Mentors
This book encapsulates all the scientific work done by the IISc iGEM team of 2023. There are 2 other volumes to this series, yet arguably, this is the most essential. I hope that this is instructive for future teams and undergraduates!
This work would’ve been IMPOSSIBLE without the help of our mentors. We extend a special thanks to our PI’s and mentors:
Primary PI
Prof. Rachit Agarwal has overseen our activities and given his valuable advice, through weekly meetings. It is great to run new ideas by him, as we have done so very often! He and his students Dr. Yeswanth Chakravarthy Kalapala, Ms Sharumathi Jeysankar, Dr. Rituparna Saha and Ms Nisha Sanjay Barge have taught us various techniques required for our project. They never complained even if we bugged them constantly regarding the arrival of our consumables at the department, and always did their best to help us out!
Secondary PI
Prof. Dipshikha Chakravortty has been with us in this project ever since it began! We are indebted to her for her continuous support and encouragement. She has given us lab space for training, carrying out a few new protocols of our own, and has also helped us out in the design and Human Practices part of our project: an essential part of the contest. Without her and her student, Dr. Abhilash Vijay Nair, who has taught us essential lab skills like PCR, bacterial transformation, primer designs and has helped us out with our experiments, the project would’ve been crippled. Dr. Abhilash has been more than just a great mentor, but he has been an amazing friend too!
Prof. Siddharth Jhunjhunwala has helped us extensively in this project: A major part of our project is as it is because of his input! We have also used HeLa cells from his lab, which formed the basis of our primary POC. Dr. Bartika Ghoshal, from the immune-engineering lab has been a great mentor and friend to us in carrying this project forward. We’re extremely grateful to her for her continuous support and advice, not just in her field of expertise, but also in making our very first products lists!
Prof. Raghavan Varadarajan never said no to any of our requests: our constructs are derived from the ones he very kindly showed us! He has also given his advice extensively to troubleshoot our protein purification and characterisation processes. We’re extremely grateful to his students Prof. Debajyoti Chakraborty, Mr. Samarth Kumar and Dr. Simran Srivastava for helping us out throughout this journey.
Prof. Mrinmoy De and his students Dr Pradipta B and Dr. Jagbandhu Sahu have helped us out extensively. The LNP’s we made were made with lipids sourced from his lab and characterised there also!
We’re extremely grateful to Prof. Debasis Das and his student Dr. Dhanalaksmi K.N who have trained us His-tag proein purification, which comprised a major part of the project!
Prof. Prosenjit Sen kindly allowed us to use the iLiNP devices made at the CENSE, IISc. We’re extremely grateful to his student Dr. Nishanth Sharma Kumar, who has helped us fabricate and use these devices!
We’re extremely grateful to Prof. Graca Raposo, Research Director, CNRS, (Head, Structure and Membrane Compartments). She was the VERY FIRST person we introduced this project to, and she encouraged us to continue working on it! Her endorsement, as an independent, international faculty, has meant the world to us!
We are indebted to Prof. Balaji Jagirdar (Dean UG) for supporting us throughout the project, helping us out when we had issues with the processing of bills and import of foreign kits.
We are immensely grateful to Prof. PS Anil Kumar (Dean A and F), without whom, we would’ve never got funding to power this project to the heights it has reached.
We are fortunate to have been supported by Prof. Govindan Rangarajan (Director, IISc), who has been so kind and generous as to allow a group of Undergraduates manage a project of the scale as we shall reveal in this volume.
We are grateful to Prof. Srikanth Iyer (Dean UG (B Tech)) for showing us his support and
making steps to improve the experience iGEM students have in IISc.
Dr. Nimi Vashi, senior scientist at Deep origin, has been of great help in inspiring us during the past 6 months: Her advice shaped a lot of the components of our project! We have had bi-weekly meetings with her, where she gave us some great, on-ground advice: something which only a true entrepreneur and industrialist can give: After all, its one thing to ideate something and something else entirely to ensure it makes a difference in the lives of the people who need it!
Dr. Mukund Kumar is one of the best Teaching Assistants we have ever had, and he is always one of the first people we run our ideas by! His constant encouragement was of great value to us!
Prof. Ramray Bhat (UG Biology co-ordinator) has given us his valuable advice on the project, especially on the design of the Organoid model we have tried to theorise. He allowed us to use the excellent 3rd semester UG laboratory for this project.
Prof. Dipankar Nandi very generously gave us some consumables, essential for our project.
We’re extremely grateful to Mr. H.S Vinod and Dr. Lavanya Shivashanmugam, (UG
Laboratory Instructors), who guided us in troubleshooting our experiments, and helped us using the 3rd semester UG laboratory that this project has called home for the past 6 months.
We were fortunate to have Prof. Rhiju Das and his student Dr.Christain Andrew Choe‘s help in optimising our RNA sequences using their tool, ribotree. Without a doubt, it gave our project a vision, and more credibility.
We heartily thank Dr. Manjunath Kamath Ammembal, Dr. Akshata Kamath Ammembal,
Dr. Hemant Kanojia and Dr. Shilpa Rao for their invaluable on-field advice, which is,
unfortunately, sorely lacking in the field of pure science, due to the large segregation between the 2 fields, especially in India. Their advice has been invaluable to us.
The most approachable people are of course, fellow students! We are grateful to our seniors, Jeevan Subodh, Shreya Kulkarni, Krishna Bharadwaj, and Dhruv Gupta, who have
supported us through the highs and the lows.
Last, but not the least, I thank my fellow members of the IISc IGEM team!
This project would not have been possible without the effort of the amazing people I have just mentioned here. I might have missed out a few, but I can assure you, it was not intentional!
This project has already gone beyond what I had expected, and things can only go up from here!
Aditya Kamath Ammembal
Team Leader,
IISc IGEM 2023
25/10/2023