Attributions

University of Calgary Support

The University of Calgary iGEM team would like to thank and acknowledge all of the support from the University in terms of student stipends, support personnel, facilities, and materials which made this project possible. The O'Brien Centre for the Bachelor of Health Sciences provided the laboratories we worked in this summer and allowed us to continue our work even into the fall term. Additionally, a special thanks to the Faculty of Medicine and Schulich School of Engineering for their financial support.

Advisor and Instructor Support

All research work was performed by the undergraduate students on our team. Our professors and advisors contributed support and ideas to the students and facilitated a safe and efficient laboratory environment. Special thanks to Dr. Anders Nygren and Dr. Mayi Arcellana Panlilio for their continuous support in organizing the logistics of this team despite their busy schedule. Big thank you to Dr. Anthony Schryvers, an advisor, whose technical know-how helped us troubleshoot our assays. Special thanks to Jamie Fegan, for helping us troubleshoot our protein expression. We would also like to thank Cesar Rodriguez from Autodesk who provided valuable advise with both the 3D-modeling component of the project as well as the mathematical model. Thank you to Dr. Mark Bieda for advising us in the fall semester and facilitating O’Brien Center Lab space for our team. We also would like to thank Kate Chatfeld-Reed for her input and advice on our project throughout the year. Additionally we wish to extend our thanks to David Lloyd, Emily Hicks and Margaret Renaud-Young for advice and thoughts on completing our project. Finally, special thanks to Jeff Wintersinger for lending his expertise and time to build the biosensor database SensiGEM.

Support From Additional Professors and University Staff

We would like to acknowledge other professors in the Faculty of Medicine including Dr. Mark Ungrin and Dr. Glen Armstrong (for meeting with us and providing expert advice on the general direction of the project). Additionally, Dr. Glen Armstrong is the E. coli O157:H7 expert we are collaborating with to acquire EHEC E. coli DNA to test and characterize our final system. Additionally, we would like to thank Dr. Mark Anikovski and Dr. Tom Swaddle from the Department of Chemistry for providing us valuable feedback on the ferritin subproject.

We also extend our gratitude to the SACRI Research Group and the Schryvers Lab for their donation of chemicals. We would also like to thank Dr. Cairine Logan for being the designated safety assignee in the fall semester. Additionally, we would like to thank Dr. Howard Ceri and Carol Stremick for access to specific reagents. Furthermore, we would like to thank Nicholas Jette for his advice on the electrophoretic mobility shift assay. Lastly, we wish to thank Dr. Joseph Lemire for providing us with valuable feedback and comments on our overall system.

Outside of University Research and Technical Support

We would like to thank and acknowledge the support of various individuals from outside sources. This includes Chad Laing from the University of Lethbridge for sharing his expertise about EHEC genomes and conservation profile of EHEC E. coli to ultimately allow us to decide target sequences for our TALEs. We would also like to thank Donna Douey, the National Manager of Food Microbiology Lab Programs at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA), for giving us insight into the current protocols and standards used by the CFIA and valuable advice regarding our project.

Outside of University Additional Support

We would like to thank the individuals who we had requested to do interviews with Dr. Bob Church including a prominent Alberta rancher, researcher and expert who has transferred genetic technologies into livestock. We would also like to thank Dr. Eric Behlke (Feedlot Health Management Services), Ryan Clisdell (Cargill Meat Solutions), Rick Sears (Chinook feeders), Rick Culbert and Susan Goebel (Bioniche), and Nancy Burgess (US Defense Threat Reduction Agency). We would also like to thank Gabe Patin for his resources in making 3D print outs of our FerriTALE system.