One partner we frequently collaborated with was the fellow iGEM team Düsseldorf. They are the very first team from the Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf so naturally they had a lot of questions on how to get started in iGEM.

We were asked if we could help them on getting started and so we invited them to Bielefeld to answer their questions and aside from that, cake. Topics we discussed were Gibson assembly, Biobrick assembly, Sponsoring and many more. We met again at the German iGEM meet up in Marburg and stayed in touch. This lead to our participation in Düsseldorfs postcard initiative to spread knowledge on synthetic biology where we submitted our own design.

They also invited us to the NRW- day where we had a stall and hold a presentation on our project. What was special about this was that the presentation was open to the public so we had to find a way to simplify our project to an extend that everybody would be able to understand what we were doing. Get a more detailed look here.

At the iGEM Meet Up Germany in Marburg in August where all German iGEM teams participated and presented their projects we gained great insight into their topics. Since we found out that the iGEM team Freiburg 2016 works with Nanobodies, too, we began to exchange experiences. Shortly after our first get together we had a skype call to discuss further details about our projects and possibilities for supporting each other.

Considering the proximity of these aspects of our projects, it was only natural that we shared similar problems. For example, the correct folding of the chosen binding proteins in E. coli. As disulfide bounds are not well built in the cytoplasm and Nanobodies are possessing these when not specifically designed to avoid, we thought about utilizing a bimolecular fluorescence complementation (BIFC) as a control for correct protein folding. While further formulating this issue in our calls (click here for our Skype protocol) it crystallized that team Freiburg could make good use of our control system, too. After all we decided to give them the two plasmids necessary for the BIFC in order to have a control.

We were thrilled after realising that this year’s project from Lethbridge University was similar to our project. They also wanted to screen a library of nanobodies using a bacterial two-hybrid system. After initiating the contact we had several skype meetings (see here for a complete skype diary) where we exchanged ideas and talked about each other’s approaches towards the experiments. After a intensive discussion about bacterial two-hybrid systems, we realized that Lethbridge has no positive controls for their two-hybrid system. Therefore we sent them our positive controls: the HA4-Abl SH2 binding pair including the different mutants of HA4. In this way,we hope to give iGEM Lethbridge the tools to validate their two-hybrid system.

In exchange, Lethbridge provided us with the NS1 peptide from influenza A virus. We wanted to try this peptide as a potential target for our Evobodies. Therefore we could generate Evobodies against the important pathogen influenza A as well.