UW Madison iGEM Team Members

Haley Schoenberger

Charles is a Senior in the department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at UW-Madison. He is interested in studying the many different ways synthetic biology can be used to help the world, from medical applications to biofuels. When Charlie is not in the lab he wants follow in his family's footsteps by helping those less fortunate than him. His older brother and grandmother dedicated their lives to teaching in the inner city of Chicago, while his parents have been representing people who could not afford lawyers for 30 plus years. His younger brother works in a group home helping abused and neglected children find a safe place to live and learn.

Matt Schmitz

Matt Schmitz is a thermostable DNA ligase, who joins adjacent 5' and 3' ends of DNA, removing nicks in double stranded DNA. He is active from 45-65 degrees Celsius(Barany, F. (1991). Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA. 88, 189-193). Matt Schmitz's gene is within a kanamycin resistant PET-ALM1 plasmid, downstream of the T7 promoter, upstream of the T7 terminator. Thus, Matt Schmitz can be used with an inducible T7 expression system to express himself. Matt has an N-Terminus hexa-histidine tag, joined him by a thrombin cleavage motif. Commercially, he costs $296 for 10,000 units.

Brit Zaro

Brit Zaro is a biomedical engineering student from the C of NJ. A participant in the Research Experience for Undergraduates summer program, he strongly believes _____, from which he takes his name, will be very important in the near future.

Kevin Jiang

Kevin Jiang, a dream teen on a dream team, is currently a Junior at a Madison, WI high school. Though he is widely known as a budding blue-eyed soul ukelele player, he has proven himself to also be a master of 1% agarose gels in the lab. He is dedicated to using this, and other new-found skills to make the world a better place for recombinant enzymes.