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 |
iGEM Kaiserslautern Link
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iGEM 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, but we had not enough time to finish our growth experiments with Dresden’s Bacteria.
Mentoring
iGEM Bielefeld 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. We had a great time and were glad to get coached 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.
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