IDEA

The idea of Crustaway has been always in the back of our minds since Daniele proposed it in our first meeting in March.
However, the idea started to take off when Jason found an interesting paper by J. Keasling where they used two genes to reduce sulfate with the ultimate goal of precipitating metals. Since then everybody worked on the planning of the project.
Anna and Giacomo with some help from Sheref (one of our supervisors) designed the Terminator 5 project.

CONSTRUCT DESIGN

Crust Away

Most of the constructs were planned by Giacomo and Daniele, with some help from Cristina (our supervisor).
The constructs for the GFP fusion were designed by Jason, Andrea and Francesco.

Terminator 5

We started to build our platform from a plasmid of the Mansy lab (RL024), made by one of our advisors Roberta Lentini (one of our advisors). Starting from this construct we mutated three illegal sites and we added a prefix and a suffix between the two fluorescent proteins.
All the constructs for this project were designed by Giacomo and Anna, with initial help of Cristina.

CLONING & CHARACTERIZATION

CysDes Parts:

Andrea built and characterized Parts: K731300, K731400, K731450 (i.e. K731400 in pSB4K5), K731480.
The initial gene encoding CysDes was synthetized by Genescript and then subcloned into our Parts.
Gas chromatography measurements were done by Damiano Avi.

CysE Parts:

Jason has cloned and characterized Parts: K731000, K731010, K731020, K731030, K731025 (i.e. K731020 in pSB3C5), K731035 (i.e. K731030 in pSB3C5), K731040, K731045 (i.e. K731040 in pSB3C5).

Promoters Parts:

Daniele worked on the following Parts: K731200, K731201, K731250, K731255 , K731260 (i.e. K731250 in pSB3C5).
Daniele also helped Jason with the characterization of K731040.
Francesco built and characterized Parts: K731500, K731510, K731520, K731530 and gave some help in characterizing K731480.

Terminators Parts:

Anna and Giacomo built and characterized together all the Parts for the terminators project: K731700, K731701, K731710, K731711, K731721, K731722.
Anna and Giacomo developed a new method to use the platform. Sheref contributed with both humor and important suggestions.

APPLICATIONS

The black crust bioremediation pathway was put together by Daniele, Francesco e Jason.
The Crustanator was an idea of Cristina and was built by Daniele and Francesco with some technical suggestions of Damiano.
Everybody had fun together cleaning the statues!

Scanning Electron Microscopy Images were taken at the facility of SEM in the department of Engineering by the staff of the facility under the supervision of Prof. Flavio DeFlorian.

WEBSITE

Our Wiki was designed by Jason, who also put all the content together. Everybody worked on the content of the Wiki.

ART & SCIENCE

Although, we all took part to the interviews, this aspect of the project was mostly cured by Andrea and Anna.

EVENTS

Anna organized with Patrizia Famà the “3 open days” at the Museum of Science for high school teachers.
Francesco, Anna, Daniele and Andrea organised the activities for The Researchers Night with the help of Roberta.
Everybody participated to the events.

SAFETY

Francesco and Cristina wrote the SRB safety handbook. Marzia Filippi from the Safety office of the University of Trento revised the text. UniTN communication office helped with the graphic of the pamphlet.

POSTER, PRESENTATION & LOGO

Everybody worked on the poster with a special contribution from Andrea, Francesco, Laura, and Georgia Gabrielli from UNITN communication office.
The logo was designed by Daniele.
Jason and Daniele worked on the presentation.

TRAINING and ICECREAMS…

…were brought in by Cristina.