Bronze

• Register the team, have a great summer, and plan to have fun at the Regional Jamboree.
  Our team was registered at the start of summer, everyone had a wonderful time working on the project, and we are eager to present at Stanford in October!


• Successfully complete and submit this iGEM 2012 Judging form.
  This form has been completed and we have added this page to our wiki to further elaborate.


• Create and share a Description of the team's project using the iGEM wiki and the team's parts using the Registry of Standard Biological Parts.
  We have created this wiki, which describes our work, parts and results. For more information concerning our project please view our Project page. Additionally we have detailed 19 new parts, as well as sent in DNA of 7 of those parts into the Registry of Standard Biological Parts along with their appropriate sequences and data.


• Plan to present a Poster and Talk at the iGEM Jamboree.
  We plan to present both a poster and a talk at the regional Jamboree in Stanford on Oct. 12-14, 2012.


• Enter information detailing at least one new standard BioBrick Part or Device in the Registry of Standard Biological Parts.
  We have entered information detailing 19 new BioBrick parts, both with DNA sequences and data into the Registry. For more information about these parts please view our Parts page


• Submit DNA for at least one new BioBrick Part or Device to the Registry.
  We have submitted DNA for 7 new parts to the Registry, specifically Bba_K936000 (LC-Cutinase), Bba_K936013 (LC-Cutinase with pelB sequence), Bba_K936016 (Constitutive Promoter with Reductase and Dehydrogenase), Bba_K936017 (Inducible Promoter with Reductase (anaerobic) and Dehydrogenase), Bba_K936020 (Inducible Promoter with Cutinase with pelB sequence and polyhistidine tag), Bba_K936021 (LC-Cutinase with polyhistidine tag), and Bba_K936024 (Inducible Promoter with Reductase (aerobic) and Dehydrogenase). We also submitted our ethylene-glycol degrading strain E-15 EG3, Bba_K936035 to the registry in the form of a glycerol stock. We chose to only send the samples that we had absolute confidence in and we plan to have the remaining planned parts along with our LC Cutinase mutants sent to the Registry as soon as possible.

Silver

• Demonstrate that at least one new BioBrick Part or Device of your own design and construction works as expected; characterize the operation of your new part/device. Enter this information and other documentation on the part's 'Main Page' section of the Registry.
We created several constructs with cutinase which can cleave pNPB at the same bond location as polyethylene terephthalate (PET):
• Bba_K936000 (LC-Cutinase)
• Bba_K936013 (LC-Cutinase with pelB sequence)
• Bba_K936020 (Inducible Promoter with Cutinase with pelB sequence and polyhistidine tag)
• Bba_K936021 (LC-Cutinase with polyhistidine tag)
A more detailed description of these parts can be found on the data page or on each part's registry page.

We also developed a strain of E. coli, called E-15 EG3, that can degrade ethylene glycol more efficiently than previous strains could. We created this strain through directed evolution, and we found that by repassaging the strain over 25 generations, we were able to increase growth rate on ethylene glycol. An increase of 74.8% and 227.84% respectively was observed when compared to the original strain.

Gold

• Outline and detail a new approach to an issue of Human Practice in synthetic biology as it relates to your project, such as safety, security, ethics, or ownership, sharing, and innovation.
We developed a lesson plan for middle school students that furthers the sharing portion of the human practices requirement. We believe that as undergraduates, actually conducting the protocols through a hands-on approach is significantly more beneficial opposed to reading text out of a textbook, and furthermore, that exposure to the field of synthetic biology early on can be extremely beneficial to students in foundationalizing their understanding of many topics that will not even be introduced until the collegiate tier of higher education.

We also developed an economic toolkit that addresses the ownership, sharing, and innovation aspect of the human practices requirement. By conducting an in-depth analysis of the intellectual property, legal issues that arise, and their relation to the iGEM competition, teams reading our deliverable will hopefully gain a cohesive understanding of the importance of protecting innovation.
A full description of our human practice advances can be found on our Human Practices page.