All our members were part of different subgroups, which we created to organize our work. These belong to laboratory as well as organizational tasks, which are listed below. In total, we complemented each other to meet all upcoming challenges.
This section we want to dedicate to our advisors. As most of our team members are still bachelor students and had no or only minor knowledge about actually working in a lab before getting in touch with iGEM, our advisors played an important role in starting our project. They guided us in the long process of shaping our abstract ideas into real, scientific strategies and are the reason why we can now proudly announce that we are able to organize and execute our own experiments. Here, we want to present how each of them supported our project.
Alongside with our advisors we also owe special thanks to our supervisors. In 2016, RWTH Aachen University has had its third iGEM team and this would have never been possible without reliable faculty members who promote the iGEM spirit. They enabled us to work on our idea by providing us with their expertise as well as resources and lab-space. We are very grateful for their support and look forward to another successful synergy between our experienced supervisors and a new iGEM team that is bubbling over with ideas in 2017.
We owe special thanks to those who supported us in our daily work for iGEM, always listened to our problems, spent their time helping us and made the work of this year’s iGEM team Aachen possible.
Science
Barrick Lab: The University of Texas at Austin, Institute for Cellular and Molecular Biology, for sending us parts which were essential for our project.
Volkan Besirlioglu, for helping us with the measurement via flowcytometry and always being available for questions.
Dr. Cornelius Bessler, for sharing his knowledge with us by finding good literature for our topic, meeting us and reflecting on our project ideas.
Dr. Marco Bocola, for helping us planning our project and working on the theory to make a big part of our project possible by showing us how to model our synthetases.
Dr. Jochen Büchs, for his feedback on our project and for helping us with measurement by letting us use his devices and obtaining our screening conditions.
Dr. Thomas Drepper, for his tour through the institute of the Forschungszentrum Jülich where he is working in and for the offering of his support.
Brigitta Ehrt, for her technical support, for providing materials for our work and for being available whenever we had questions.
Michael Hammerling, for answering questions regarding the project of iGEM Team Texas 2014 and being the person of contact for the Barrick Lab.
Kalle Hüser, for giving us a lab instruction.
iGEM Austin Texas 2014 for sending us their plasmids and answering a lot of project related questions.
Dr. Felix Jakob, for giving us information about subtilisin structure and advice in modeling.
Celine Jung, for helping us with the measurement via NMR spectroscopy.
Prof. Dr. Jürgen Klankermayer, for helping us with the measurement via NMR spectroscopy.
Bianca Klein, for helping us to analyze our non-canonical amino acid with the mass spectrometry.
Dr. Dietrich Kohlheyer, for his tour through the institute of the Forschungszentrum Jülich and for offering his support.
Georgette Körfer, for introducing us to gathering data with the Tecan Plate reader and helping us with fluorescence measurements.
Christoph Lenzen, for advice in working with the picking robot in the iAMB.
Dr. Jan Marienhagen, for his tour through the institute of the Forschungszentrum Jülich, for offering his support and for recommending us for DECHEMA.
Dr. Alan Mertens, for giving us instructions in laboratory devices and for being our person of contact regarding human practices.
Dr. Dennis Mishler, for answering questions about non-canonical amino acid.
Akshay Mogarkar, for helping us with building the dark bench.
Jordan Monk, for being our person of contact of the iGEM Texas Team 2014.
Dr. Meike Niggemann, for being available for answering our questions regarding chemical reactions.
Dr. Stefan Noack, for his tour through the institute of the Forschungszentrum Jülich and for arranging the measurement with the mass spectrometry.
Dr. Richard Ottermanns, for helping us with data evaluation and giving us useful tips and hints.
Dr. Jörg Pietruszka, for suggesting literature regarding our project.
Liesa Pötschke, for helping us with the measurement via UV-Visible spectroscopy.
Dr. Johannes Schiffels, for helping us searching necessary materials for our work.
Dr. Daniel Summerer, for giving us information about tRNA synthetase specific for our non-canonical amino acid and S. cerevisiae.
Hamed Hosseinpour Tehrani, for technical support in the lab even on weekends.
Dr. Ljubica Vojcic, for her advice in planning our project idea.
Anne Maria Wallraf, for advising us while working with S. cerevisiae.
Georg Wandrey, for helping us with measurement and giving us general microbiological advice.
Alexandra Weingartner, for answering a lot of questions about photocaging especially regarding screening conditions and incorporating our non-canonical amino acid.
Dr. Birgit Wiltschi, for sharing her knowledge about photocaging and genetic code expansion with us.
Benedikt Wynands, for advice in working with the picking robot in the iAMB.
Dr. Martin Zimmermann, for giving us a safety instruction (and more information about our project work).
Advice in Lab
Thanks a lot to the people who are always available for questions and help us in the lab with lots of different things.
Deepak Anand
Chaymae Azdouffal
Marius Beylebens
Hao Cao
Yunus Ensari
Jan Förster
Anna Gärtner
Wolfgang Gloy
Alexander Richard Grimm
Dr. Stefanie Hamer
Isabell Hofmann
Dr. Thomas Horn
Julia Kinzel
Sandra Knopp
Zhanzhi Liu
Wei Long
Dr. Paul Majkut
Stephanie Mertens
Marie-Luise Pennings
Sandra Schulte
Daniel Sexauer
Dr. Maike van Ohlen
Anne Wallraf
Claudia Wichlatz
Jianhua Yang
Organization, Financing and Public
Corina Barth, for helping us with different requests.
Michael Bock, for meeting us and reflecting on our project ideas.
Brian Caudill, for giving us an introduction into the usage of IDT.
Dr. Ulrich Commandeur, for giving us information and being always interested and helpful regarding our work.
Dany Dimassi, for creating a business plan for our project.
Prof. Dr. Rainer Fischer, for providing us lab space.
Nina Freyer, for creating our surveys in cooperation with us.
Dr. Roland Hendlmeier, for helping us with financial questions.
Elke Kaußen, for booking rooms for us and for further organizational tasks.
Dr. Steffen Koschmieder, for having a project related talk with us.
Manja Kropp, for a lot of organizational work and fund administration.
Günther Lehle, for helping us with financial questions.
Dr. Nicole Maaßen, for lending us materials for school visits.
Anita Modigell, for organizational work.
Dr. Monika Reiss, for helping us to manage our studies in combination with the work for the iGEM competition.
Dr. Helen Rosenkranz, for a lot of organizational work and fund administration.
Dr. Nursen Sözer, for organizational work.
Jan Thar, for providing us work space in the FabLab.
Bastian Tweddell, for his technical support.
Katharina Vitt, for advise on questions in legal matters.
Dr. Benjamin Weyers, for his technical support.
Asmus Wolff, for his tour through the company, for meeting us and reflecting on our project ideas.
Former iGEM Aachen Team Members
Philipp Demling, for advice regarding our fundraising work by establishing contacts to potential supporters.
Sayantan Dutta, for mentoring us especially in the beginning of our project and for always offering his help.
Florian Gohr, for familiarizing us with the iGEM work.
René Hanke, for advice regarding our fundraising work.
Lisa Hannappel, for helping by the planning of the final celebration.
Laura Helleckes, for establishing a contact to the industry and handing knowledge on to us as new iGEM members of Aachen.
Sarah Lubjuhn, for showing us the first steps of working with BioBricks.
Michael Osthege, for his dedicated help with every question we had especially regarding IT stuff.
Jonas Rührer, for familiarizing us with the iGEM work and mentoring us especially in the beginning of our project.
Tobias Schwanemann, for familiarizing us with the iGEM work.
For the huge advice and financial help we would like to thank many great institutions and the people behind them. With this support our project came true and laboratory materials, the costs for registration fees, our flights to Boston and much more could be realized.