Team:FAU Erlangen/Collaborations

iGEM Erlangen


iGEM Team Aachen

The collaboration with the iGEM team Aachen started at the German team meetup in Marburg. It was a perfect match as their problem of solubility of non-canonical amino acids is based exclusively on the chemical nature of the amino acids. So we conducted a literature club and discussed some important general aspects regarding solubility. The solubility of their amino acids could be simulated for aqueous systems. The results lead to a change in the solvent from water to dimethylsulfoxide (DMSO). In the end, we were happy to help them getting back on track with their project.

Figure 1: Solubility of tyrosine modified with a light cleavable protecting group.


iGEM Team Munich

As we were also testing fluorescent proteins on their function as photosensitizers we tried a broad variety of them, which we could not produce on our own. Hence, iGEM Team Munich helped us with highly purified eGFP modified with a Histidin-Tag. We demonstrated a slight impact on the performance of the solar cells built with titanium dioxide cells. However, this impact may lie within our standard deviation. For ZnO no enhancement could be observed. Thus, we tested the fluorescent protein as co-photosensitizer for closing absorption gaps yielding better results.

Figure 2: Basic idea of co-sensitized solar cell. Fluorescent protein provides an emission maximum at the absorption maximum of the dye (red star). The excited dye can transfer its electron to the ZnO layer.


iGEM Team Marburg

Last year, we started our first iGEM Team and needed some help to familiarize ourselves with all iGEM standards. Team Marburg hosted the German meetup, so we decided to attend to get new ideas and perhaps some help. After the meetup, many teams offered us advice but we worked especially closely with team Marburg. Team Marburg and us designed a “game of cells” and chose to stay in contact.

Planning this year’s project, we thought about acquiring a high-quality biofilm and remembered a key detail from Marburg’s last year’s project: Curlis. So we asked our friends if they could send us the E. coli strain W3110 and their BioBrick pPickUp encoding CsgA, a part of Curlis. As this wouldn’t be enough, CsgA was tagged with a SpyTag – part of our own last iGEM project. Perfect teamwork!

Thanks to team Marburg for sending us the constructs and the E. coli strain W3110!

Figure 3: Biofilms grown on glass slides containing curli fibers.