Team:UC Berkeley/Team/Madhvi Venkatesh



MY NAME/NICKNAME

Madhvi Venkatesh

MY STATS

UC Berkeley Bioengineeing Undergrad entering Junior year

WHAT LED ME TO SYNTHETIC BIOLOGY

I first heard about synthetic biology in an introductory bioengineering class that I took during my first semester at Berkeley. I was particularly interested in Chris's tumor killing bacteria project when he was invited to speak to our class, so I contacted him and got involved with that project last spring. I feel that our current approach in improving foundational techniques like Gateway and assembly reactions can potentially help in expediting the process of making composite parts throughout the field of Synthetic Biology.

SYNTHETIC BIOLOGY: IN MY WORDS

I think that synthetic biology entails manipulating parts from existing systems to create novel systems. I like to think of it as taking apart lego structures and reorganizing the legos to make new structures. On a day to day basis, it mostly involves lots of pipetting and keeping track of what is in each tube.

MY POSSIBLE FUTURE WITH SYNTHETIC BIOLOGY

After iGEM, I hope to continue synthetic biology research with Chris until I graduate in 2010. After that, I will probably continue in the field in grad school. As far as projects go, I definitely want to work on the tumor killing bacteria project that many people in Chris's lab have been working on. I also would be excited to work on engineering bacteria for use in bioremediation and biofuels.

MY GOALS WITH IGEM

iGEM has given me the opportunity to become much more independent as a researcher. I have become much more knowledgeable and comfortable with all of the cloning procedures and the reasoning behind them. From writing construction files to making assembly trees, I have been involved with many of the design aspects of the experiments that I am doing. Additionally, iGEM has helped me decide that I want to pursue grad school.

MY FAVORITE DNA SEQUENCE

T4 DNA ligase basic part (after all of the restriction sites have been removed). Although the creation of the basic part required some of the most time and energy (I had to do seven PCRs and a lot of them did not work the first time), when I was ecstatic when finally got a clone that sequenced correctly. I don't want to include the sequence here because it is ~1500bp, but you probably can figure it out from the T4 genome and my construction file on the wiki.

MY DUMBEST LAB MISTAKE/COMPUTATIONAL ERROR

Resuspending oligos for a PCR in ethanol instead of water and only realizing after the oligos had dissolved. Wouldn't you have expected me to recognize the difference in smell sooner than that?

MY FAVORITE CHILDHOOD CARTOON

Rugrats

MY FAVORITE FOOD

Indian string hoppers and coconut milk

A BOARDWORTHY QUOTE

Jin (referring to an experiment to test a promoter in animal blood): "I just need blood!" Terry (when discussing the quote hours later): "The appropriate response to that statement would be 'Who doesn't?'"