Scientific Collaborations
iGEM Marburg Link
We tied first bonds with the Marburg iGEM-Team at the German Meet-Up in Düsseldorf and soon decided to start a collaboration. We took part in their Interlab-Study testing a standardized protocol for Golden Gate-reactions. As the MoClo-Toolkit we are working with is also based on Golden Gate reactions this was a splendid opportunity to generate data, validate an improved protocol and show the possibilities and especially the benefits of the Golden Gate method. Our gathered data shows that the improved protocol works as reliably as the long one (see table and pictures below). The reactions were pipetted following their Interlab Study guide book: Interlab Protocol_final.pdf Additionally we decided to cultivate Marburg`s Synechococcus strains to improve our knowledge on the needs of phototrophic organisms and to gather more reliable data on their growth rate and growth conditions.
| Protocol | Amount Plated (µl) | Green Colonies | Red Colonies | White Colonies | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Troubleshoot | 100 | 228 | 0 | 0 | dh5alpha, BsaI |
| Troubleshoot | 100 | 57 | 0 | 0 | dh5alpha, BsaI |
| Troubleshoot | 100 | 139 | 0 | 0 | dh5alpha, BsaI |
| Rapid | 100 | 5 | 0 | 0 | dh5alpha, BsaI |
| Rapid | 100 | 20 | 0 | 0 | dh5alpha, BsaI |
| Rapid | 100 | 31 | 0 | 0 | dh5alpha, BsaI |
| Improved | 100 | 23 | 0 | 0 | dh5alpha, BsaI |
| Improved | 100 | 35 | 0 | 0 | dh5alpha, BsaI |
| Improved | 100 | 224 | 0 | 0 | dh5alpha, BsaI |
Cultivating phototroph organisms isn't easy - even with a temperature of 40 °C, 500 μE of light and proper CO2 ventilation, we weren't able to reproduce Synechococcus tremendous growth rates. None the less, our data shows temperature/growth correlation and the huge influence of continuous gas exchange. Every temperature increase (see temperature curve in red) is followed by a huge gain in growth and every re-regulation of the ventilation rate (indicated in the graph with dotted line) leads directly to an increase in reproduction.
iGEM TU Kaiserslautern Link
iGEM Kaiserslautern worked on the same topic as we initially planned to do. This reassured us that tackeling the plastic problem with a plant chassis was a good idea and it also inspired us to focus more on building a useful toolkit for C. reinhardtii . Moreover two teams working on a similar problem enables a variety of cooperations and knowledge-exchange. This is why we discussed together how to characterize parts in a meaningful way while using the same organism as a chassis. We had the following ideas on working together - taking advantage of afore mentioned fact:
- Kaiserslautern had a MHETase ready from the beginning and decided to kindly share it with us. As they we were using other strains of C. reinhardtii than we did, we would be able to collect broad data on expression in different strains. In the process of understanding the design of this MHETase, we came up with an idea: According to Baier et al. 2018 and other publications, different types of Introns from Rbcs2 have different influence on transformation and mRNA abundancy. So we decided to design our MHETase with another combination of Introns to get characterization data that would accompany each other.
- Unfortunately, we did not manage to build our sequence of MHETase because we faced problems while cloning and transforming our constructs, taking us an unexpected amount of time. Luckily, the transformations with the MHETase went well in the strains of Kaiserslautern aswell as ours, so we decided to further work together.
- Lastly, Kaiserslautern agreed on sending us their transformed strains. Thanks to that, we were able to collect additional growth data in our MC-1000 OD cultivation setup to evaluate whether transgene expression would affect growth of C. reinhardtii and successfully collected growth data for different strains and transgenic constructs
As a last icing on the cake, we were able to feed ours and Kaiserslauterns data of protein expression of the MHETase construct to our model, enabling us to further evaluate our data and characterize the parts.
Apart from our work together for characterization, we engaged in the Synbiocommunity by attending the German Conference on Synthetic Biology (GCSB 2019) and the iGEM German Meetup in Duesseldorf. Both events were good occasions to exchange ideas and thoughts about our projects and discuss recent research in synthetic biology.
To summarize, we feel we had a very productive cooperation with Kaiserslautern!
iGEM TU Dresden Link
This cooperation was established thanks to Paula from iGEM team Dresden who studied at Humboldt-University together with some of our team members. She reached out to us and we started looking for ideas to work together. At the iGEM German Meetup in Duesseldorf we had the idea to characterize some parts together: We wanted to grow their transgenic Spirulina to collect more data on influence of foreign protein expression on growth. Unfortunately, iGEM Dresden decided to give up their Sweet Spirulina project and focused on DipGene instead. We still made an attempt to work together by at least growing wild-type Spirulina in our Multicultivator.
Mentoring
iGEM Bielefeld-CeBiTec Link
Since we are the first team of our university that ever participated in the iGEM competition we had a lot to learn, especially about our wiki website. Creating a new wiki can be quite challenging - fortunately we had the opportunity to team up with iGEM Bielefeld for this concern. Two iGEM Bielefeld team members visited our team in Berlin for three days and coached us.
Main points we discussed were the general structure of the iGEM wiki and on what to focus when it comes to judging forms and deadlines. They also gave us an introduction to html and CSS and showed us the wiki upload tool. Moreover they emphasized the importance of short texts and visually appealing information. In those three days we learned everything we had to now about wiki and received interesting and very useful informations we could later apply on our website. Additionally we paid each other consecutive visits throughout the whole iGEM period (Darius visited Bielefeld whereas Alex and Adila from Bielefeld-CeBiTec dropped by) establishing a continuous contact and forming a long-lasting bond. We had a great time and were glad to get mentored by a team that already had some iGEM experience.
Outreach Collaborations
iGEM Düsseldorf Link
The overall aim of iGEM is to not only design and run a project but to engage and sensitize the public with synthetic biology. This is why we collaborated with iGEM Düsseldorf and their postcard project. Former iGEM teams of the Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf established the project by collecting self-designed postcards from iGEM-teams all over the world. Every team had to create a personal postcard with an image and a short informational text related to their topic. iGEM Düsseldorf collected all of them and sended those collections back to every team that participated. We then received iGEM postcards from all over the world, which showed us the huge variety and diversity of the iGEM competition. Most importantly it gave us the possibility to share those postcards whenever we organized events about synthetic biology, such as the panel discussion or The Long Night Of The Sciences in Berlin.
iGEM Freiburg: NietorP Link
As a part of our project was dedicated to sustainability and the battle against man-made problems we were happy to participate in iGEM-Freiburgs challenge which requested teams to take actions for a better environment: Collecting trash, swapping public-transport for bike and sharing pictures of this team-experience. It was a fun way to think about how simple changes in lifestyle could have a huge impact for the preservation of our earth. And by posting this on instagram we shared this vision with the world.
iGEM Costa Rica: SDG-Challenge Link
As part of a challenge establised by iGEM Costa Rica, we were nominated to name four Sustainable Development Goals that fit best to our project. As it is iGEM's goal to solve a problem with Synthetic Biology we were happy to participate and name the Goals we aim to fulfill.
Naturally "Clean Water and Sanitation" and "Life below water" belong to our main visions, which Chlamy could solve as it degrades plastic and could then clean the water from it. Moreover we named "Sustainable Cities and Communities", as it is one possibility to use Chlamy in a wastewater plant as last filtration step. This would enable cities to establish an eco-friendly cleaning process by using a fresh water algae. Last but not least we fight for a "responsible consumption and production". Microplastic is a matter that concerns us all, which is why we have to change our behaviour and way to consume. By posting our goals an Instagram and nominating three other teams we showed our colours and visions and spread the idea.