Team: Thessaly - 2020.igem.org

Attributions

Team

Foteini Papadaki, Veterinary student, and project leader of our team. She organized and coordinated all of the team’s work throughout the whole project. Also, as a member of the wet lab, she ran functional experiments, regarding cloning, in vitro transcription/translation, and more specifically, ran functional experiments regarding the Prom Module and Characterization. She was responsible for the project development process, Human Practices development, and was in charge of Fundraising and Sponsors. She also managed social media content and was responsible for communication with other teams and our PI’s.

Magdalini Koroxenidou, Biochemistry & Biotechnology student and head of the Wet Lab. She organized the project development process, was responsible for our Wet Lab’s timeline, designed our experiments, and ran functional experiments regarding our Modules, cloning, in vitro protein synthesis. She was mainly responsible for our Prom Module proving the functionality of our NOT-GATE and accomplished our Proof of concept. She also designed and ran all experiments that involved the characterization of our part measuring the absorbance of our reporter genes, eCFP, eGFP, sfGFP. Moreover, she took part in the preparation of our competent cells for protein expression, MC1061. Furthermore, she helped the dry lab by providing the biological information for modeling our Module. She, also, took part in the activities of our Human Practices and helped with our Integrated Human Practice. Furthermore, she was responsible for the sponsorships of the Wet Lab, co-organized the Finance of our team, and came in touch with different companies and potential sponsors, as a member of our finance team.

Venetios Michelioudakis, Biochemistry & Biotechnology student and member of the Wet Lab. He took part in the project development process and contributed to the organization and the design of our experiments. He designed primers for the domestication of the parts. He designed primers for the construction of the plasmid collection, conducting all the experiments. He conducted all the experiments for the Reporter Module, including cloning, in vitro protein synthesis, and testing the electrochemical activity of the proteins. He helped others execute several clonings and preparing for chemical competent cells. He submitted and documented the majority of the parts in the iGEM registry. Concerning Integrated Human Practices, he approached doctors, patients, and the president of the Local IBD society in order to improve our project design. Also on education and public engagement, he took part in the theatrical play informing the actors and audience about IBD and took an interview with Professor Demetrios Kouretas, about Personalized Nutrition Plans. Also on fundraising, he helped on the approach of potential sponsors by email and telephone contact.

Asteria Tsapadikou, Biochemistry & Biotechnology, and member of Wet Lab. She took part in the project development process and contributed to the organization and design of our experiments. She designed primers for sequencing, cloned constructs, prepared competent cells for the lab,DH5a and MC1051. She designed our in vitro protein synthesis protocol and run a series of measurements for our reporter gene eCFP. She submitted and documented the majority of the parts in the iGEM registry. Concerning Integrated Human Practices, he approached patients of IBD and a member of our local society of Crohn's Disease and Ulcerative Colitis’ Patients. Moreover, regarding Public Engagement, she took place in local events such as TEDxUTH and interviewed Professor Demetrios Kouretas, about Personalized Nutrition Plans. She managed the social media of our team and edited our texts in our native language. Also on fundraising, she helped on approaching potential sponsors through email or contact via telephone.

Stylianakis Emmanouil, pharmacy graduate, current MSc student in Biomedicine and, as of April of 2020, member of the IGEM Thessaly’s wet lab. Participated in the designing of the experiments, by searching in databases and bibliography for the sequences needed in the frame of the Modules’ construction. He also designed primers regarding GoldenBraid-domestication for several bioparts (araCpBAD, eCFP, sfGFP, djIA, rraA). His task was to create the Tango-GPCR based assay, by executing the cloning and assembly experiments needed to construct the FFAR2 bioreceptor SCFAs-sensing unit and the downstream eCFP-based reporter unit. Furthermore, concerning the biosafety aspect of our project, he articulated a comprehensive, kill switch-based strategy, to fulfill the biocontainment requirements related to SynBio- products utilization. As a member of the iGEM Thessaly’s human practices committee, he helped in organizing an initiative regarding the contribution of LGBT+ scientists in science and the promotion of pluralism & inclusivity in academia.

Lemonia Apocha, graduated last year from the Department of Agriculture Crop Production and Rural Environment, and nowadays, she is working towards her master in “Phytoiatrics and Environment”. She was the head of Human Practices, listened to society, and organized events to make science accessible to all. She was responsible for organizing the Public Engagement & Education activities. She came in touch with the expert people that helped us build on Integrated Human Practices and also the Public Engagement & Education activities. Furthermore, she was in charge of organizing the Big Greek Meetup, helped with our collaborations and wrote some of our texts in our native language.

Vasileios Stergiou, Electrical and Computer Engineering student and member of the Dry Lab. He took part in the design of the ingestible capsule module. He contacted experts in the field of engineering to select responsibly the materials, transmission method, and frequency of the capsule, in regard to patient safety. He participated in the modeling and parameter selection of the antenna that transmits the data. He also designed the mathematical model regarding the tango system that helped our team gain knowledge of our system. Furthermore, he came in touch with different companies and potential sponsors, as a member of our fundraising team.

Anastasios Messis, Electrical & Computer Engineering student and member of the Dry Lab. His work was based around the design and functionality of the ingestible capsule module. He was responsible for selecting the appropriate materials for the capsule, the transmission method, and frequency of the data to the experts, and generally for making the capsule as effective as possible, while also ensuring patient safety. He contacted experts for advice and information regarding the best utilization for the capsule and he also came in contact with other iGEM teams in the prospect of collaboration. He was also tasked with the selection of the materials and modeling of the antenna that transmits the data from within the capsule. Also, he conducted experiments on Arduino boards for the Proof of concept experiment of the antenna. Finally, he was a part of the fundraising team where he helped on the approach of potential sponsors via email and telephone.

Ifigenia Daskalaki, Architecture student, graphic designer of the team. She visualized every small detail of the project in a more colourful, fun and understandable way. She was responsible for our presentation to the outer world, designing and creating our project in an animated way. Presentations, cards, flyers, banners etc. passed through her own hands. Also, as a member of Human Practices, she designed a card game and an online game for kids and schools. Lastly she was responsible for the animated images of our project, the creation of our Promotion Video and co- directed our Presentation video.

Georgios Mouchtaridis, Department of Computer Science and Engineering student. Our newest member was responsible for making and designing our website and our wiki pages. He was recruited at the last minute, as our previous wiki master left us hanging and with a mess of a wiki. He managed to put the wiki together in just a few weeks. He also participated in activities for Human Practices and was an active member for our cause. Lastly, he co-directed the Presentation Video.

Supervisors

Katerina Moutou, Associate Professor, Vertebrate Biology at the Department of Biochemistry & Biotechnology, University of Thessaly. She provided us with lab space as well as guidance and general support throughout the development of our project. As a research coordinator of the Omic-Engine infrastructure, she also provided us lab supplies. She helped us make the script for our Project Promotion Video and the Presentation Video. She also provided the most financial support.

Kalliope Papadopoulou, Secondary iGEM PI, Associate Professor, Plant Biotechnology at the Department of Biochemistry & Biotechnology of the University of Thessaly. She gave us lab space as well as guidance and general support throughout the development of our project. As a research coordinator of the Omic- Engine infrastructure, she helped us with our lab supplies and orders. She also contributed to our Human Practices activities. She also helped us make the script for our Project Promotion Video and the Presentation Video.

Instructor

Constantine Garagkounis, Postdoctoral Fellow at the Laboratory of Plant Biotechnology and Environment at the Department of Biochemistry & Biotechnology of the University of Thessaly. He provided help for our project design helping us understand the meaning of Synthetic Biology. He offered his help during our troubleshooting sessions concerning wet lab progress and provided us with day-to-day lab guidance.

Advisors

Nikolaos Ntelkis, MSc student, University of Thessaly. As an advisor and past iGEM participant, Nikolaos contributed to the general guidance and coordination of the team members, acted as a connection between Wet and Dry labs, and supervised the Wet Lab experimental design, by laying the general strategic plan. Moreover, he conducted a two-week hands-on training for Wet Lab members, which covered basic and advanced molecular biology techniques (lab basics, basic cloning procedure, competent cell preparation, modular cloning). Finally, he provided day-to-day mentoring and troubleshooting regarding experiments and general iGEM topics (Fundraising, Human Practices, Dry Lab, medal criteria, etc.).

Marios Lange, MSc student, University of Thessaly. As an advisor, Marios participated in the coordination of the team and as an interviewer for the new team members. Furthermore, he provided his insights in regards to the Wet Lab experimental design, while also acting as an instructor for Wet Lab members for two months. Finally, he had an active role in other topics, such as Human Practices (interviews both for Public Engagement and Integrated Human Practices, while also participating in the teams’ events), Fundraising, and Proposed Implementation.

Mentor

Jordi Pla, our mentor in the iGEM mentor - mentoree program helped us navigate through the competition and brought us in contact with specialists that helped us with questions regarding the dry lab.

Finance

Antonia Spanomitrou, Lab technician at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology and Genomics at the Department of Biochemistry & Biotechnology, University of Thessaly. She helped us with the orders of our lab supplies.

Lab Support and Advice

Afroditi Katsaouni, MSc student, University of Thessaly. She advised us and provided us with guidelines for our lab work. She taught us to use lab equipment and helped us make dNTPs.

Alexandros Belavilas, Ph.D. Candidate at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology and Genomics at the Department of Biochemistry & Biotechnology of the University of Thessaly provided support during our troubleshooting sessions by offering scientific advice concerning the nature of plasmids.

Antonios Giakountis, Assistant Professor, Molecular Biology -Genomics at the Department of Biochemistry & Biotechnology of the University of Thessaly. He provided us with scientific advice on our project development and especially on our primer design and generally in PCR. He also helped us during multiple troubleshooting sessions.

Athanasios Dalakouras, Postdoctoral Fellow at the Laboratory of Plant Biotechnology and Environment at the Department of Biochemistry & Biotechnology of the University of Thessaly. He gave advice on how to maximize the efficiency of the Miniprep, Plasmid isolation.

Georgios Skretas, the Principle Investigator of the Laboratory Enzyme and Synthetic Biotechnology at the Institute of Biology, Medical Chemistry and Biotechnology of the National Hellenic Research Foundation. He currently holds the rank of Research Assistant Professor in Greece and helped us in several parts of our project. He sent us MC1061 strains for the expression of our reporter gene and SuptoxD and R plasmids for GPCR expression in bacteria. Also, he was one of the speakers at the Big Greek Meetup that we organized.

Maria Feka, PhD candidate at the Plant & Environmental Biotechnology Lab, at the Department of Biochemistry and Biotechnology, University of Thessaly. She gave us Cloth, Loading Buffer, and guidelines on how to prepare acidic solutions in the Lab.

Rafail Angelakopoulos, PhD candidate at the Laboratory of Genetics, Comparative and Evolutionary Biology at the Department of Biochemistry and Biotechnology, University of Thessaly. He provided us with plates for our in vitro experiments conducted with a plate reader. The Lab also gave us200-1000μl and 2-200μl tips,and 1,5 ml tubes.

Tilemachos Dimitriou, Post Doctoral Researcher and Laboratory teaching staff at the Laboratory of Molecular Virology at the Department of Biochemistry & Biotechnology, University of Thessaly. He provided us help on how to use the lab equipment.

Human Practices

Education & Public Engagement

Antonia Magou and Nadia Angelouli, the supervising theatrical teachers, organized with us a beautiful workshop under the auspices of Without Omega, which deals with theater pedagogy and theatrical play and made a video about it for us.

Chrysoula Dritsari, teacher from Chortiatis General High School in Thessaloniki, and one of her student, published an article about synthetic biology, the iGEM competition, and projects of other school teams that participated in the competition in previous years, in their online school newspaper, called Gialinos Kosmos.

Dimitrios Kouretas, Professor, Animal Physiology - Toxicology at the Department of Biochemistry & Biotechnology of the University of Thessaly. We interviewed him about Personalized Nutrition Plans. Also offered us networking to interview other specialists in the food industry.

Lemonia Karapaiou, MSc student of Pedagogical Science at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. She gave us advice on writing texts in our native language. Moreover she edited texts and helped us approaching students of High School to inform them about Synthetic Biology.

Ourania Ereiliadou, teacher of the 1st elementary school Nea Maditos in Thessaloniki used the H5P and promoted our interactive tutorial video that contains questions, word matches, fill in blanks, and pictures about Synthetic Biology.

Spyridon Zafeiriadis, Undergraduate student from the Department of Technological Agriculture, University of Thessaly. He helped us with designing and synthesizing our song for our collaboration.

Integrated Human Practices

Adamantia Kyriakou, Associate Professor in Microbiology at the Department of Nutrition and Dietetics at the Harokopio University of Athens. She helped us with the biotechnological part of our project.

Apostolis Mekras, a Dietician and Clinical Nutritionist in Larissa. We interviewed him, in order to inform the public about nutrition and IBDs. Also he discussed with us about our project.

Ashram Bin Islam, Associate Professor from the University of Asia and the Pacific, Pharmacy. He answered the questions that we had, specifically our concerns around the operating and transmission frequency, antenna size, and power consumption.

Georgios Paroutoglou, Director of the Infusion Unit of the Gastroenterology Clinic of the General Hospital of Larissa, discussed with us our project and urged us to continue our research.

Helen Papadimitriou, an IBD specialist doctor from the General Hospital of Larissa, discussed with us about our project and she distributed to the patients our questionnaires.

Ioannis Serafetinidis, Director Gastroenterologist - ELPIS Clinic – Volos, Scientific collaborator of Athens Hospital and head of polyclinics MEDICAL, YASIS – Athens. He discussed our project with us.

Konstantinos Oikonomou, MD, Ph.D. is a gastroenterologist- hepatologist in Larissa. He advised us about our project.

Meropi Kontogianni, Assistant Professor at the Harokopio University of Athens, Department of Nutrition and Dietetics, Clinical Nutrition. She offered us her pieces of advice about our project.

Non-Governmental Organizations

Colour Youth, Athens LGBTQI+ Youth Community. They helped us about LGBTQI+ in Science, was a weekly tribute to all these people on social media, organized by our team in collaboration with them.

European Federation of Crohn´s and Colitis Association (EFCCA). We discussed with them about the mental wellbeing of chronic patients and they told us that is an important issue for their organization and it will be their priority theme for 2021.

Hellenic Society of Crohn’s Disease and Ulcerative Colitis Patients (HELLESCC) and especially a Member of the Board of Directors and representative of the Region of Thessaly, Costas Demertzis, discussed with our team about their problems, the treatment they receive, and our project.

Acknowledgments

General support

Athina Milona, iGEM Ambassador to Europe, Msc Marketing and Communication at the Athens University of Economics and Business. She provided guidance during the 2020 iGEM season concerning the organisation Big Greek Meetup and our Human Practices.

Eleftheria Moustaka, Computer Science and Biomedical Informatics student and a member of iGEM Thessaly 2019. She provided us with information about our wiki website for iGEM Competition.

Georgios Stamatopoulos, Department of management science and technology at Athens University of Economics and Business. He helped with some functions of the “Featherlight” library. Also, he advised our web-designer regarding the last configurations of our wiki site.

Leandros Tsiotos, iGEM Thessaly 2019 Alumni, provided guidance during the 2020 iGEM season concerning the organisation Greek Meetup and our video deliverables.

Leonidas Anthopoulos, Associate Professor, Business School, TEI of Thessaly. He provided useful information about the design of our project with us. Also, he was one of the speakers at the Big Greek Meetup we organized.

Maria Gerontopoulo, Architecture student and a member of iGEM Thessaly 2019. As the graphic designer of the team, she advised us on how to design our logo and in which program we could create our Promotion Video.

Vasiliki Kavvatha, ΜΒΑ candidate at the Athens University of Economics and Business. She advised us upon the project design, mostly regarding the detection system. She also presented at the Big Greek Meet-up and enlightened us about the entrepreneurial aspects of an iGEM project.

We want to thank all the speakers at the Big Greek Meetup that we organized: Anthopoulos Leonidas, Georgios Skretas, Constantine Garagkounis, Athina Milona, Vasiliki Kavvatha, Leandros Tsiotos, Maria Gerontopoulou, Konstantinos Mathiopoulos ( Professor, Molecular Biology at the Department of Biochemistry & Biotechnology of the University of Thessaly), Kosma Anthi (giving classes at the Department of Architecture in University of Thessaly), Dimitris Michailidis, (supervisor at iGEM Cyprus team and member of VRT Committee) and Asteris Arampatzis (iGEM Greece 2017).

Ambassadors

Anxhela Zaka, Biochemist and Biotechnologist student. As an ambassador of our team she provided translation for texts and videos.

Markos Tsitsianopoulos, Biochemistry & Biotechnology student. As an ambassador of our team he took part in the brainstorming sessions and was responsible for searching bibliography for the project. He also provided text translations and relevant literature for the project’s operating principles.

Meropi Angelaki, Biochemistry and Biotechnology student. As an ambassador of our team she provided text translation.

Ioanna Georgia Gkoni, Biochemistry and Biotechnology student. As ambassador of our team she provided text translations for our videos. She also represented our team at Global Meet Up and at iGEMeetParis-Worldwide Virtual Meetup. Furthermore, she found relevant literature for Project's Promo Video and possible investors for team's Project and helped at recording of the team's Presentation Video.

Katerina Papadimitropoulou, Biochemistry and Biotechnology student. As an ambassador of our team, she contributed to brainstorming providing literature in order to reach the final project idea. She provided text translations for the teams texts, mails and video subtitles. Finally, she is the deputy representative of our team in our city's Youth Council.

Konstaninos Elenis, Biochemistry and Biotechnology student. As an ambassador of our team he contributed during our brainstorming providing literature and ideas to reach our final idea. He provided text translations for our videos and represented the team in several events alongside main members. He helped in creating links of communication with potential investors. Finally, he represented the interests of our team and project in our city's Youth Council, serving as one of its counselors in various committees.

Advice during Brainstorming sessions

Anna-Maria Psarra, Assistant Professor, Biochemistry at the Department of Biochemistry & Biotechnology of the University of Thessaly. She provided us with advice and support for food-borne diseases.

Daniela Τsikou, Assistant Professor of Molecular and Developmental Plant Biology at the Department of Biochemistry & Biotechnology of the University of Thessaly. She provided us with advice and support for food-borne diseases.

Dimitrios Stagos, Assistant Professor of Biochemistry – Animal Physiology at the Department of Biochemistry & Biotechnology of the University of Thessaly. He provided us with information about food and nutrition.

Mirsini Kakagianni, Postdoctoral Fellow at the Laboratory of Plant Biotechnology and Environment at the Department of Biochemistry & Biotechnology of the University of Thessaly.She provided us with advice and support for food-borne diseases.

Persefoni Gianouli, Assistant Professor of Technology and Quality Control of Plant Origin at the Department of Biochemistry & Biotechnology of the University of Thessaly. She gave us guidelines on our project regarding quality control of Food.

Vasiliki Skamnaki, Assistant Professor of Biochemistry – Metabolism at the Department of Biochemistry & Biotechnology of the University of Thessaly. She gave us guidelines on the assessment of our paper articles that we build on our project.

Translations

Hlib Bryskin – Russian and Ukrainian Subtitles for our Promotion Video

Manolis Papadakis & Lucilla Barcellandi – Italian Subtitles for our Promotion Video

Myrto E. Vrentzou - Spain Subtitles for our Promotion Video

Evaggelos Pappas - German Subtitles for our Promotion Video

Team:Thessaly/Attributions