelle Caire
  • Nicolas Guillaume
  • Michel Geissel
  • Antoine Viale
  • Nathalie De Daim
  • Daniel Ettouati
  • Marijana Smetisko
  • Ana Smetisko
  • Françoise Lecocq
  • Olivier François
  • Sylvie Zany
  • Hubert Hitier
  • Stephane Naudin
  • Isabelle Ginestet Naudin

  • And all those sponsors who preferred to stay anonymous

Big thanks to our sponsors :