Team:OhioState/Attributions
Attributions
We would like to thank everyone who helped us with our project this year, no matter if it was a small or large contribution. A special thanks goes out to the individuals below and those of the Battelle Center who provided insightful comments and thought provoking questions when we were trying to determine our final project idea.
Consultants
Dr. Steve Abedon
Hover Over Me!
Dr. Abedon was instrumental in getting our project started. We met with him early on and he provided insight into paths we should stay away from as well as questions that we should be careful to answer and think about.
Dr. Eric Adkins
Hover Over Me!
Working as an ICU and ED doctor, his advice and viewpoint on sepsis was valuable for both HP and Dry Lab. His insight into catheters helped us move on from the idea of designing a new catheter.
Dr. Kevin Bosse
Hover Over Me!
As the director of the research of regulatory affairs at Nationwide Children’s Hospital, our meeting with Dr. Bosse was focused on our regulations work. He provided insight for our proposal and gave us the idea of making a document with guidelines for researchers developing phage therapy.
Evan Boylan
Hover Over Me!
As our point of contact for the summer camp, Evan’s ability to stack our biological topics along with his robotics/coding topics (soil bacteria and centrifuge experiment) allowed the kids to experience how biology and technology can come together with powerful results.
Austin Cool
Hover Over Me!
Austin met with the Dry Lab group to discuss the potential of using protein docking. His willingness to help and ensure our understanding was appreciated. Despite not going forward with docking, Austin’s explanation made sure we grasped why docking wouldn’t advance the project so we could focus on other models.
Ben Daigle
Hover Over Me!
With a team of non-coders and no returning wiki creators from last year, our meeting with web-designer Mr. Daigle was invaluable. Anyone can learn to code, but Mr. Daigle helped us organize a plan of attack for the wiki as well as introducing us to programs (WAVE), that we could use to evaluate the accessibility of our website once completed.
Dr. Anik Debnath
Hover Over Me!
We spoke with Dr. Debnath on a range of topics, from models to regulations. For each topic he provided us with insight on how we can improve. He confirmed that docking wouldn’t be a good route and that we should instead focus on a simplified bacterial mutation rate model. Dr. Debnath suggested looking at phage therapy upscaling and cost when considering our regulations work.
Dr. John Gunn
Hover Over Me!
Our meeting with Dr. Gunn was Wet Lab oriented. He helped us narrow down our list of anti-lipid A proteins, while also confirming the efficacy of our phosphate modifying proteins. Dr. Gunn also suggested using HEK TLR4 reporter cell lines over tissue assays when testing.
Dr. Dan Mandell
Hover Over Me!
Dr. Mandell offered insight on all aspects of our project. From his experience with computational biology, he was the first to suggest that docking may not yield the results we want and focusing on bacterial mutation would be better for us. Dr. Mandell expressed support for our children’s book idea and suggested for our regulation that we contact the FDA with ideas about how much sepsis costs society as a whole.
Prof. Efthimios Parasidis
Hover Over Me!
As a law and public health professor, his input into our regulations work was vital. He advised us on our ethical considerations of our treatment and even suggested we get a patent for our work. Beyond feedback on our regulations document, Prof. Parasidis suggested we look at animal studies as a means for FDA approval for human subjects.
Dr. Tom Patterson
Hover Over Me!
Being the first person in the U.S. to receive phage therapy, Dr. Patterson’s experience was one we definitely wanted to hear. He also gave us numerous contacts from his own experience, such as the FDA contact who helped get the phage therapy treatment compassionate care use approval.
Dr. Vatsan Raman
Hover Over Me!
Having previously worked with iGEM teams, Dr. Raman asked us some amazing, judge-worthy, questions that helped us find flaws in our project presentation. He gave us back up plans in case our phage kit didn’t come in on time. For HP, he reiterated sentiments about our regulations focusing on the cost and upscaling of our phage therapy. Dr. Raman also suggested our final model, a bacteria-phage population model.
Dr. Jim Rathman
Hover Over Me!
As an OSU professor, one class Dr. Rathman teaches is Models & Simulations. His knowledge of MATLAB and overall modeling techniques helped us progress with our model. Dr. Rathman suggested how to handle both the S prime and P prime terms in the model by using a mass matrix. Despite this not fixing our issue, we are grateful for his guidance and suggestions, they allowed us to reach our final model.
Dr. Steffanie Strathdee
Hover Over Me!
She is the author of The Perfect Predator, the book about her husband receiving phage therapy. Her book provided a lot of useful info about phage therapy, but physically speaking to Dr. Strathdee was even better. She gave us the idea to model how bacteria are mutating to be able to judge when a phage cocktail will become useless. Including receptors on our phage database also stemmed from this conversation.
Brooke Zentmeyer
Hover Over Me!
As a graduate law student, we valued Brooke’s opinion on our regulation efforts. She provided us with excellent context and resources about how regulations get passed through the FDA. Brooke also gave us insights on the wording and aspects of phage therapy we should use/focus on when writing our regulations.
Our Advisors
Our advisors were instrumental in going from ideas to a project with results. Dr. Brian Ahmer and Dr. Jerry Lio were our primary and secondary PIs this year. Their continual help regarding lab space and Wet Lab ideas was invaluable. As Ohio State does not have a synthetic biology course, the lectures/research they presented to us helped to supplement our knowledge to create a well thought out project. We would like to thank our other advisors as well, Dr. Anice Sabag-Daigle, Andrew Schwieters, Erin Boulanger, Allison Howell, and Jacob Riina. These advisors helped us with every aspect of our Project, from Dry Lab to HP, and we are grateful for their guidance, experience, and help.
THE Team
Ankit Annapareddy served as the Funding Committee leader. He set up many of the team’s funding documents and kept track of our finances. The BuckeyeFunder, which allows us to reach out to alumni for funding opportunities, was also his doing. Outside of Funding, Ankit was a part of Wet Lab, specifically beginning by looking into the biosynthesis of Lipid A. He continued by working with Wet Lab throughout the summer, devoting most of his time there. He also created the centrifuge lab for the summer camp!
Ryan Burrows headed the Dry Lab Committee. He oversaw Dry Lab meetings while also creating the population model himself. He took part in Human Practices, creating the Strawberry DNA and Microbial Fuel Cell Labs for the Summer Camp as well as designing and writing the script for the children’s book. Ryan was also one of the primary wiki coders, helping bring the project to life online.
Lizzie Chung was the Vice President. She was largely in charge of communicating with other iGEM teams for any collaborations the committees’ wanted to set up. Beyond VP, Lizzie was heavily involved in both Wet Lab, Dry Lab, and HP. She worked various jobs in Wet Lab and assisted with model brainstorming in Dry Lab. Lizzie headed up the regulation work as part of her HP involvement.
Lindsay Drumm was our Media leader. She maintained all of our social media platforms and created a majority of images for our social media as well as the initial outlines for the children's book characters. Lindsay initially took part in Wet Lab and was one of the co-researchers of the anti-lipid A protein LALF, before she switched to become more involved in Human Practices.
Satvik Kethireddy headed the Wet Lab Committee. He was in charge of planning and everything that had to be done for Wet Lab. Satvik was our go to science brain and was heavily focused on the intricate details and happenings of the Wet Lab all the while actually taking part in Wet Lab as well.
Saranya Lamba started her Wet Lab work by researching the anti-lipid A protein LptA. She continued working in the lab and conducting lab work throughout the rest of her Wet Lab involvement. Beyond Wet Lab, Saranya took part in Human Practices. She helped run the Summer Camp along with working on the regulation portion of HP.
Joey Lo was the leader of Human Practices. She helped organize and run the Summer Camp activities along with directing HP happenings and writing a portion of the children’s book script. Joey was also involved in Wet Lab, being a co-researcher of LALF and continuing to to help in the lab as our project progressed.
Nathan Meyer spent his time helping out both Wet Lab and HP. As a part of HP, Nathan found and adapted the fluorescent bacteria transformation lab for the Summer Camp as well as helping out with the regulations side of HP. Nathan helped with Wet Lab, carrying out experiments and furthering our project.
Lindsey Shimoda served as our Team’s President. She was a true Swiss army knife. In the off-season, she worked to compile and organize documents needed for the season. She set up a majority of the recruitment efforts for the 2021 iGEM team and continued her organizational efforts throughout the year. Lindsey was involved with Dry Lab, HP, and the Wiki teams. She created the Epidemiology and Microbial Fuel Cell Labs for the Summer Camp and helped run the camp. Lindsey was in charge of the Outside Excellence Medal criteria and was also one of the primary wiki coders; designing color schemes, layouts, and coding it all in.
Yingyi Zhu was involved in both Wet and Dry Lab. As a part of Wet Lab she researched sepsis TLR and continued to work in lab. Yingyi was in charge of our phage database where she compiled a list of phages found to target sepsis causing bacteria.
Fundraising
We would like to thank Integrated DNA Technologies, iGEM, New England BioLabs, geneious prime, Ohio State’s Infectious Diseases Institute (IDI), Office of Diversity and Inclusion, College of Engineering, College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences, and College of Arts and Sciences for their generosity in helping finance our team.
We would like to thank everyone who donated through our BuckeyeFunder platform.
