Team:TU Darmstadt/Attributions
Attributions
At the beginning of the year the team met for the first time. Ever since then, there were numerous issues which
needed elaboration. It took a lot of research and debating within the team but also with many experts of
the field, professors from the faculty and also members of previous iGEM teams at TU Darmstadt until a
decision for a final topic was made.
We, all members of the iGEM team TU Darmstadt from 2019, would like to thank each and everyone who
supported us during and after the decision for a project topic. Without you it would not have been
possible to achieve everything we did this year.
A great thank you goes to the working group of Prof. Dr. Warzecha. Without their support it would
not have been possible to realize the project, since they provided us with a lab, materials and helped
us with all questions and problems regarding lab work. We especially want to thank Prof. Dr.
Warzecha for being our Primary PI, and for investing as much time and effort into our project. Without him there would be no iGEM at TU Darmstadt and for that we owe him a huge thank you. We
want to thank Simone Bartl-Zimmermann who helped us with everything regarding the management of
our lab. We thank her for always helping us with things inside and outside of the lab and for always
having our backs. Our thanks also goes to all postdoctoral researcher and PhD students of the working
group, who always willingly answered all our questions. For supporting the team as a secondary
PI we want to thank Prof. Dr. Kabisch.
Biology
The wet lab would like to thank the working group of Prof. Dr. Stein for helping us with
advice as well as instruments for protein purification and other laboratory work. Of course, we thank
Alexander Gräwe who this year actively joined the team as an instructor and helped with
everything from theoretical to practical matters. We also appreciate the patience of the other PhD
students from Prof. Dr. Stein’s working group while we were working in their labs.
For the use of their ultracentrifuge and transmission electron microscope we thank the working group
of Prof. Dr. Thiel. We especially thank Dr. Brigitte Hertel for all her support with the
imaging of our VLPs. Without this, important results of our project would be missing. We would also like
to thank the working groups of Prof. Dr. Süß and Prof. Dr. Cardoso for providing us with advice
and laboratory instruments. Many thanks to Dr. Marcus Langhans and Robert Lehn for helping us
with the single molecule imaging microscopy of our particles.
We really appreciate the possibility to perform experiments for our project during a practical course of
Prof. Dr. Kolmar, which some of our team members were taking. Here we would like to offer our
thanks to Simon Englert and Hendrik Schneider who supervised us during the time in their group
and practical course. Additionaly we want to thank Valentina Hilberg for providing us with proteins vital for our FRET-assays.
Regarding the modeling part of our project we received valuable advice from Prof. Dr. Hamacher’s
working group. In this case we want to offer our appreciation especially to Benjamin Mayer,
Maximilian Dombrowski and Patrick Kunzmann.
Expert Advice
We owe a special thank you to all the experts who agreed to discuss our project with us. We got a lot of
positive and most of all valuable and helpful feedback regarding our project. A lot of input generated
during those discussions helped us to form our project and made it exactly what it is now.
Prof. Gaisser of the University of Ansbach talked to us about not only
the biological part of our project but also the ethical aspects and made us aware of dual-use aspects.
She also referred us to Paul-Ehrlich-Institut. Here, we talked to Dr. Schülke who gave a lot of input regarding toxicity and immunogenicity
and even offered to help us with experiments. For this we want to express our gratitude. Furthermore, we
would like to express our appreciation towards Prof. Santi and Dr. Lico which both work with Virus-like particles (VLPs)
and due to that answered a lot of our questions regarding VLPs.
Prof. Susanne Bailer from the Fraunhofer Institute in Stuttgart, who is working on VLPs as
vaccinations, also gave us helpful advice regarding the purification of our particles. For giving
us advice about VLPs as vaccinations we thank Dr. Cramer. For discussing feasible purification and analyzation methods with us, we want to thank Dr. Mampel. Lastly, it was a great honor to talk to
Prof. Dr. zur Hausen who in 2008 received the Nobel Prize in Physiology
or Medicine for his research which lead to the development of HPV (human papillomavirus) vaccines which
are based on VLPs. Again, we would like to thank all experts who were willing to talk to us. We did not
take it for granted that you have taken the time to discuss our project with us in such detail.
Support from Former iGEMers
For all the help, and sharing their experiences, we want to thank all former iGEM team members who contributed this year. A special thank you is for Bea Marie Spiekermann, Lara Steinel and Jennifer Zimmermann who we could always ask for help regarding "anything iGEM related". For helping us during the lab kickoff and showing the new iGEMers how it’s done, we would like to thank Luca Brenker, Christian Hake, Bea Spiekermann, Lara Steinel and Jennifer Zimmermann. At the start of the lab phase Sebastian Barthel gave us an insight into the BioBrick system and a workshop on SnapGene. For working on the experiments at the PEI with us, we want to thank Alexandra Goretzki. Marietheres Kleuter, Timotheus Kiel, and Bea Spiekermann supported us with presentation workshops in preparation for the giant jamboree. We would also like to thank Christian Sürder who supported Louisa Born and Anies Rösch with the monitoring of this year’s team. Furthermore, we owe a thank you to Thea Lotz who has been active in almost every team at TU Darmstadt since the beginning in 2012. This year she came to our presentations to give feedback and together with Tim Maier, Maria Musillo, Theresa Wörmann, Timo Kiel, Bea Spiekermann and Lara Steinel helped with the correction of texts for our wiki.
Others
We would like to thank everyone from Lab3 for their help while working at Lab3 and also all professors from the faculty of biology and chemistry who came to our presentations and gave their input and offered help regarding our project. Barbara Wolf helped us with a lot of paperwork regarding financial matters. Therefore, we would like to thank her. Furthermore, we want to thank Jörg Kalkowski for taking the pictures for our team page and Joshua Johannson for his significant help regarding our webapp.
