Contribution
Our contribution to the iGEM community
During this year’s iGEM competition, we gained a tremendous amount of knowlege about many different aspects in science which are related to our project InToSens, dry and wet lab work, synthetic biology in general and also science communication. We wish that future iGEM teams will be able to benefit from our experiences and achievements which are described in the following.
InToSens Parts
In the course of the generation of a genetic construct especially designed for the detection of inflammatory toxins (BBa_K3338010), we added various new part sequences, literature and comprehensive characterization data to the iGEM Parts Registry so that these will be available for future iGEM teams. For instance, we worked on an improvement of the usage of the CMV Promoter (BBa_I712004 -> new part: BBa_K3338002) and the P2A peptide (BBa_K3338003). Follow us to Engineering, Results and Parts for more details.
3D print template for microfluidic "magnetic cell" measuring chamber
Our novel measuring chamber was especially designed for the characterization of magnetic
particles.
While we aimed to use it to demonstrate magnetization of cells by iron import via MagAcreated part:
BBa_K3338000, it can
potentially serve for other studies as well. Follow us to Design, Engineering, Experiments and
Results to learn more about the physical background of
the construction and the validation
experiments we performed as well as how to use the chamber.
Contact us to obtain the 3D print template so that you can use this hardware tool in your
lab as
well!
Open-source software: simulation of biofilm growth
We developed a software tool in collaboration with the “TU Darmstadt" iGEM Team, which enables the user to run a molecular dynamics simulation of biofilm growth. The program is implemented in Python and documented in detail on our Wiki and GitHub repository. The software tool not only provides the numerical model but various functions to visualize the results and access the data. The software is optimized to make use of the full computational power of the local machine. All of the used parameters and formulas are well documented. In our example notebook, we explain in detail how to adapt the model for its purposes. We implemented a specific class, to enable the user to switch easily between simulation constants and even different compositions of biofilms. Furthermore, we followed a comprehensive programming approach, to encourage future iGEM teams to contribute to the project.
Cell and synthetic biology board game
We learned that communicating science is a very important aspect in research and that outstanding teaching, which plays such a crucial role in fueling enthusiasm for a special topic in pupils, is one of the earliest points of it. That is why our goal was to create a really fun way to teach the basics about cell and synthetic biology to pupils. And how could this be achieved better than with a board game?! While we provide the English and German version of the game, there are still a lot of other languages we unfortunately do not speak. We hope that future iGEM teams will be as excited about our board game as we are and that they will translate it into their native languages to make it accessible to an even broader range of pupils coming from all over the world! Follow us to Education to learn more about our self-designed game. We provide you with the game instructions as well as all the print templates you will need to create your very own version of it.
