Organization
The SynFronteras team (UNILA_LatAm) carries in its history three significant milestones. The first being its creation, by the four founder members, Giulio, Maria, Matheus, and Samuel, in march 2020. Soon after that, with the development of our SynBio club, the team went through its second expansion with five more members, Giovanna, Milena, Sara, Rosane, and Lucas, who arrived in July 2020. Months later, in April 2021, we did a selective process that culminated in nine more members, Agatha, Anderson, Elize, Johana, Julio, Viviana, Caio, Elizandra, and Michelli. Now our beloved team is complete.
Each member had at least one specific task along our path, being responsible for its accomplishment.
As our team size varied, so did our organization. In the beginning, everyone did all the research together, helping to elaborate the project's idea. With the entree of new members, we felt the need to divide into work fronts to get the job done better, which has been our organization ever since.
General coordinator
Giulio Mendes Braatz - Worked in the organization of the team, ensuring that all fronts were on the same page and that the team was in tune. He was, for a period, the coordinator of Human Practices.
Communication
Viviana Lopez Colorado - Coordinator - Mainly worked on preparing and translating the texts for social media, coordinating the production of the presentation video, and creating the "knowing BioPank" series.
Lucas Ovelar - He was responsible for almost all of our visual identity. Lucas coordinated the promotional video production, designed the images of our posts on Instagram, participated in the presentation video production, and coordinated the wiki front.
Giovanna Zanette - Was responsible for managing our social media, attracting new followers, content production in the Instagram stories, and creating the "Ask a vet" series.
Dry Lab
Samuel Chagas de Assis - Coordinator - He worked on designing our circuit with the wet lab front and created our kinetics and molecular dynamics models. In addition, he designed the Toehold RNA Switch library.
Dianeth Sara Lima- Worked on the theoretical research of our circuit design and supported the development of the Toehold RNA Switch.
Johana Regalado - Supported the modeling area, the bacterial growth code, and the research for parameters for our model.
Caio Ramos - Worked on the HTML programming of our wiki.
Wet Lab
Matheus Araújo - Coordinator - He worked on the design of our circuit and was responsible for our labwork's experimental design and execution.
Milena Challco - Worked on the experimental design of the AMP purification.
Anderson Alievi - Coordinated the discussion about safety in our project and reviewed our experimental designs
Michelli Teixeira - Worked on the experimental design of the trypsin assay and on the review of other experimental designs.
Human Practices
Agatha Mendes - Worked on the Fighting underreporting project and participated in meetings with experts about the implementation of our project.
Elize Marcondes - Worked on the Leishmaniasis Awareness Survey and on the solidarity raffle.
Rosane Marcondes - Coordinator for a period - She created and worked on the fighting underreporting project and was responsible for networking with animal protectors.
Funding
Maria Beatriz Barmaimon - Coordinator - She wrote the document 'How to fund', created our sponsorship plan, and worked in the fulfillment of the sponsor's counterparts.
Elizandra Camilo - Worked in fulfilling some of our sponsor's counterparts
Leiber Julio Granda Galvis - Worked in fulfilling some of our sponsor's counterparts
Summary of works
However, the team members didn't just work on their original fronts, and to have an idea of how much we had done, we created a semi-self-assessment questionnaire in which members could rate their work on other fronts. To avoid the underrating of one's hard work, we agreed as a team that the coordinators would have the freedom to raise these notes, assigning them fairly. The survey with modifications by the coordinators resulted in this table.
PIs & advisors
Cristian Rojas - PI - He was the first to believe in our potential. He helped us with financial support, lab equipment, paperwork, circuit design, and experiments.
Kelvinson Viana - Secondary PI - Helped us with feedback about our approach, gave us the strain of Leishmania infatum, and reviewed scientific divulgation material we produced about leishmaniasis.
Eric Velasco - He was the one who introduced us to paratransgenesis and BioTROJAN (USP-2017). In addition, he was by our side in some lab experiments and got a lot of lab supplies for our team.
Tiago Lubiana - Helped us with the design of our circuit, organization of the team, wiki and gave us relevant information about paratransgenesis.
Marcelo Ramalho-Ortigão - Helped us with feedback on our circuit design, implementation strategies and suggested the trypsin experiment.
Felipe Buson - Helped us with the design of our circuit, wiki and in programming our model.
Acknowledgments
To Dr. Danielle Pedrolli for sending us a Bacillus subtilis 168 strain and the plasmids pBS1C and pBS0E for Escherichia coli and for helping us with the Toehold Switch design.
To Dr. Rafaella Bonugli-Santos for providing us with laboratory supplies
To Dr. Jorge Ruiz for providing us with laboratory supplies and institutionalization of our project
To Henrique Retti for helping us with modeling
To Guilherme Kundlatsch, Alina Rodrigues and Marcelo de Souza for presenting the synbio world to us
To Giovanni Mendes for helping us in the translation of the promotional video
To Cibele Zolnier for helping us solving iGEM related problems
To Deborah Schafhauser for helping us with customs bureaucracy
To Patrick Squizato for providing us the means to study synbio
To Dr. Maria Leandra e Dr. Maria Claudia for helping us with institutional bureaucracy and providing us with laboratory supplies
To Jimmy Hayden and Heloisa Oss Boll for helping us solving iGEM related problems
To Gleisson & Carla Grade for helping us with institutional bureaucracy
To Carol Dedonatti, Daniel Junior, Natália Peres, and Natasha Smidt for helping us get in touch with Itaipu, publicizing our project and believing we could make a change in the city.
To Yuri Perez for being always so solicitous, patient, and didactic.
To Giulia Ramella for helping us plan our institutional funding.
To Maria Eliza USP for helping us with the raffle organization.
To Meyre Aquino for rescuing Pank, believing in us, and providing us a network with other animal protectors.
To Pedro Tannus for the help with the promotional video.
To Almiro Neto for helping us solve wiki-related problems.
To Thaila Soares for participating in our video series and taking care of Leilo