Trinity On Tour
Monschau
Our first journey with the team led us to the small town Monschau in the Eifel region of western Germany. For the weekend of 2nd to 4th of March we stayed in the castle of Monschau for team building.
We traveled via bus and train from Düsseldorf to Monschau. During the ride it started snowing which is why we were granted a wonderful view at our arrival. We had to walk through the snow-covered city up to the castle late at night and met a man dressed as a medieval guard soldier, who kindly explained to us the quickest way to the castle.
The next morning we held our first team building exercise in the castle, guided by one of our advisors. The aim was to estimate our own strengths and think about the area of responsibility in which we can use our abilities the best. It started with a little game about ourselves. We made a poster with different important characters in a team like “planner and manager” or “creator” and everyone listed themselves under one or more categories. Then we asked every team member how he or she would categorize this person and if they agree with the self-assessment.
After lunch we explored Monschau in daylight, took pictures together and looked for souvenirs. Back at the hostel we met again to hold our next seminar connected to our previous one. Now we started to plan the structure of our team and decided that we wanted the team leadership to have three main coordinators: a team leader, a social-media-representative and a laboratory-manager.
After the hard part our advisor had planned some games for us with the main focus on communication. The first was called “Gordian Knot” where we all stood in a circle and had to grab two random hands. The challenge was to unknot everyone without letting go of the hands in order to return to the circle.
After somehow managing to master this nearly impossible task, the next game was even more challenging. We were divided into four groups and decided on a leader in each group. Each member of each group got different cards from a stripped deck and had to sort them in a specific way. During the game we were not allowed to speak and only the leader knew the exact way we had to sort the cards. We were only allowed to communicate with little notes, which was not easy for us. The team who used the fewest notes and finished first won the game.
In the evening, hunger overcame us and led us to an Italian restaurant overlooking the half-frozen river “Rur“. Our last evening in Monschau was completed with a cozy get-together with card games.
The next day, after breakfast, we set out traveling home after a successful, wonderful weekend in the Eifel.
Mosbacher Kolloquium
69. Mosbacher Kolloquium - "Synthetic Biology - from Understanding to Application"
The GBM "Gesellschaft für Biochemie und Molekularbiologie e. V." in English "Society for biochemistry and molecular biology" (e. V. = registered society/association) welcomed us to their annual colloquium in Mosbach, the so-called "Mosbacher Kolloquium". The 69th colloquium was titled "Synthetic Biology - from Understanding to Application". The scientific organizers of the Mosbach Colloquium 2018 were Victor Sourjik (Marburg), Anke Becker (Marburg), Wilfried Weber (Freiburg) and one of the professors from our university, Matias Zurbriggen (Düsseldorf). The Mosbacher Kolloquium is an opportunity to establish contacts, to find orientation in the research landscape or to receive detailed technical knowledge for your own projects. It’s for students of every stage of education. We were fortunate enough to have formed a carpool with students from the jGBM ("Junior GBM") who gave us valuable tips about the colloquium.
Of course, the main focus were the scientific talks: One interesting talk was given by Hannah Wagner from the University of Freiburg, who synthesized a positive feedback loop with molecular switches. Mustafa Khammash from the ETH Zurich spoke about the application of optogenetics in synthetic biology and provided the Mosbach Colloquium with several posters about his research, which were displayed at the poster sessions. The general take-home-message was that synthetic biology is the chance to understand what life is. As Nobelist (1965) Richard Feynman said:
“What we cannot create, we do not understand.”
In addition to the science talks, a get-together "Get to know iGEM" was organized for current and former iGEM participants and interested parties. iGEM Hamburg, iGEM Marburg and former participants of iGEM Darmstadt, among others, attended.
We discussed how to establish the iGEM competition in an university and were given advice on conflict counseling in the team and on sponsorship. We also tried to motivate those interested in iGEM to apply for their university's team next year or even to form an iGEM team themselves.
A Visit from iGEM Bielefeld
It’s a long established tradition that iGEM Bielefeld and iGEM Duesseldorf come together for a small meet up and we continued this tradition by inviting the team of iGEM Bielefeld-CeBiTec to Düsseldorf.
After a long train ride and a few delays due to the Deutsche Bahn five Bielefelder finally arrivedat our Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf.
After we let them glance through the windows of our laboratory, we quickly made our way into the iGEM room to discuss our projects and similar problems while eating delicious cake and other snacks.
It quickly became clear that not only our humor matched but also our interest in science.
Armed with a crate of beer we started our tour to the botanical garden of our university. This tour was actually led by Levin from Bielefeld who somehow knew more about the park than we did.
When the sky became clouded we quickly headed back to our team room where we started our now famous team building game: The Gordian knot.
At the beginning all players stand up in a circle, stretch their right hand in the middle and randomly grab another hand. Then the left hand follows until everyone is holding two hands. Then the real challenge starts - to untie the Gordian knot! We tried to untangle everyone for about 45 minutes before we realized that we had terribly failed. I’m sure it wasn’t our fault though since we were still trained from our castle Monschau event.
After the big defeat our heavy hearts craved some comfort food (we recommend pizza with sauce hollandaise, white asparagus and ham) and we decided on an easier game: Werewolves.
This game is role playing game and takes places in a town in which several unknown werewolves strike terror into its inhabitants hearts by killing people.
Each round the residents are allowed to execute one person in the hope of getting rid of one of the werewolves. With the help of some special characters, we actually did it!
Encouraged by our success we started our last tour for the day into the “Altstadt” of Düsseldorf.
The “Altstadt” of Düsseldorf is widely known for its many bars next to one another which earned it the nickname “longest bar in the world”.
What is only known to most residents of Düsseldorf though is a special shot called “Stress”. The name says it all as it is loaded with many hot spices like pepper, tabasco etc and of course we had to introduce it to the team of iGEM Bielefeld.
Thankfully everyone survived.
After this everyone was treated with “Altbier” - an traditional beer brewed in Düsseldorf.
As everyone was tired, we went home and four of the team members set their bed for the night in Carina’s 15 m2 (150 square foot) room. It was crowded to say the least…
But well worth it!
After a successful and fun meeting, the Bielefelder iGEMers were guided to their train in the morning and went back to Bielefeld, probably to catch up on some sleep.
...and they lived happily ever after. Or so we hope...
Lab Supply Frankfurt
We visited the Lab Supply trade fair in Frankfurt (March 14, 2018) on the Main to initialize contact to different exhibiting companies and to talk about our project.
The Lab Supply fair is a trade fair for laboratory machines and supply held in different locations in Germany throughout the year. Next to many exhibitions, the trade fair also lures many people to it with its talks.
For three of us it started as a big challenge to walk up to different exhibiting companies. As it was our first time on such an event we were mortified to ask them for help, supplies or even money. But this fear quickly faded as the exhibitors reacted positively to our project ideas and offered us their help. One offer included the nanophotometer as a unit on loan from the company Implen, which later helped us a lot during growth curve measurements and mini preps.
A problem we encountered was that most of the exhibiting companies had attendants at their booth that were only responsible for a specific region. Since Duesseldorf is a two hour ride away (which is a lot in Germany) and is located in a completely different part of Germany, the people usually had to refer us to a different, more relevant contact of their company.
At the Lab Supply trade fair, several talks were offered. We joined the talks about autoclaving and pipetting. Thus, we learned about the different protocols for autoclaving systems and their function and advantages. Afterwards, we learned how different kinds of pipettes function and how to handle them correctly, in order to prevent diseases caused by wrong pipette handling in the lab.
Besides all that, we met the iGEM teams of Marburg (for the first time) and Bielefeld and had the chance to talk about our projects and the experiences with sponsoring.
It was especially interesting for us freshmen to talk to one of the members who had participated in the iGEM competition before.
All in all, the Lab Supply was a big success and we gained a few very valuable insights and a really useful nanophotometer.
VAAM Wolfsburg
The annual conference of the Association for General and Applied Microbiology was visited by our member Miriam, our advisors Kai, Anna, Max and Nic and our PI Jun.-Prof. Dr. Ilka Axmann. Since the congress assembles scientists from several subcategories of microbiologists, microbiology scientists are offered an insight into many diverse fields of research at the congress. There, famous researchers like Harald Engelhardt from the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry presented the microbe of the year Lactobacillus and Joakim Larsson from the Department of Infectious Diseases at the Institute of Biomedicine in Gothenburg showed the environmental dimensions of antibiotic resistance.
We attended several talks of renowned researchers from biotechnology, environmental microbiology, symbiotic interactions, fungal biology, microbial cell biology and gene regulation. Especially the talks concerning co-cultures offered interesting insights like the research of Hannes Löwe from the TU Munich, who co-cultivated
At the Microbe Slam, we met the iGEM team of Hamburg. During this event, several students and researchers presented their work and combined it with poetry and humor. Jens Rudat from the institute of technology in Karlsruhe, who was the winner of this years’ Microbe Slam, explained what bacteria in space might have in common with caffeine, while Wael Yakti from Leibniz-institute of Vegetable and Ornamental Crops in Berlin narrated the epic battles of fungi in environmental co-cultures.
Since there were several companies at the congress, we approached them and talked about methods and products we could involve in our project. Macherey-Nagel gave us a huge variety of kits to isolate DNA from organisms that are hard to break down and Zymo research offered us kits for isolation of plasmid and genomic DNA from bacteria. Both were used to isolate genomic DNA to amplify specific genes in our project.
Additional to that, all of our advisors and our member who participated in the congress presented a poster concerning their latest research. Thus, Miriam presented the results of her bachelor thesis concerning toehold switches in cyanobacteria, Kai showed his latest outcome in unconventional secretion of
As a huge variety of researchers visited the congress, it was interesting to establish contact with different microbiologists.
Teambuilding at TeamEscape Düsseldorf
After an initial month of getting to know each other a few of our team wanted to experience a live escape game at Team Escape Düsseldorf under the motto “one team - one room - one goal: Escape”.
Some people say that live escape games are not for the faint of heart or for claustrophobic people because people are locked inside a room until they manage to break out. But it’s actually super fun as you don’t have to escape by using force or by jumping out the windows but by solving a bunch of riddles with your team members within 60 minutes!
The most exciting part in our escape game was that we were actually locked inside a laboratory!
But why?
The story went as follows:
The day has arrived. A global pandemic outbreak has sent the world into chaos. One third of the human population has been infected by a deadly virus. Millions of people are on the brink of death. But there are good and bad news.
The good news first: One Professor - Professor Dr. Hofman - has been experimenting with this virus for a while and seemed to have found a serum against it in time.
The bad news are that he was kidnapped right before he was about to publish his results. The world is doomed!
Now a team of talented scientist - us - were granted access to his laboratories to create the cure based on his lab book. The difficult part: His notes are hidden and put behind locks by the kidnappers. The team has only one hour to create the serum until the pandemic will be unstoppable.
Are they going to save the world in time?
Of course we weren’t dealing with real viruses and scientific research in a real laboratory because otherwise it would have taken a much longer time to save the world.
Instead our most important task was to get out by solving several riddles in time.
Our strategy: Search - collect - combine.
At first we looked through the entire room to find as many hints as possible. Then we gathered them in one place and started combining them one by one, in order to find codes to open the locks. Behind those locks we found more hints that helped us with even more... locks.
The real challenge besides searching, collecting and combining all the right things was the communication inside the team - which is why live escape games are a great way to do team building. During this game it’s very important to inform your team mates about new objects, new items etc. so that everyone has an overview on what’s going on, what has been done and what needs to be done.
But now to the most important question: Did we make it out in time?
YES WE DID!
After 55min and 35sec our team found the right combination and held the key for the door in our hands!
In the end it wasn’t about winning though.
Most import was that we improved our communication skills, team work abilities, working while having serious time pressure (hello wiki freeze), combination skills… and more.
Thank you Team Escape Düsseldorf!
Analytica Munich
The Analytica Munich is one of the largest trade fairs for laboratory equipment and laboratory technology. This year it was held from the 10th to 13th of April and three members of our team made the long journey to Munich. The aim was not only to get in contact with new companies and possible sponsors, but also to get in touch with other iGEM teams, as we knew in advance through social media that many iGEM teams would be on site.
Since we had already informed ourselves about the exhibitors, we first went to the companies in order to find out news about the market. Especially interesting for us were MicroPlate readers that could help us with our project, specifically in quantifying the growth of our co-cultures. We informed ourself about fluorescence measurement for the determination of the proportion of different organisms in a joint media. As a small highlight there was homemade ice made with liquid nitrogen during the break.
After the lunch break we met iGEM teams: Bielefeld-CeBiTec and Würzburg. We talked about our projects' cornerstones and were able to exchange experiences. It was exciting to see how different the respective approaches were.
In the afternoon we listened to various lectures held at multiple presentation hubs. All in all, the Analytica was a great experience which gave us a great insight into the world outside of the lab.
German iGEM Meet-up in Marburg
The first big German iGEM meetup took place in Marburg on Friday the 22nd to Sunday the 24th of June. Nearly all German teams were present in Marburg.
We arrived at Marburg in the afternoon and were welcomed by the local iGEM team. While enjoying the great weather we build our tent for the weekend. After everybody had arrived we were split up in smaller groups and explored the small city. This was an awesome opportunity to get to know the other teams and their members.
The following day started with a great breakfast and a welcoming talk. After this we had some great talks from Steffano Vecchione and Daniel Frank and a poster session where each team presented their project. We learned a lot from the other teams and were able to exchange helpful tips with each other. Moreover we received great input for our own project. This made it possible to plan future collaborations with other teams. For example we did find out that we could help the iGEM team from Hamburg “Reagents of S.H.I.E.L.D” with their work with cyanobacteria.
Standing at our poster and explaining our project to other people was a great preparation for the Giant Jamboree in Boston. It gave us helpful insight of how the poster presentation there is going to be.
At the end of the day we had a barbeque and cheered for the soccer teams at the world cup in the match Sweden versus Germany.
It was an amazing weekend. Getting to know the other teams with their projects and working together with them is a wonderful part of the iGEM competition.
European Meetup Munich 2018
For the European Meetup four members of our team went on a trip to Munich. We began our travels very early at 4:30 am on friday in order to arrive in Munich during midday.
After our arrival we quickly had to check-in at our hostel and then continued to the meetup immediately. Luckily, we were greeted with a nice goodie bag and a cup of coffee - and to be honest, we all needed that coffee after such a long drive.
Right before the meetup started we placed our poster on the wall and prepared ourselves for the first talks and the poster session on Friday afternoon. Over time more and more teams arrived and we were happy to finally meet some people we were texting with in person.
At the beginning of the meetup a warm welcome speech with a presentation on the schedule for the weekend was held.
friday afternoon was filled with talks followed by a poster session. Within the breaks we rushed to get more coffee - we were still trying to combat fatigue - and a few delicious pretzels. Later on a city tour through Munich organized by the iGEM Team Munich filled the evening. We were also able to visit the 'Hofbräuhaus' in Munich which is quite huge and was full of people laughing and having a nice time together.
The program for saturday started at 9 am with breakfast and the first talks of the day. In between breaks we were able to discuss the talks with members from other teams. During lunch break we had longer conversations with other teams and were able to network a little more.
Saturday afternoon was a little different. A few teams, including us, prepared workshops. They were in parallel with the poster session in the afternoon which is why we had to split up. Two of us led the workshop and the other two stayed at the poster and had more conversations about our project.
The workshop we prepared was about virtual cloning and the usage of the Yeast ToolKit and the CIDAR toolbox. Both are toolboxes using the MoClo cloning method and work with Golden Gate. To explain these methods and the toolboxes were the topic of our workshop. The participants had a lot of questions and we showed them using a few examples how to deal with virtual cloning, how to design the needed primers and so forth.
After the long day we finished up with another cup of coffee to stay awake in the evening hours.
On the last day we met again for breakfast and listened to some last talks and of course had a lot of conversations regarding the topics. At the end we were surprised by a video the hosting team Munich had prepared during the weekend. Also the head of the iGEM Headquarter had some motivating and interesting words to the teams in the audience. We were very impressed and thankful.
During our poster sessions on friday and saturday we received new impressions from other teams and helpful comments regarding our own project. We want to to thank everyone again for the advice. The iGEM Foundation also presented us nice ideas for our project and poster which we are very thankful for as well.
All in all, this weekend was full of meeting interesting new people, socializing, talks and discussions about current topics in biology, insights on other iGEM projects, receiving opinions to our project and last but not least a lot of fun - and of course coffee.
Thank you for this amazing experience!
Schloss Mickeln
Our university is not just a place of teaching, but also a place of research. This research is normally conducted by each professor and his or her team on their own, but in some cases there are cross-field projects.
At the Heinrich Heine University, many of these projects are organized by the professors themselves and preliminary ideas are discussed in meetings, organized by the science dean when and if needed at an old estate from the 18th century called „Schloss Mickeln“.
This time, our team had the privilege to be able to attend one of these meetings and not only be there when our predecessors introduced their work to the professors, but also be privy to the future plans of the Computer Science departments in regards to their capabilities to help with the progress of the Synthetic Life Sciences at our university.
This opened the floor for a discussion of our project and allowed for a spirited discussion about our plans, our view point and approach and what would hopefully be our results.
In this discussion it became evident that there was, at that point, a high scientific appeal, but our real world application was not yet clear.