Attributions

A short description of our project genesis

Our team was created in December 2019 (click here to read our Notebook), and we started brainstorming soon after. We were able to start working in the lab from mid-June to the end of August, some of us being able to carry on until the end of September (if they were spared by COVID-19...).
Since the very beginning, Solène suggested that we work on something related to nutrition in space, but at that point we were still open to many other ideas, such as spider silk, a solution for sharka virus, or treatment of cancer. The final project is a combination of all our team ideas: nutrition in space, production of vitamins, and use of electrolysis as a source of energy. We opted for the Space theme in March. If you want to learn more about our brainstorming process click here.

The hardworkers

We are a team of 8 students. None of us was a specialist in molecular biology, synthetic biology, HTML coding or modeling. We all had to learn our part, deeply engage in the brainstorming and wet lab work during the summer, find the money to fund the project and our internship salaries, and find all the necessary contacts listed below without whom nothing would have been possible.

Laurène Adam (Communications team leader): she was in charge of all our social media accounts. She also was responsible for contacting other teams in order to make collaborations. In the lab, she first focused on the engineering of yeast to introduce the limonene and by the end of summer focused more on the growth of Clostridium ljungdahlii. She helped for the videos’ storyboard and also contacted the press to tell them about our project.

Laura Balcells (Organization team leader): she organized our schedule (and wrote our meeting minutes!). During the summer, she was in charge of the experiment organization with Anton and she focused on cloning the yeast for the production of vitamin A. She did the storyboard for the presentation video and helped for the promotion video storyboard. She also coded the virtual exhibition with Arno.

Cécilia Brancheriau (Finances team leader): she was the main responsible for contacting companies and organizations in order to fund our project. In the lab, she started the cloning for the red regulation and then focused on the yeast and clostridium fermentation. She created the storyboard for our video game and designed all the backgrounds. She also drew our mascot Cosmos the astronaut, and designed our coculture system in real-life.

Arno Bruel (Wiki team leader): he had to learn to code with HTML for iGEM (and even taught Laura this coding language). Thus, he coded our wiki, our video game and the virtual exhibition with Laura, starting from scratch since he is not even a computer guy in the first place. During the summer, he started the cloning of vitamin A and by August decided to focus more on the growth and fermentation of the bacteria. He is also our best translator. He did the voice-over in our promotion video.

Pierre Demoux (Entrepreneurship team leader): he was in charge of turning our ideas into strategies and plans that could be implemented in the real world and he created our project’s life-cycle. He was in contact with the Catalyseur foundation to learn how to build our entrepreneurship action plan. In the lab, he focused on the vitamin A construction and its introduction into the yeast. He also performed the experiments for iGEM Concordia.

Solène Frapard (Human Practices team leader): she was responsible for contacting and interviewing all the experts. She designed the exhibition, organized a conference with three experts and more than 50 participants, and created our ethical matrix. In the lab, she first focused on the cloning to produce a rose taste, and at mid-summer focused on yeast fermentation. Finally, at the end of the wet-lab period, she also helped in the growth of the bacteria.

Eliot Goguet (Modeling team leader): he learned how to code in order to create our models for the yeast, the bacteria and our coculture system. In the lab, he focused on the molecular biology part, more specifically on the cloning of the brazzein module. By the end of summer, he tried to finish as many cloning experiments as possible since he was one of our last men standing, the others being under Covid suspicion.

Anton Mykhailiuk (Wet lab team leader): he arranged meetings to design our parts and was in charge of the experiment organization with Laura. During the wet-lab period, he first centered on the cloning of the brazzein and the geraniol gene. By the end of summer, he worked on the introduction of the blue optogenetic regulation. He was in charge of the Parts section of the wiki and of the team registry

While all lab work and design has been performed by the eight members of our team, our project would not have been possible without all the help we received. We would like to thank all the people who made this project possible:

Our favorite Instructors

We would like to thank our amazing PIs and advisors for helping us from day one and all along the project. All PIs and advisors were welcome to join us for our weekly meetings, where we presented our progress on the project and tried to solve the difficulties we encountered.

Brice Enjalbert (INSA teacher and Head of the Molecular Physiology and Metabolism department at TBI): primary PI, he advised us all along the project, he was present at all the meetings, and was always here when we needed advice.

Yves Roméo (lecturer at Université Paul Sabatier, and researcher at the Ribosomes and telomeres team at IBCG): secondary PI, he helped us to design our parts and during the first months of experimentation.

Anthony Henras (research fellow at the Ribosomes and Telomeres team at IBCG): he helped us during the design of our experimentations, and came to teach us how to (properly) do the yeast experiments.

Pierre Millard (Researcher at INRA): he advised us during the brainstorming stage, helped us for the modeling part, and also for the sampling of GGPP.

Our precious advisors

Our project would not have been possible without the feedback of our advisors who supported us all along the project.

Caroline Rousseau (PhD student in Metabolic engineering of Escherichia coli at TBI): she helped during the two first months of wet lab work and to grow anaerobic bacteria.

Cédric Montanier (researcher at the LISBP): he guided us during our brainstorming sessions by giving us constructive feedback and answered all our questions.

Florian Deligne (PhD Student in Plants Sciences at LRSV): he helped during the first weeks of the lab where he taught us the proper ways to perform the experiments, and during the brainstorming sessions.

Régis Fauré (CNRS senior research scientist): he helped Cécilia for the finances and advised us during the brainstorming period.

Leo Gerlin (PhD student in Metabolic Modeling at the Laboratory of Plant-Microbe Interactions): he helped Eliot for the modeling part specifically on the establishment of production constraints and other parameters. He also helped Pierre with the implementation part.

Matthieu Guionnet (IT manager at GeT-BioPuces): he was a life saver for Arno and helped him solve his wiki problems.

Alix Meunier (PhD Student at CBI): she mainly helped us during the brainstorming months, and gave us ideas for the exhibition.

Stéphanie Heux (Leader of the MetaSys Team at TBI): she helped us during the brainstorming stage of our project, and for the analysis of the experiement for iGEM Concordia.

Our much-needed specialists

After deciding on our project we contacted different specialists, who did not help us during the brainstorming phase but were very helpful for their expertise and insight.

Alain Maillet (scientific leader at MEDES - Institute for Space Medicine and Physiology): he was our guide to the stars (and to the CNES!) and exposed us the limiting constraints of space that we had to take into consideration.

Marie-Pierre Escudié (Research scientist at the Gaston Berger Institute, Lyon): lecturer in human and social sciences, she helped us on the ethical part of the project and with the ethical matrix.

Stéphane Guillouet (Head of the Microbial engineering pole and Fermentation Advances and Microbial Engineering Team at TBI): he guided us on the design and implementation of the yeast fermentations.

Jason M. Whitham (post-doctoral fellow at North Carolina State University studying plant microbial interactions with the purpose of improving yields and tolerance of bioeconomy crops): he helped us to properly grow challenging anaerobic gas-fermenting microbes.

Christine Lafforgue (professor at INSA Toulouse and member of the Microbial engineering pole at TBI): she helped us on the design and construction of the coculture system.

Gilles Truan (Research director at CNRS): he advised us on the production of vitamin A by the yeast.

Jean-Marie François (professor at INSA and researcher at TBI): we contacted him for the culture of the yeast in our specific condition.

Carole Molina-Jouve (Director at TBI): she provided useful contacts for the fundraising of our project.

Benjamin Erable (member of BioSym department and biofilm engineering specialist at the Chemical Engineering Research Center of Toulouse): he helped us to define the type of electrolyzer.

Arnaud Cockx (Head of the Transfer Interface Mixing team at TBI): he advised us on our gas transfer model.

Our fabulous lab support

Despite the current worldwide situation, we are very thankful to INSA Toulouse and Toulouse Biotechnology Institute for allowing us to work in the lab with all the basic equipment during the summer, especially for finding missing equipment and replenishing our material stocks.

Boualem Sebbouh (laboratory technician at INSA Toulouse biological engineering department): he helped us during our lab work by stocking our lab up on materials.

Théo Menville (laboratory technician at INSA Toulouse biological engineering department): he helped us during our lab work to run the equipments.

Sylvie Cancel-Pfister (laboratory technician at INSA Toulouse biological engineering department): she helped us during our lab to order chemicals.

Elodie Berdy (laboratory technician at TBI): she helped us in the preparation of the reactors for fermentation.

Hanna Kulyk Barbier (engineer at MetaToul, the TBI platform for metabolomics and fluxomics): she guided us for the sampling and sample preparation for GGPP analysis by LC-MS.

Etienne Severac (Research Engineer at TBI): he taught us how to prepare and use the HPLC machine.

Laurent Hadjedz (Logistics Operator at TBI): he helped us by building the gas installation that we needed to test our system.

Our strain and plasmid providers

Sara Castaño-Cerezo (Post-doctoral researcher at TBI) kindly gave us the strain pTSH3-pTEF1, and she guided us for the sampling and sample preparation for GGPP analysis by LC-MS.

Sevan Arabaciyan (PhD student at TBI): gave us the BY4741 Leu- His- Ura- Met-, BY4741 Leu- His- Ura- Met- delta Gal4, and CENPK strains.

Clara Bouyx (PhD student at Lallemand): gave us the BY4741 Leu- His- Ura- Met-, BY4741 Leu- His- Ura- Met- delta Gal4.

Sylvain Pouzet (PhD Student at the Complex systems and material Laboratory at the University Paris Diderot) sent us the L-83 and L-105 strains.

Our HTML (and CSS and JavaScript) little helpers

Benjamin Dijoux (Student at INSA in Informatics Systems): Creator of the faithful top-of-the-page rocket, the Notebook's calendar and the funky-scrolling-thingy on IHP

Younes Bouchiba (PhD student at TBI): we received great help from him with our Team members page as well as for our Achievements page and LaTeX equation translator

Rémy Tupenot (Young Web developer): Father of our cute Cosmos-intereactive icons on Modeling and Implementation pages

Our entrepreneurship support

We collaborated with a business incubator, Le Catalyseur, that helped us build a strong entrepreneurship plan. We would like to specially thank Nicolas Delcey, Guillaume Fabre, and Colette Schenker with whom we did the workshops.

Our artists

Video

For the presentation videos, we did all the storyboard but we were very lucky to be assisted by great wannabe professionals who filmed and edited the video.

Rémy Leroy, camera assistant but also director, editor, sound designer and dream maker (especially the latter). He voluntarily helped us for the video deliverables, even though he was coming all the way from Paris! As so, he has been the director for both of our videos. For the project promotion video, we wrote the narration text and from there we brainstormed all together. But he was the one who filmed and edited the video. We owe him so much for his dedication to our project, he is the one filming guy any iGEM team craves to have!

Louis de Rolland, a friend of Rémy's, he created the very convincing take-off of the spaceship using visual effects.

3D model of our system

Cécilia drew our real-life model, and Pierre-André Fontaine designed our 3D model from Cécilia’s drawings.

Logo

All the team participated in a brainstorming session to decide which elements should be on our logo.
Oscar Prêcheur (Student at Polytech Montpellier) combined all of our ideas to design our amazing logo.

Acknowledgments

We want to thank all the experts we interviewed during our project in order to get their opinion and advice. If you would like to know more about these interviews, check out our Human Practices page by clicking here.

Romain Charles (member of the Mars 500 expedition).
Karen Dhanraj (Technical Marketing and Sales Manager at Lallemand Bio-Ingredients).
Jean Jacques Favier (French astronaut).
Brigitte Godard (doctor in medicine specialized in medical biology, currently one of the doctors following European astronauts).
Natalie Leys (head of the Microbiology Research Unit of the Space Life Science program at SCK-CEN. She works on the MELiSSA project)
Romane Maillet (Yeast Product Specialist at Lallemand).
Phillippe Perrin (French astronaut).
Rob Van Houdt (specialist in genetic engineering, part of the Space Life Science program at SCK-CEN. He works on the MELiSSA project).

We also wish to thank La Cité de l’Espace, a scientific discovery center focused on spaceflight in Toulouse. They kindly accepted to display our exhibition "Microbiology in Space" for a couple of days, hosted our conference, and allowed us to film in the park.

Funding

We would like to thank all our financial sponsors who made this project possible:

CNES (National Center for Space Studies): it operates from the Toulouse Space Center and the Guiana Space Center.
Fondation Catalyses: Paul Sabatier University Foundation which finances original projects.
TBI: Toulouse Biotechnology Institute, Bio & Chemical Engineering research institute located in the campus of INSA Toulouse.
TWB: Toulouse White Biotechnology, TWB’s activity is based on the use of innovative biological tools that will be installed at the heart of high-performance industrial processes, for the materials chemistry, agro-food and energy markets.
Commission recherche: this Commission distributes the resources allocated to research by the Board of Directors of the Paul Sabatier University.
Fondation INSA: the INSA Toulouse University Foundation allows companies and individuals to work together for the development of the Institute.
INRAE: the national research institute for agriculture, food and the environment. The world’s leading research organization specializing in these three areas.
Adisséo: the company is among the world leaders in animal nutrition.
CBI: the Toulouse Integrative Biology Center brings together five research units which form a strong center in post-genomic biology.
Département Biologie et des Géosciences: Paul Sabatier University department of biology and geosciences.
FSI promotion de la culture scientifique: Faculty of Science and Engineering of the University Paul Sabatier.

Our best press officers

And last but not least, Joy Cozar (Digital communications officer at INSA Toulouse), Helene Sovignet-Pont and Elodie Jambon, (both Communication officers - Press relations at Université Paul Sabatier), who helped by giving us visibility in the press.

And we would like to thank all the journalists who showed interest in our project and who wrote newspaper articles about us or shot tv reports (click on the links to access the material):