The iGEM teams of Linköping University and the University of Rochester have collaborated to make it more accessible for future iGEM teams and researchers to easily find biomarkers for a specific disease. The aim of the collaboration was also to elevate both our own projects and subprojects to make them better by getting feedback and input from a second source. Below we have listed the objectives where both teams have collaborated and helped each other.
Both teams will have together designed a banner to showcase on our wikis. In this banner, we will present Rochester’s database for existing biomarkers and parts together with Linköping’s ClusteRsy for biomarker discovery. We hope that this will help future iGEM teams to find and discover biomarkers specific to their project.
Rochester has designed a workflow to synthetically create antibodies using SnapGene. Which is a great asset for us in Linköping because this is exactly what we need in phase II, to cheaply produce antibodies for our lateral flow assay. Rochester shared their biobrick workflow for us to learn about it and to be able to integrate it into our project. Feedback was of course returned to the Rochester team.
In the second beta testing of ClusteRsy two persons from the Rochester team attended to try out ClusteRsy and give valuable feedback as an iGEM team. This information is crucial because iGEM teams will be one group of our future users. ClusteRsy needs to be adapted for this party and to fulfill its purpose as a tool for biomarker discovery for iGEM teams as well. Feedback such as a youtube tutorial was given which is now implemented.
Rochester has created a model for their lateral flow assay which was shared to us in Linköping for evaluation and feedback. This model was also an inspiration for us in Linköping for the phase II lateral flow assay that we are going to design.
The iGEM team from London Imperial College is creating software to optimize the automation for the uses of synthetic biology. Since both teams are developing software and aiming for high user-friendliness it is great to share knowledge regarding this trait. Imperial London College attended our second beta testing of ClusteRsy and shared the experience and feedback on the whole experience.
In the summer we had a meeting with Imperial London College to discuss user-friendliness and each other’s project. We in Linköping shared our protocols of our first beta-testing with Imperial London College to get inspiration for their protocols and they shared the idea that ClusteRsy could be used for transcriptomics analysis of iGEM organisms. This massively extends the use of CluteRsy and broadens the perspective of who a potential user can be, a clinician researching on cancer cells to an iGEM team analyzing their bacterial culture.
