We are eternally grateful to our supporters
We are deeply grateful for all the support that we have received over the past iGEM year! Many researchers, students, experts, departments and companies helped us along the way and we owe so much to all of them. Here we really want to say thank you. We particularly appreciate Prof. Dr. Lars Angenent and Dr. Bastian Molitor, who instructed our team, as well as our incredibly supportive advisors Sarah Schulz and Patrick Schweizer. We could not have done it without you.
Students
Lina Widerspick designed our wetlab parts and was heavily involved in everything related to human practices, collaborations and worked out our business plan. Her incredible speed of writing is yet to match.
Lukas Heumos designed our drylab parts, implemented our wiki, was involved in sponsoring and partnerships and organized the team. If anybody was looking for an answer in our slack channels, chances are high that Lukas had already answered it before the message really came through.
Patrick Müller designed our wetlab parts, was our master of constructs and our RNA-Seq library wizard as well as BioRender master. Furthermore, he was also involved in our partnership with the Experimenta. He’ll probably beat you at grain income at the Settlers of Catan.
Antonia Binder performed all different kinds of wetlab experiments and didn’t hesitate to stay for long hours to get the job done. If there’s one person in the world that really loves her jute bags - it’s Antonia.
Jakob Keck was heavily involved in the wetlab, RNA-Seq and finance. He also helped us coordinating our stay in the ZMBP laboratories. If you find a working, ancient looking device in your laboratory, there is a strong possibility that Jakob fixed and donated it.
Famke Bäuerle was responsible for our metabolic modelling, managed our partnership with the Experimenta, organized our team and took great care of our finances. Famke did everything for the team and didn’t even dread driving five girls four hours to Düsseldorf.
Steffen Lemke designed our cpp constructs and implemented our software C3Pred. Few people know the rules of board games as well as Steffen, especially the infamous Steffen house rules.
Marie Evers performed a multiplicity of experiments and managed our social media channels. Her well-timed jokes during our meetings ensured that our spirits were kept high.
Eva Kunzelmann performed all different kinds of wetlab experiments and had an overview over the course of various experiments. Eva’s choice of music really helped us bypass the waiting time between experiments and motivated us not to give up even when things went wrong.
Luzia Hamma helped in different projects in the lab, was involved in our human practices parts and helped us designing our posters and banner. When our long meetings yet again didn’t want to end, Luzi cinched our survival with nourishing snacks.
Philipp Ehmele implemented our wiki. If technical limitations prevent something from being implemented on an iGEM wiki, Philipp will find a creative way to still do so.
Katharina Csik helped in the lab and captured our expert interview videos. Her experience with people helped us approach experts from different backgrounds and in turn develop new ideas.
Carolin Schwitalla organized us a laboratory and important materials. Additionally, she helped us design our images to be understandable even by non-scientists. The team is currently waiting for our probiotic to find a way to Caro’s Sims3 families.
Jonas Steinwender is our design expert, who, despite the approaching deadline of his bachelor thesis, has always managed to present our sometimes quite bizarre design ideas in a clear and structured way.
Advisors
Sarah Schulz gave staggeringly valuable insight and advice for our wetlab experiments. If we ever got weird results in the lab, she was the one that we consulted first.
Patrick Schweizer’s experience and comprehension of synthetic biology was extremely valuable. Additionally, his past experience of competitions ensured that we set up a professional working and design environment. We won’t forget our time spent on the roofs of the Max Planck Institute organized by Patrick.
Dr. Pengfei Xia eminently inspired our kill-switch mechanism and provided invaluable feedback for our project. Additionally, his molecular cloning knowledge is off the roof.
Dr. Bastian Molitor’s deep understanding of synthetic biology was very beneficial during our project development and troubleshooting. We’re very grateful for his unconditional support.
Partner Institutions
The European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) warmly welcomed us in Heidelberg and allowed us to use their RNA-Seq library kits and perform the rRNA depletion in their laboratories. Additionally, Nayara Trevisan Doimo de Azevedo and Ferris Jung proceeded with the RNA-Seq library preparation and sequenced it. Specifically, we would like to express our profound gratitude to Iris Kruijen for handling everything related to communication and public relations exceptionally well and to Vladimir Benes for his great interest and extensive feedback for our project, as well as for allowing us to use his laboratories.
The Center for Plant Molecular Biology (ZMBP) kindly allowed us to use their laboratories, enabling our wetlab projects in the first place. Prof. Dr. Klaus Harter in particular supported us in a great measure.
Moreover, the group of Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Wohlleben generously allowed us to use their laboratories as well as some of their material.
Additionally, the NGS Competence Center Tübingen (NCCT) provided us with their laboratories, as well as material such as the flow cell for RNA-Seq. We are particularly grateful to Dr. Angel Angelov who supervised and encouraged us even when things went badly.
Finally, we want to thank the Quantitative Biology Center (QBiC) for storing our sequencing data and providing us access to high performance clusters. In particular, the director of QBiC, Dr. Sven Nahnsen, did not hesitate to support our team with precious cluster resources and we are very grateful for his support. Moreover, we would like to thank Simon Heumos and Dr. Gisela Gabernet for providing assistance with running pipelines on a modern cluster system.
Project Advice
We’re very grateful to Dr. Lisa Maier who provided us with gut microbiome support. Her expertise greatly influenced our RNA-Seq experimental design. Additionally, she generously provided us with bacteria supernatant and mGAM medium.
Dr. Vladimir Benes, head of the Genomics Core Facility at the EMBL, was the main person who suggested to examine the gut interaction and anaerobic conditions in the gut further via our RNA-Seq experimental design and metabolic modelling. He also greatly supported our RNA-Seq efforts and inspired us to work out a thoughtful experimental set-up for the experiments.
Dr. Daniel Machado, at our visit of the EMBL, gave us great insight into the internal of CarveMe, recommended various ways of improving our generated model and validated our novel model of E. coli Nissle. Furthermore, he introduced and explained Smetana in an exceptional presentation to us.
Prof. Dr. Andreas Dräger, assistant professor for Computational Systems Biology of Infection and Antimicrobial-Resistant Pathogens, was the main person who jump-started our metabolic modelling approaches. He pointed us towards the creation of our own metabolic model for E. coli Nissle with the use of CarveMe.
Prof. Dr. Oliver Kohlbacher, professor for applied bioinformatics, provided extensive feedback for our constructs and shaped our initial RNA-Seq experimental design. Moreover, he provided first hints at our metabolic modelling approaches.
Dr. Jörg M. Schibel and Dr. Brigitte Walderich examined the safety of our experiments and provided valuable feedback for keeping everything in line and documenting everything related to safety.
Prof. Dr. Andreas Fritsche, Deputy Director of the Institute for Diabetes Research and Metabolic Diseases at the Helmholtz Centre Munich at the University of Tübingen, helped us with his extensive knowledge of Diabetes and answered fundamental questions about the disease. Moreover, as a clinician, he could give an estimation about patient acceptance and potential shortcomings of our idea.
Dr. Anette Christ is a member of the Institute of Innate Immunity in Bonn and works in the group of Prof. Eicke Latz. Her support in researching potential outreach strategies for Diabetes prevention, as well as her expertise in inflammation and nutrition, helped us greatly in designing our educational flyer and the concept of our information booth.
Prof. Timo Müller, acting director of IDO (Institute for Diabetes and Obesity) of the Helmholtz Institute Munich is researching Diabetes Mellitus, greatly supported us by raising our awareness to the issue of pharmacological availability, as well as stability of GLP-1 analogues. Moreover, he kindly participated in our expert interviews.
Dr. Rolf Hecker, director of the Institute of Technology Transfer and startups of the University of Tübingen, discussed the open-source nature of iGEM with respect to patents with us. Moreover, he gave valuable insight into the process of founding a company and entering pharmaceutical markets and we are happy to collaborate with him in the next year.
Synovo, a pharmaceutical company in Tübingen, was very helpful in project design and the evaluation of our idea. Moreover, they gave us insight into their company and helped us refine our entrepreneurial strategy. For this support, we are very thankful.
Lab Support
iGEM projects get complex and expensive very quickly. Without the generosity of these groups and institutions, our project could have never entered the laboratory stage.
The ZMBP, the NCCT, the EMBL, the group of Professor Wohlleben, the group of our PI Prof. Dr. Lars Angenent, the group of PD Dr. Evi Stegmann and Dr. Lisa Maier generously supplied us with various lab materials. We’re very grateful for the unconditional support.
Interview partners
Conducting experts is vital for sophisticated projects to reevaluate the approaches and adapt to a constantly changing environment. Several experts were willing to conduct interviews and share their expertise with us and the iGEM community.
Dr. Rolf Hecker, director of the Institute of Technology Transfer and startups of the University of Tübingen, discussed the challenges of entering a pharmaceutical market as a young student-driven startup.
Dr. Annette Christ from the Institute of Innate Immunity in Bonn discussed everything related to our scientific project with us.
Prof. Dr. Timo Müller, director of the Institute for Diabetes and Obesity, explained the molecular mechanisms of Diabetes and the interactions of obesity with Diabetes to us.
Stefan Gammel, an expert for nanoethics, debated the implications of GMO based treatments and the difficulties of convincing European legislation with us.
Claudia Leippert, a certified Diabetes consultant, discussed the possible usage of our probiotic by Type 2 Diabetes patients and the difficulties that patients have with the disease.
Figures
All figures on our wiki which are not images of gels or photos have been created with https://biorender.com/.
