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. In the end, we were happy to help them getting back on track with their project.

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 successfully demonstrated a slight enhancement of the titanium dioxide cells, which was caused by a moderate broadening of the absorption spectrum to longer wavelength. However, with ZnO the layers were not consistent causing a high deviation of the individual results. Accordingly, we could not proof this point for ZnO.

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!