Attributions

A big thanks to everyone who helped us deliver a successful project!

Our approach to iGEM

The University of Southern Denmark offers degrees in biology and medicine, but not courses that specifically teach synthetic biology.
Our team had to rely on the knowledge and teaching received from the project supervisors, Joel and Jens (attributed below), who are both iGEM alumni and Ph.D. students, and from Simon Rose and Mikkel Girke Jørgensen, also attributed below.

The team started brainstorming on areas of interest and problem definitions on March 6^th at a weekend team-building exercise, which laid the groundwork for our iGEM project.
After the initial brainstorming and idea selection, the team started working on the project from April 22^nd.
Following the initial COVID-19 lockdown that started on March 11^th, the team was granted special laboratory access from June 15^th. Until then, the focus of our research was on human practices and hardware.

Our team relied on the internal knowledge and experience to develop PROSTATUS wherever we could. When we encountered problems that required skills we did not have, we took a proactive approach: we found people who had the skills we needed and rather than asking them to provide a solution, we arranged lecture sessions and learned the required skills ourselves.

Team member attributions

Click or tap here to see our team roster!

Click or tap a category below to see more information!

Laboratory

Aicha, Anne Mette, Flora, Frederik, Jakob, Kristine, Nikolaj and Rikke were all involved in the work done in the wet lab. All have contributed to the research part of the project.

Aicha, Jakob, Nikolaj and Rikke primarily focused on the Cas13a aspects of the process, while Anne Mette, Flora, Frederik and Kristine focused on the Cas12a approach.

Jakob and Frederik have overseen protein expression and purification.

Rikke controlled the sgRNA and target sequences that were crucial for the proof of concept.

Flora, also known as “Flow strip Flora”, has been the main force behind the flow strip detection system and its implications on our solution.

Human Practices

Aicha, Heléne, Jens, Maja, Martin, Suyasha and Thomas were the main contributors to human practice efforts.

Aicha, Jens, Katharina, Maja, Martin and Suyasha conducted, transcribed and analysed interviews related to end-user involvement, and Heléne helped them in the analysis. The results were documented in the human practices section of the wiki.

Thomas wrote an article titled “Reflective Equilibrium & Prostate Cancer”, analysing the ethical and epistemological considerations of a test. He also facilitated the expert correspondence and wrote an essay to sum up the key points of it.

Jens facilitated the ideation sessions in the team using Affinity Diagramming and post-it clustering methods.

Maja took the initiative and established a ‘gamification’ subgroup, which included Baldur, Gyula, Kristine and Marie-Louise. Together, they developed conversation starter cards, informational brochures and an early detection card game as well as a deck of cards including prostate cancer awareness facts. Maja also provided the theoretical and analytical baseline behind gamification.

Rikke and Marie-Louise wrote and sang the lyrics for our prostate cancer awareness music video.

Hardware and Design

Cecilie, Gyula, Katharina, Marco, and Marie-Louise were the key contributors in the field of hardware, design and business. All have provided documentation of their work for the wiki.

Cecilie, Gyula, Katharina and Marie-Louise sketched a business model canvas and translated the input into the drivers behind the initial stages of the product development. Together, they investigated several concepts and built prototypes that reflected the overall objectives of our project.

Marco utilised his knowledge in business and economics to develop the business plan from the initial business model. He provided key figures regarding the financial feasibility of our project and conducted hands-on competitor’s analysis by ordering and assessing existing products from the market.

Flora, Frederik and Maja provided valuable input in the form of essential criteria that had to be met from both laboratory and human practices, defining the outcome of the product development. They also participated in the ‘pretotyping’ workshop where those criteria were translated into physical properties of the product.

Jens provided guidance and input from his research into sustainable materials that could be used for the making of the product.

Modeling

Baldur and Suyasha were tasked with the development of models that aid the work done in the laboratory and on the hardware.

Baldur worked with the lab team to try to find aspects of the project that could be modelled but unfortunately came up short, but he did make a model for hardware and then made that available for use for other teams. He also made models to be used on the wiki.

Suyasha helped create the DALY (Disability-adjusted Life Year) model, which involved mathematical predictions related to prostate cancer.

Wiki

Anne Mette, Gyula and Suyasha were the main contributors to the coding of the team’s wiki page.

The entire team contributed relevant content to the wiki, based on the work they have done.

Anne Mette was responsible for ensuring that all text related to the laboratory section was delivered in time. Suyasha ensured that the outcome from human practices was documented. Gyula had to make sure that hardware and business content was put into place.

Baldur wrote the content and the code for the modeling page and created the early detection card game rules under human practices.

Cecilie, Marie-Lousie and Rikke provided vital illustrations and animations throughout the wiki.

Jakob created a small Java program and gathered the content for our contributions page.

Collaborations, Outreach and Social Media

Baldur, Frederik and Jakob contacted potential sponsors and secured relevant sponsorships for our team.

Frederik and Kristine were managing our social media presence throughout the project, documenting successes small and large to our audience.

Jens arranged and facilitated a session followed by a debate with the citizen science expert Thomas Kaarsted from the University of Southern Denmark.

Kristine was the main contact person for outreach efforts towards other iGEM teams.

Maja was the link for the partnership between us and the iGEM team from the University of Rochester.

Aicha, Anne Mette, Cecilie, Gyula, Flora, Frederik and Thomas facilitated the youth outreach sessions, where our team presented about synthetic biology to groups of high school students from ATU (Academy for Talented Youth) and conducted laboratory experiments with them.

Flora, Katharina, Kristine and Rikke planned and facilitated the Workshop Weekend for the other Danish iGEM teams.

Flora and Gyula took part in an interview about their experience in iGEM for ‘Humans of iGEM’, an initiative from iGEM BITS.

Maja and Nikolaj participated as guests in a radio program about synthetic biology on Danish National Radio P1, and Nikolaj, Rikke and Frederik were interviewed for the podcast hosted by the Nottingham iGEM team.

Videos and Presentation

Flora, Gyula, Kristine and Thomas did the work behind the project promotion video. Flora and Gyula helped write the script, while Kristine also edited the footage and Thomas also provided the narration. Baldur, Gyula, Katharina, Marco, Rikke and Suyasha provided translated subtitles.

Aicha, Baldur, Flora, Frederik, Gyula, Kristine, Marie-Louise and Rikke put countless hours into the making of our project presentation video. All were involved in the writing of the script and the making of the video.

Additionally, Flora, Frederik and Rikke presented our project to the attendees of the Virtual Nordic Conference.

Supervisors

Mikkel Girke Jørgensen

Served as the Principal Investigator and was the driving force in assembling the SDU-Denmark iGEM team of 2020. He also held a number of lectures on synthetic biology for the laboratory team.

Joel Mario Vej-Nielsen

Mentored, assisted, listened to us and was actively ready to guide our team. He held a workshop on good scientific practices for those who participated in the Danish iGEM Meetup that our team organised.

Jens Sivkær Pettersen

Mentored, assisted, listened to us ,and guided our team's activities in the laboratory. He also held a workshop where we were taught the basics of Biobricks and how to design our sgRNAs.

External attributions

Tina Kronborg

Assisted in the financial, structural and procurement aspects of our project. She made sure that the team had access to all the necessary gadgets for our team to efficiently work on the project.

Simon Rose

Taught the laboratory team everything related to laboratory activities and guided them through the practical work regarding synthetic biology.

Christian Eiming

Held a workshop on public speaking for those who participated in the Danish iGEM Meetup that our team organised.

Louise H. Jørgensen

Gave our team insights on diagnostics vs. screening procedures and participated actively in our expert conversation that helped us gain many insights on prostate cancer and medical testing.