Virginia

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Welcome to the official VGEM Team wiki!

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The Virginia Genetically Engineered Machine (VGEM) Team is a student-run synthetic biology research group at the University of Virginia. The VGEM Team was founded by George McArthur (Chemical Engineering) in December 2006 so that UVA could compete in the 2007 iGEM competition. There are four other undergraduate team members: Kevin Hershey (Chemical Engineering), Amy Schell (Biomedical Engineering), Ranjan Khan (Biomedical Engineering), and Emre Ruhi (Biology). Our five member team read 42 research papers relevant to synthetic biology over winter break and met for an hour each week during the spring semester to teach ourselves the basic concepts of this emerging discipline and to brainstorm project ideas. After several projects were scrapped, we focused the majority of our summer research time on just a handful of projects and will present one of these at the 2007 iGEM Jamboree in November (see below).

We are advised by Erik Fernandez (Chemical Engineering), Jason Papin (Biomedical Engineering), and Ron Bauerle (Biology) in addition to our graduate student mentor Brianne Ray (Microbiology) and lab specialist Kay Christopher (Biology).

Email the VGEM team

2007 Project

At the 2007 iGEM Jamboree, we will present our synthetic biology approach to the design and implementation of a novel metabolic pathway in E. coli that utilizes cellulose and sunlight as sole energy sources for the biosynthesis of butanol, an alternative liquid transportation fuel. Please read more about our project by navigating with the links at the top of the page.

The 2007 VGEM Team: George, Emre, Amy, Ranjan, and Kevin

Acknowledgements

VGEM Team benefactors at UVA include the following groups:

The Office of the Vice President for Research and Graduate Studies
The University of Virginia Engineering Foundation
The School of Engineering and Applied Science
The School of Medicine
The Department of Biomedical Engineering
The Department of Chemical Engineering
The Department of Biology

Our corporate sponsors include the following:

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