Collaborations overview

The focus of iGEM is progress in research and the improvement of Biobricks to standardize biological parts for an easier application. To reach this ambitious goal and receive medals in the iGEM competition, teams must work together and establish solidarity and cooperation instead of rivality. The following text is an overview of our collaborations.

We asked team Bielefeld to help us with our first steps in iGEM. During our meeting they gave us a detailed instruction for the Gibson- and Biobrick-Assembly and many useful information about Sponsoring. Without their help we had not gained such a good impression and we decided to finally sign up for iGEM. Read more!

Another important Team we cooperated with, was team Aachen. Like us they are working on a project with an optogenetic focus. We built a lightbox for the light-controlled induction of optogenetically controlled proteins for Team Aachen. We already had a blueprint from our own lightbox therefore we were able to build an improved version which perfectly fits the requirements Aachen poses. So the box was ready to use for their testing phase. Read more!

We also received help from team Tübingen, as they sent us four yeast shuttle vectors. The vectors were not available from the iGEM HQ, but required for our project. We are thankful that we did not have to produce them ourselves, which enabled us to build and use our yeast constructs instantly. Read more!

Optoptosis also coordinated a Collaboration between eight german iGEM teams! For our postcard campaign we contacted all german iGEM teams and asked them to join us and create postcards showing and describing relevant topics of synthetic biology. They contain short descriptions so everyone can understand what synthetic biology is about. Most teams gave us a positive feedback and joined immediately. After finishing the cards, we sent them to each other and distributed all cards on any events we organized like e.g. the NRW-Day. Read more!

Our first steps to iGEM

Made possible with the help from Bielefeld

The first time we heard about the iGEM competition was when team SpaceMoss from Copenhagen visited us at the Heinrich-Heine-University in Düsseldorf, presenting their project and iGEM to us.

From this moment on, we were infected by the idea to create the first iGEM team at our university. In October 2015, some students decided to arrange a first meeting. At this meeting 60 students came together to discuss and talk about iGEM and how we could establish a team in Düsseldorf. It quickly became clear that we had a lot of questions which we were unable to answer ourselves, so we decided to ask team Bielefeld for help.

Soon, we had a meeting with them in their hometown. As it is the seventh time that Bielefeld is participant in the iGEM competition, they have a lot of expert knowledge.

They welcomed us with an iGEM cake and we spent a really interesting and nice afternoon together. During our meeting they gave us a detailed instruction for the Gibson- and Biobrick-Assembly and much information about Sponsoring. Thanks to team Bielefeld we had a good overview and lots of necessary information which we would have never found out without their help.

After all, we looked forward to manage our project and decided to sign up for iGEM.

Tübingen

Back in April, after receiving the designation kit from the iGEM HQ, we found out that we would need a couple of plasmids which have not been available at the iGEM HQ. So we contacted the Tübinger iGEM members from 2015 for a collaboration after exploring that they had what we needed.

This collaboration was about giving us 4 different yeast shuttle-vectors (pTum100, pTum104, pRS314, pRS315, pRS316), which were either used or produced by iGEM Tübingen 2015. We used these plasmids to test our construct consisting of the blue light switch and the red light switch in yeast.

Unfortunately, we have not been able to test our whole construct in yeast cells, but a part of the red lightswitch Bba_K1936002 .
Without these plasmids we would have had to produce the shuttle vectors ourselves, but luckily they still had glycerol stocks from last year and were so kind to share these with us.