Team:Uppsala/Attributions
Team Attributions
Team Members
Paarkavi Udayakumar
Served as one of the project managers of the project. Worked on putting the team together. Facilitated communication internally and externally. Helped with some lab experiments and provided assistance to the groups in terms of resources and communication.
Sebastian Uggla
Served as one of the project managers of the project. Helped plan the work to do throughout the year and facilitated communication within the team as well as communication between the team and faculty.
Emelie Oscarsson
Designed the novel mutations to increase binding affinity. Lab coordinator for lab group 1. Partook in the overall planning of the lab experiments including protocol assembly, designing and ordering primers and troubleshooting problems during the wet lab. Planned and led the upscaling at Testa Center. Constructed a list of wet lab reagents and ensured availability of material. Member of Sponsoring and Wiki groups. Led the lab work during the high school visit. Wrote the part registry pages.
Daniel Lake
Lab coordinator for group 2. Designed and ordered primers, troubleshoot problems in the wet lab, member of the Human Practice group. Was part of the testa group (for upscaling) and performed the heparin column purification. Contributed to several Wiki pages including Engineering Success and Sustainable Development goals.
Diogo Filipe
Planned and coordinated the wet-lab work which included designing and performing the experiments, troubleshooting, and contacting experts and faculty members for advice and/or access to facilities/equipment. Collaborated in the planning and execution of the expert interviews that had a direct impact on the wet-lab approach of the project. Collaborated in the organization and execution of the Future Farming Webinar.
Natalia Reynisdottir
Brought the initial idea to cover the field of cellular agriculture. Coordinator of the Human Practice and Sponsoring groups. Managed public relations for the project and led the emphasis on the human practice projects pursued. Drove collaborations for the team, both with other iGEM teams and external partners. Organized and led the Future Farming webinar. Ensured availability of material by arranging with lab coordinators.
Milena Trabert
Directing, animating, editing, and helping with writing the promotional video. Coordinator of the Graphic Design group, Graphic Design for the Wiki, Farmer's survey, and Indiegogo page. Wet lab work as co-coordinator of group 3. Helped on writing and reviewing the modelling page, most intensively the homology model and the bioreactor for cell growth. Planning and preparation of the (not conducted) mammalian cell culture experiments. Helped with writing and filming the presentation video. Also made and animated the graphics for the presentation video.
Patrick Hennig
Leader of Wiki group: trained group in html/css/js (web development programming languages), lead technical development of the Wiki (visual design was done in collaboration with Graphical Design and all members of both groups). Co-leader of Modelling group: technical leader of supercomputer (Uppmax) interaction, for which programmed different things for linux bash, and other things in python. (Code is summarized for optional software tool deliverable)
Subashini Kennedy
Modelling group coordinator. Contributed in the framing surveys, contacted the U-print team for the 3D printing of FGF2 and receptor, helped with residue scanning mutations for filtering mutations, helped writing and reviewing the homology model, participated in the molecular dynamics calculations, helped to gather speakers for webinar. Contributed extensively to the Human Practice Wiki pages, especially Integrated Human Practice.
Tove Jonsson
Worked actively in the wetlab. Member of Graphic Design and Wiki groups, contributed to the development of the Wiki and with Graphic Design for events and social media. Designed the merchandise and helped to plan the order.
Niklas Eckert Elfving
Worked in the Modelling group and did extensive in-silico evaluation of mutations. Worked in the wet lab as well. Served as a student TA during the high school visit.
Gustaf Hederoth
Worked actively in the wet lab for lab-group 3 and was responsible for writing the notebook wiki page. Was also a part of the Testa team and helped scale-up expression of FGF2. Was part of the Wiki group and contributed to the Wiki's layout.
Alexander Blomlöf
Created the standard side page together with the Wiki group. Planned and coordinated 2 weeks in lab group 1. Did wet lab work. Designed primers together with lab coordinators. Served as a student TA during the highschool visit. Narrowed down mutations early on with PyMOL and ClusPro.
Maria Ovezik
Contributed extensively to the wet-lab work as co-coordinator of group 3. Contributed and led the planning of the Future Farming webinar. Contribution, in the beginning, in trying to find what amino acids to mutate.
Caroline Normann
Led the social media group and planned the content. Worked in the wet lab as part of group 3 and was also involved in the Sponsoring group by doing outreach to companies.
Andreea Carmen Ciobanu
Member of wet lab 2. Did the modelling contribution for group 2 which involved making and evaluating a homology model, participated in finding novel mutations, and worked on the bioreactor and cell growth model. Participated extensively in writing the modelling page. Member of the graphical design team and helped with the creation of some of the graphics requested by the team members. Performed the team’s photoshoot. Implemented new strategies to raise the engagement on social media in order to make the educational content more accessible.
Bela Soares
Member of the Graphical Design and Social Media groups. Worked on templates mainly for social media, and also some graphics for the Wiki pages. Involved in making content for CellAg Monday and Farmers Friday. Did wet lab work as a member of group 2 and was a part of the Testa team. Organised and wrote the benchling page for lab group 2. Helped in implementing strategies for better engagement in social media.
Aditi Bahadur
Did wet lab work, worked on the bioreactor and cell growth model along with participating in the discussions about the in-silico mutations. As a part of sponsoring, she performed outreach for our wet lab work. Responsible for the voice over for the project video in Hindi.
Tanya Al-Khafaf
Contribution to the wet labs. Contactedontacting and reached out to companies and organisations for sponsoring and funding. Member of Sponsoring and Social Media groups, involved in the content for Cellag Monday, Company Wednesday and Farmers Friday. Co-coordinator for lab group 2, planned and designed protocols for the Testa Center upscaling and was a member of the Testa team.
Supervisors
Konrad Gras
As our teaching assistant, Konrad has always been there for us. He was present during our strategic meetings, guided us in the lab throughout summer and helped us get access to crucial pieces of equipment. He has been available on short notice and gone above and beyond his responsibilities in helping us throughout the year. He also helped review our project deliverables.
Margareta Krabbe
As our primary PI, Margareta has provided us with inspiration and her experiences of iGEM as well as her career within biotechnology. She also helped coordinate the communication with faculty and organize the practicalities of our work during summer within the department at our University. Margareta also was supportive of our aspirations for the project plan and booked time at Testa center through Uppsala University, who generously funded the booking for our project. Margareta also coordinated the meeting with highschool students, with whom we collaborated towards our goals for Integrated Human practice.
Anthony Forster
As our secondary PI, Anthony has given us very valuable input on our project throughout the year. He crucially helped us solve our lab-related issues on several occasions during summer, which also included providing us with multiple materials we required for the lab work over the summer, like the backbone of our vector and control plasmids.
Acknowledgements
Throughout the year we have received support from a number of amazing people and organizations that we want to highlight. We could not have done even half of what we accomplished without the support of these people.
General Support
Biology Education Centre (UU)
Thank you for providing our team with a laboratory and equipment. Special thanks to the head of the department, Henning Blom for being open for discussions on the team’s needs and work in regards to the pandemic restrictions.
Department for Cell and Molecular Biology (ICM) (UU)
Thank you for allowing us to use your equipment for certain experiments and for providing us with a very generous amount of funding for our project, without which a lot of resources would have been out of reach for the project. Thank you for also supporting us by providing expert opinions on the complex protocols we were to pursue.
iGEM Uppsala Association
Thank you for connecting us with previous iGEM Uppsala team members, doing a handover for our group and providing us with valuable advice.
Mikael Olsson
Environmental chemist at Biomedical Center (BMC), BMC Intent
Thank you for giving us a biosafety and waste management tour of the campus and making sure the work we did during summer was as safe as possible.
Mats Omarin
Department technician at Biology Education Centre
Thank you for answering practical questions about the lab, helping us move our equipment around and answering urgent calls about equipment failure.
Peter Lillhager
Biomedical Analyst at Biology Education Centre
Thank you for giving us a practical safety tour of the lab, answering all our questions that arose during summer, helping us find our way in the lab and ordering most of our materials.
Afsaneh Ahmadzadeh
Facilities manager at Biology Education Centre
Thank you for helping us to order our material throughout the summer.
Research Support
Chandra Sekhar Mandava
Researcher at Department of Cell and Molecular Biology, Molecular Biology
Thank you for your expert advice during the planning of the upscaling project as well as joining us in the Testa Center lab to guide us while using new equipment, for lab guidance at BMC after Testa upscaling to finalize the upscaling project and for lending us equipment that was needed to go forward with the lab work.
Carl-Henrik Heldin
Senior professor at the Department of Medical Biochemistry and Microbiology, Biochemistry, and Cell- and Tumor Biology at Uppsala University
Thank you for providing essential feedback on our project idea while it was still being developed. This feedback was extremely valuable due to Carl-Henrik’s extensive experience with growth factors, especially TGF-beta. We are incredibly thankful for the valuable insights that helped us to select which approaches would be more likely to succeed when improving a growth factor such as FGF2.
Terese Bergfors
Researcher at Department of Cell and Molecular Biology, Structural Biology
Thank you for your tremendous support throughout our purification process, in terms of helping with the constant systems (for the lysis of cells), centrifuge, heparin columns and the ÄKTA system. Thank you very much for letting us use these resources for our project.
Julia Griese
Research assistant at Department of Cell and Molecular Biology, Structural Biology
Thank you for allowing us to use the equipment at the structural biology department.
Maria Selmer
Professor at Department of Cell and Molecular Biology, Structural Biology
Thank you for allowing us to use the equipment at the structural biology department.
Shabbir Ahmad
Researcher at Department of Cell and Molecular Biology, Structural Biology
Thank you for teaching several team members how to use the french press and centrifuge at the structural biology department.
Alžběta Cardová
Business Development Manager at Enantis
Thank you for answering questions about the production of FGF2, one of the easier molecules to produce in their experience and offering to provide any guidance if needed in the future.
Martin Lord, Antonino Napoleone, Triinu Linkgreim
Thank you for the feedback on our scale-up plan for Testa center. Also, thanks for giving us many helpful recommendations on characterization assays such as ELISA, SPR and ITC.
Lena Claesson-Welsh
Professor in Vascular Biology at Uppsala University
Thank you for kindly providing a cryovial of bovine aortic endothelial cells that would be used for testing the growth factors and for also providing a vial of commercial bovine FGF2 to the team. This bovine FGF2 vial would be used as a control on the cell proliferation assays that were planned. Lena also suggested Elin Sjöberg as an expert that could be interviewed by the team for advice on mammalian cell culture.
Nils Welsh
Professor at the Department of Medical Cell Biology at Uppsala University
Thank you for allowing the team to store the bovine aortic endothelial cells in your -150 ºC freezer.
Letian Bao
PhD student at the Department of Cell and Molecular Biology at Uppsala University
Thank you for providing 2-mercaptoethanol to the team and for expert assistance, providing materials and lectures about chromoproteins during the high school visit.
Filipa Oliveira
Scholarship holder at the Department of Immunology, Genetics and Pathology at Uppsala University
Thank you for the support in starting and maintaining the mammalian cell cultures.
Laura Rojas-Lopez
PhD student at the Department of Cell and Molecular Biology at Uppsala
Thank you for your problem solving mindset in providing us the security of having access to FBS in case regulations would prevent us from receiving sponsored samples locally. Special thanks to the Professor Staffan Svärd's Group for offering to provide us a bottle of FBS to use to culture our mammalian cells.
Testa Center
Thank you for giving us a lot of help in the upscaling process of our project by letting us use your facilities. Adam Wegelius, Jesper Hedberg, Jens Hammarlund, Charlotte Brink and Chandra Sekhar Mandava at Testa gave us some really important hands-on help with the equipment and expert advice, we could not have performed upscaling without you.
- Adam Wegelius Bioprocess specialist for advising us in the lab and on our project, and teaching us how to use 5L bioreactors.
- Jesper Hedberg Director for welcoming us to Testa Center, giving advice on our project and partaking in our Bioscaling event.
- Jens Hammarlund Head of IT and Digital for IT support, welcoming us at Testa Center and for promoting our project.
- Charlotte Brink Downstream Specialist for showing us how to use an ÄKTA pure system for IMAC for large scale protein purification.
Special thanks to the following:
Dry Lab Support
Tobias Jakobsson (UU)
Project Manager at Biology Education Centre
Thank you for providing IT support throughout our project, specifically for accessing the UPPMAX supercomputer cluster, Linux computers and giving us access to computers and software.
Hugo Gutierrez de Teran
Senior lecturer/Associate Professor at Department of Cell and Molecular Biology, Computational Biology and Bioinformatics
Thank you for introducing us to, and providing support for the software package ‘QresFEP' and helping us to evaluate point mutations in FGF2. Our Modelling group has greatly benefited from your expertise.
Florian van der Ent and Lucien Koenekoop
PhD students at Department of Cell and Molecular Biology, Computational Biology and Bioinformatics
Thank you for helping us in setting up the Q software, and also supporting us through our process of mutation evaluation.
Olle Eriksson
Research engineer at U-Print, Uppsala university 3D printing facility
Thank you for helping us construct a 3D print of FGF2 and its receptor.
Henning Henschel
Researcher at the Department of Medicinal Chemistry
Thank you for helping us with the functions of Maestro to work with mutations.
Adam Malik
Post Doctoral Researcher at the Department of Immunology
Thank you for helping us with the mathematical model.
Alexandr Nasedkin
Researcher at Department of Cell and Molecular Biology, Molecular Biophysics
Thank you for giving us feedback on our Molecular Dynamics approaches in the dry lab.
Alvin O’Sullivan
University Lecturer at the Department of Game Design
Thank you for giving us a lecture on the foundational principles and theory of graphical design. Your advice on our logo and color scheme ideas was incredibly helpful to our project. For example, thanks to your tip we redesigned the logo by removing the nostrils to make it clearer in smaller formats.
Outreach, Education and PR
New Harvest
New Harvest is a non-profit research institute within the field of cellular agriculture. They are true pioneers, being the first organization to support cultivated meat research and are probably still the most influential to date. We want to thank them for their valuable collaboration throughout the summer. Their support was immensely important for our project’s visibility and outreach opportunities.
Not only did they support us with a number of connections and expert advice throughout our project, but they also provided support leading up to our Future Farming webinar. Their assistance encouraged us to include a virtual social networking component after presentations for a more informal engagement with the attendees. They introduced us to an amazing new virtual world networking solution called Sophya world. This enabled us to host a social networking event, which would not have been possible without the support from New Harvest.
- Breanna Duffy: Research Operations and Outreach Director, for being our primary contact at New Harvest and for her continuous support and enthusiasm towards our project. This included connections with industry and academia. Also for valuable support using Sophya.
- Morgan Ziegelski: Science Communication Intern, for assisting us with troubleshooting and hosting in Sophya.
- Yadira Tejeda-Saldana: Research Collaborations Director, for offering us support.
- Isha Datar: Executive Director, for all that she has done for the field of cellular agriculture and for believing in our project by connecting us with Breanna in our initial outreach.
Special thanks to the following individuals:
SciLifeLab
SciLifeLab is an institution for the advancement of molecular biosciences in Sweden. They are conveniently located right next to our laboratory at Uppsala Biomedical Centre. Their support allowed our team to use their modern conference room multiple times throughout the summer. It enabled us to aim high when hosting professional events. This includes the 2-day Future Farming webinar conference, DRIVHUSET interactive workshop with iGEM Stockholm, the virtual prototyping event and a guest introduction lecture from VidiLab. Additionally, we recorded most of our presentation video at SciLifeLab. Special thanks to Erika Bergqvist Erkstam, Deputy director Office for SciLifeLab in Uppsala, for the continuous support and for always making us feel welcome.
STUNS Life Science
STUNS is a foundation and life science innovation hub that actively works with connecting life sciences' actors from everything from small startups to the public sector. We want to extend our thanks to managing director, Björn Arvidsson, and project leaders Fanny Blom and Anisha Khan for providing support, feedback and visibility to our project as well as giving us some valuable contacts. This included connecting us with researchers at SLU working on projects related to the Future Foods initiative.
SynthEthics
Thank you to Erik Hartman and Blanka Novák from SynthEthics for hosting an intriguing and well organized workshop in collaboration with iGEM Stockholm. This event gave us an insight into the ethical implications of our project and turned out very important to us when incorporating ethics into our project.
Protein Report
Special thanks to Naropa Love who connected us with Cellular Agriculture Australia, which provided us with one of the speakers for our Future Farming webinar. Protein Report also shared our content on their page and allowed us to mention our webinar on their event alert page, providing more visibility to our project. Protein Report is a platform dedicated to advancing public understanding of protein by advancing protein literacy for safer, and more sustainable food systems.
Alternative Protein Project Wageningen
Thank you to Aditya Vaze and Panagiotis Vlachogiannis at the Alternative Protein Project at Wageningen for being one of the first individuals that believed in our project and brainstorming on public outreach ideas. Thanks for spreading the word with other Alternative Protein Projects about our Future Farming webinar.
Good Food Institute (GFI)
Thank you for showing our project much interest and responding well to giving us a valuable consultation about setting up an Alternative Protein Project at Uppsala University and for having a very updated overview of the emerging regulations, not just in India, but also in other countries that are now current hotspots for the development of cultivated meat. We are very grateful to have obtained the pre-marketing strategies that are currently in place from the experts at GFI, India.
Uppsala University Newsletter
Thank you to the Uppsala university newsletter team and Cecilia Tiscornia for featuring our project in the 2021 May issue of the newsletter.
Integrated Human Practices
Abi Aspen Glencross
Heritage grain farmer & Co-Founder of The Sustainable Food Story. Former "Lab Meat Lady"
You are the spark that inspired us to host the Future Farming webinar. Thank you for sharing with us your intriguing journey that bridges from growing meat in the lab to transitioning to the field of wheats. You can watch her presentation from the Future Farming Webinar here. We admire your determination to advocate for a more sustainable way of providing future foods.
Irfan Tahir
New Harvest research fellow and a PhD student at the Engineered Biomaterials Research Laboratory at the University of Vermont
Thank you for sharing with us your insight into how scientists could collaborate with farmers in the conversation surrounding the emergence of cellular agriculture and cultivated meat, first in our expert interview and then later during our Future Farming webinar.
Who
Irfan Tahir is a New Harvest research fellow and a PhD student at the Engineered Biomaterials Research Laboratory at the University of Vermont where he is tissue engineering cell-cultured meat on plant-based scaffolds.
Why
While analyzing the cultivated meat production chain, we wanted to hear the opinions from experts who work closely with alternative proteins or cultivated meat. Hence, we contacted New Harvest, a research institute dedicated to the field of cellular agriculture and they connected us with Irfan.
Implementation
Irfan shared his views on cultivated meat following our explanation of FGFuture. He made us realize the importance of collaborations between cellular agriculture and traditional farming. Similarly, he mentioned the societies’ negotiation of GMOs and advised us that transparency to the public and farmers can avoid such issues in cultivated meat. He added that seminars and conferences are the means to educate society about cultivated meat which was one of the igniting factors for organizing our future farming webinar.
Patrik Fernlund
Swedish farmer
Thank you for sharing with us your insights as a Swedish farmer and allowing us to share our interview with you as a part of our Farmer Friday series on social media.
Bianca Le
Founder and Director of Cellular Agriculture Australia
Thank you for connecting us with Ruth Purcell, one of our Future Farming Webinar speakers.
Special thanks to the experts we got to interview:
- Carl-Henrik Heldin Senior Professor at Uppsala University
- Stefan Eriksson, Associate Professor and Senior Lecturer in Research Ethics at Uppsala University
- Elin Sjöberg, Researcher at Uppsala University
- Hugo Gutierrez de Teran Associate professor at Uppsala University
- Mia Keyser New Harvest Research Fellow
- Irfan Tahir New Harvest Research Fellow
- Erik Tosterud Business Developer at Drivhuset
- Kerstin Ekelöf, IP advisor at Uppsala University Innovation
- Ikigai Law, Law firm based in India
- Good Food Institute India Non-profit organization supporting alternative proteins
Read the full description of each interview here.
Special thanks to our Future Farming webinar speakers:
- Mark Post, CSO & Co-founder of Mosa Meat and a Professor at Maastricht University.
- Paul Shapiro, CEO of The Better Meat Co. & the author of the book “Clean Meat ”
- Abi Aspen Glencross, Heritage grain farmer & a Former "Lab Meat Lady"
- Ruth Purcell, Media and Communication officer at Cellular Agriculture Australia
- Sara Peterson, Patent Information Specialist at Uppsala University Innovation
- Ola Thomsson, Coordinator at Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU)
- Tomas Linder, Senior lecturer at Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU)
- Michael Saad, Cellular Agriculture Researcher and PhD student at Tufts University
- Irfan Tahir, New Harvest Research Fellow
Watch the full recordings and read descriptions of all speakers here.
Entrepreneurship
Drivhuset Uppsala
Special thanks to Erik Tosterud for setting up the Stakeholder workshop with our team. Also, for meeting up with both our Human Practice and Sponsoring groups to pitch our project and for giving us important and noticeable feedback on how to talk professionally.
Charlie Carpene
Fullstack web developer
Thank you for provisioning us with some of the best prototyping tools and skills and by accepting the invitation to our Bioscaling workshop.
ASPYR Biomanufacturing
Thank you Nikhil Bharadwaj and Krishnakumar Ramachandran for contributing towards portraying how a prototyping pipeline works in real life from your start-up experiences.
Leo Groenewegen
Co-Founder and CEO at CellulaREvolution
Thank you for giving us an insight into industry and explaining how your bioreactors perform continuous cell culturing.
Alice Anlind
Research engineer at Vidilab
Thank you for giving our team a presentation of the work done at Vidilab for industry exposure.
