Acknowledgments

All design and modelling work within the project was carried out by members of the team. Implementation in the lab was also carried out wholly by members of the team, though with supervision when carrying out procedures that required the use of complicated (and expensive) equipment.

Generally team members were responsible for areas of the project as follows: -

• Vincent Leonardo – Design, lab work and presentation. Vincent was responsible for maintaining our L-form bacteria throughout the project and leading characterisation of our BioBricks. He also had a great hand in the development of our presentation, as well as designing the HBsu-xfp BioBricks.
• James King – Design, modelling and presentation. James adopted the position of one of the modellers in the team, also developing our modelling workshop. He also had a great hand in the development of our presentation, as well as designing the HBsu-xfp BioBricks.
• Yana Dem’yanenko – Modelling and lab work. Yana spent a great deal of the project working on modelling our systems, specifically the cell shape model. She also helped develop our modelling workshop and contributed heavily in the lab.
• Matthew Law – Wiki coding, modelling and BioGame. Matt coded the framework and templates for our wiki, as well as assisting when possible with our modelling. He also began the development of an open source game based upon engineering a bacterium with BioBricks.
• Vivian Wong – Lab work and poster. Vivian spent a large amount of the project working in the lab, specifically investigating L-forms in plants. She also helped a great deal with the content and production of the poster.
• Christopher Wall – Design and lab work. Christopher designed the L-form switch BioBrick that facilitates the switching on/off of the cell wall. He also assisted with work in the lab and the production of content for the poster.
• Isabelle McLaren – Lab work and presentation. Isabelle worked for most of the project in the lab, assisting with transformations, cultures and characterisation. She has also greatly contributed to the development of our presentation.
• Robert McKiernan – Design and lab work. Robert designed the L-form switch BioBrick that facilitates the switching on/off of the cell wall. He also assisted with lab work and content of the poster and presentation.
• Geoffrey Pettitt – Modelling and lab work. Geoffrey divided his time in the project between modelling and lab work. He assisted in developing our modelling workshop, as well as carrying out lab work that specifically involved L-forms in plants.
• Alina Tamciuc – Graphic design, lab work and poster. Alina created all of the graphics used in our project, from the BareCillus logo to the buttons on our homepage. She also designed our poster and explored links between Synthetic Biology and Architecture. Alina also assisted in the lab as much as possible.
• Justas Miknys – Wiki coding and modelling. As one of our two computer scientists Justas assisted with coding of our wiki. He also worked on the development of our models, in particular the cell fusion model.

All team members also contributed to the content of the wiki. All work contained in this wiki is our own unless otherwise stated.

What we have achieved with BareCillus wouldn't have been possible without the help of many people. We would like to extend our gratitude to:

Our supervisors for their guidance, encouragement, advice, time, wisdom and iGEM know-how.

Our advisors for their great depth of advice in a variety of areas and their guidance in the approach of our lab-work, modelling and other areas inherent to iGEM.

In particular we would like to thank the Jeff Errington Research Group at Newcastle University. They provided us with the B. subtilis strain capable of transitioning to L-form state upon which our project is based. By analysing the genome of this strain we were able to design and produce our very own L-form switch BioBrick. Furthermore, it is their [http://www.ncl.ac.uk/camb/staff/profile/jeff.errington#tab_publications published research] that our project has taken inspiration from – adapting the fruits of their research for the Synthetic Biology platform.

We would also like to thank Prof. Kenn Gerdes, who has a collaboration with Harvard, for providing us with the microfluidics chip we used.

And everyone else who lent a hand in the course of our project.

We would also like to thank the Edinburgh iGEM team for organizing a teleconference with Dr. Jane Calvert who helped us explore the ethical issues associated with our project.

Furthermore we'd like to extend a huge thank you to anyone who has helped us, who we have accidentally missed off the list!