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Lab members

Collaborators

Current lab members

Mark Somerville

Research associate – Engineering new GFPs and green fluorescent bacteria

Scott Mitchell

PhD Student – Equine hindgut microbiota and antibiotic resistance

Nick Yang

PhD student – Monooxgenases for biocatalysis

Claudia Moratti

PhD student – Engineering hydrocarbon biosensors

Brodie Gillieatt

PhD student – Heavy metal plasmids

Amos Anderson

Research assistant – Heterologous expression of psilocybin genes

Benj Gonzaga

Hons student – New genetic tools for cyanobacteria

Marcus Chung

Masters Student

iGEM teams

The International Genetically Engineered Machine Competition

iGEM is a global competition in synthetic biology, where students compete to create the most useful or novel GMO microbe. All the information that they generate and all the new DNA elements that they construct are made publicly available; this is an excellent example of open source science. The Coleman lab has hosted iGEM teams at the University of Sydney since 2013; click the photo to view each team’s project website. Their DNA parts can be found in the Parts Registry here.

iGEM 2013

“DCA Down Under”. From left: Cyril Tang, Vivian Li, (Nick Coleman), Robbie Oppenheimer, Andrew Tuckwell, James Bergfield, Shuravi Paul. (not shown): Desmond Li, Hugh Ford

iGEM 2014

“Easy cloni”. From left: Andy Bachler, Jeanne Zhang, Abigail Sison, Rokiah Alford, Callum Grey, Tom Connor

iGEM 2015

“Myco Mimic”. From left: Lizzie Richardson, Mark Somerville, Mahiar Mahjoub, Gaia Herrmann, Sandi Bo, Harrison Steel

iGEM 2016

“FRES(H)”. From left: Liam Ferguson, (Nick Coleman), Claudia Moratti, Amanda Chen, Wunna Kyaw, Alma Wu, Sholto Douglas, Sing-Young Chen, Orion Tong

iGEM 2017

“DISCO”. From left: Ruby Dawes, Erica Stewart, Grace Attrill, Courtney Pratt, Jamie Littleboy, Stephanie Sun, Alex Kelly, Emaleen Najjar

iGEM 2019

“Magic Coli” from left: Emma Todd, Isobel McGrath, Nathan Hawkins, (Nick Coleman), Fahad Ali, Merrie Caruana, Benj Gonzaga

igem 2021

“Free coli”. Clockwise from top left: Shae McLaughlin, Emily Cooper, Alex He, Rhys Michelis, Olivia Gorton, Simon Tang

iGEM 2022

“Nanobuddies”. from left: Lukian Adams, (Mark Somerville), Jasmin Li, (Claudia Moratti), Kawana Crowe, Donovan Wu, Jess Zhang, Jackie Yau, Sylvie Nolf, Oliver Nicholls, (Nick Coleman), Kiran Muthukrishnan

Past lab members

Nicole Groves

PhD student – Chemoenzymatic synthesis of new antibiotics

Yanwei Ma

PhD student – Metabolic engineering in Bacillus

Deb Rich

Research Assistant – Plant/microbe interactions

Josephine Conrade

Research assistant – Biodegradation of herbicides

Fiona Tang

Postdoc – Biodegradation of herbicides

Helen Douglas

Hons student -Biodegradation of chloromethylphenol

Naomi Jones

Honours student – Creating a synthetic DCA degrader

Daniele la Cecilia

PhD student – Glyphosate biodegradation in microcosms

Jake Munro

Research assistant – Mapping organochlorine biodegradation genes in groundwater

Michelle Ong

Grad Dip student – Engineering E.coli for dichloroethane biodegradation

Taylor Weetman

Grad Dip student – Expression of cytochrome p450 in E.coli

Frances Escobar

Honours student – Reconstruction of dichloroethane biodegradation pathway in E.coli

Ceri Jennings

Honours student – Expression of penicillin synthase enzyme in E.coli

Abigail Sison

Honours student – Development of synthetic gene cassettes for detecting integron activity

Vicky Kobylski

Honours student – Methanotrophic bacteria in Jenolan Caves

Sam Ross

Honours student – Expression of dehalogenases in E.coli

Emily Zhao

Honours student -Biodegradation of DDT and its metabolites

Kiri Martin

Honours student – Expression of SmoXYB1C1Z monooxygenase in Mycobacterium smegmatis

Vicky McCarl

Postdoc – Heterologous expression of monooxygenase components in E.coli

Carl Tong

Honours student – Mutagenesis of copper monooxygenase genes of Mycobacterium NBB4

Jazmin Oszvar

Honours student – Expression of SmoXYB1C1Z monooxygenase in Mycobacterium smegmatis

Becca Henry

Honours student – Characterisation of EtnD reductase from Mycobacterium NBB4

Simon Dingsdag

Honours student – Bacterial communities associated with apical periodontitis

Sam Cheung

PhD student – Biocatalysis for epoxide synthesis using monooxygenases

Alex Baume

PhD student -Development of probiotic and antibiotic scaffolds

Elissa Liew

Research assistant -Transcriptomics analysis of hydrocarbon oxidation in Mycobacterium

Alicia Gestal

PhD student – Devlopment of synthetic gene cassettes for detecting integron activity

Mai Anh Ly

PhD student – Heterologous expression of ethene monooxygenase

Morgaine Peart

Honours student – Investigation of plant-associated mycobacteria

Laura Nolan

Honours student – Growth kinetics of Mycobacterium NBB4

Sheree Yau

Honours student – Proteomics of Mycobacterium NBB4

Neil Wilson

Postdoc – Cloning monooxygenase gene clusters from Mycobacterium spp

Margaret Migocki

Postdoc – Heterologous expression of monooxygenases

Carmen Li

Honours student – Linking genotype and phenotype in Mycobacterium NBB4

Matt Quek

Honours student – Characterising monooxygenase genes in Mycobacterium NBB4

Nga Le

PhD student – Bioremediation of organochlorines using Mycobacterium NBB4

Collaborators and Friends

Peter Rutledge

Organic chemistry

Federico Maggi

Environmental engineering

John Kavanagh

Chemical engineering

Brian Jones

Plant molecular biology

Michael Kertesz

Soil microbiology

Jacqui Matthews

Structural biology

Marjorie Valix

Chemical engineering

Andy Holmes

Microbial ecology

Mike Manefield

Environmental microbiology

Tom Jeffries

Microbial bioinformatics

Colin Murrell

Environmental microbiology

Claudia Vickers

Synthetic biology

Liz Gillam

Microbial biotechnology

Jim Gossett

Environmental engineering

Jim Spain

Environmental microbiology

Tim Mattes

Environmental engineering

Michael Gillings

Molecular microbiology

Rob Willows

Plant biotechnology

Ian Paulsen

Microbial genomics

Sasha Tetu

Microbial genomics

Colin Scott

Synthetic biology

Gunjan Pandey

Environmental biotechnology

Chris Marquis

Microbial biotechnology

Amy Cain

Molecular microbiology

Brett Neilan

Microbial biotechnology

Chris Greening

Microbial ecology

Gary Muscatello

Veterinary microbiology

Nate Lo

Evolutionary Ecology

Ruth Zadoks

Veterinary epidemiology

Karl Hassan

Molecular microbiology

Federico Lauro

Marine microbiology

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