Virginia
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Welcome to the official VGEM Team wiki!
The Virginia Genetically Engineered Machine (VGEM) Team is a student-run synthetic biology research group at the University of Virginia. George McArthur (Chemical Engineering) founded the team, which also includes 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 [http://www.openwetware.org/wiki/IGEM:VGEM/2007/Projects projects] and will present one of these at the 2007 iGEM Jamboree in November (see below).
We are advised by faculty members [http://www.che.virginia.edu/fernandez.html Erik Fernandez] (Chemical Engineering), [http://bme.virginia.edu/people/faculty/papin/ Jason Papin] (Biomedical Engineering), and [http://minerva.acc.virginia.edu/biology/Fac/Bauerle.html Ronald Bauerle] (Biology) in addition to our graduate student mentor Brianne Ray (Microbiology) and lab specialist Kay Christopher (Biology).
2007 Project
At the 2007 iGEM Jamboree, we will present our synthetic biology approach to the design and attempted implementation of a novel metabolic pathway in E. coli that utilizes cellulose and light 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.
Please note that our project is original research inspired by published literature, completely designed by the undergraduate team members, and not at all, in any way, based on the research projects of any of our team's advisors. The articles from which our work is built are listed in the "references" section at the bottom of each of the project documentation pages (i.e., introduction, approach, procedures, and results).
Acknowledgements
VGEM Team benefactors at UVA include the following groups:
[http://www.virginia.edu/vprgs/ The Office of the Vice President for Research and Graduate Studies]
[http://www.seas.virginia.edu/vef/ The University of Virginia Engineering Foundation]
[http://www.seas.virginia.edu/ The School of Engineering and Applied Science]
[http://http://www.healthsystem.virginia.edu/internet/som/home.cfm The School of Medicine]
[http://www.bme.virginia.edu/ The Department of Biomedical Engineering]
[http://www.che.virginia.edu/ The Department of Chemical Engineering]
[http://www.virginia.edu/biology The Department of Biology]
[http://www.healthsystem.virginia.edu/internet/microbiology/ The Department of Microbiology]
Our corporate sponsor:
[http://www.dna20.com/ http://tbn0.google.com/images?q=tbn:twELO5rfkLG1VM:http://www.teknova.com/dna20/us/images/dna_c.jpg]
