Team:JMU Wuerzburg/Attributions
Organisation
Our student team leaders Annabel, Nicole and Rick always managed to maintain an overview over all the different parts of our project. They introduced a proper team structure, met with university authorities to receive academic sponsoring and reminded us to meet all the important deadlines. Also, they planned and organised the team meetings and reached out to various people like professors and iGEM alumni who provided us with valuable advice to bring our project forward.
Johannes K. supported our project through networking in his position as a member of the student’s council of the faculty of biology. In the application process for academic sponsoring he provided us with valuable information about application forms and represented our financial request.
Johannes K. supported our project through networking in his position as a member of the student’s council of the faculty of biology. In the application process for academic sponsoring he provided us with valuable information about application forms and represented our financial request.
Wet Lab
Nicole, Rick and Annabel planned and conducted the first experiments for establishing our self-designed primers in a qPCR setting. They tested the designed primers with synthetic DNA templates and DNA from some cultured Plasmodia. After that Nicole and Rick tested primers for our qPCR for P. falciparum. They established the right parameters for our qPCRs to detect the DNA of Plasmodium and especially P. falciparum. Later they tested more cultured Plasmodia strains and made a multiplex qPCR with both primer/probe pairs.
The submission of the template as a positive control for our qPCR as a BioBrick was done by Nicole and Rick. They planned these experiments and managed to organise all the materials needed in the lab.
Annabel completed the Safety Form with the help of David and our PI Jochen Bodem.
Looking beyond the proof of principle towards medical application, we are curious if our proposed diagnostic device is able to detect Plasmodium in patient derived samples as well. To receive the permission to work with actual human blood samples requires a special agreement by the institutional ethics committee of our university. The applications, associated forms and documents for the use of patient derived blood samples involved the commitment of Susanna, Rick, Nicole, Annabel and David.
Special thanks to Andreas, Maria, Corinna, Bente, Frederick and Susanna for helping us to conduct our first GFP transfection experiments.
The submission of the template as a positive control for our qPCR as a BioBrick was done by Nicole and Rick. They planned these experiments and managed to organise all the materials needed in the lab.
Annabel completed the Safety Form with the help of David and our PI Jochen Bodem.
Looking beyond the proof of principle towards medical application, we are curious if our proposed diagnostic device is able to detect Plasmodium in patient derived samples as well. To receive the permission to work with actual human blood samples requires a special agreement by the institutional ethics committee of our university. The applications, associated forms and documents for the use of patient derived blood samples involved the commitment of Susanna, Rick, Nicole, Annabel and David.
Special thanks to Andreas, Maria, Corinna, Bente, Frederick and Susanna for helping us to conduct our first GFP transfection experiments.
Dry Lab
Rick and Nicole did an unremitting job aligning Plasmodium sequences with great endurance for the design of primers and probes for our qPCRs.
As a first prototype for the application of our diagnostic device David and Rick elaborated a hardware system to easily perform our rapid test under real-life conditions. Later David created a hardware system based on this concept.
But how can we further improve our system? Annabel made the attempt to work out, how RPA (Recombinase Polymerase Amplification) could be applied in our device as a promising alternative to qPCR, which guarantees the enormous advantage of isothermal amplification without a thermocycler.
As a first prototype for the application of our diagnostic device David and Rick elaborated a hardware system to easily perform our rapid test under real-life conditions. Later David created a hardware system based on this concept.
But how can we further improve our system? Annabel made the attempt to work out, how RPA (Recombinase Polymerase Amplification) could be applied in our device as a promising alternative to qPCR, which guarantees the enormous advantage of isothermal amplification without a thermocycler.
InterLab
Anna and Chiara carried out our InterLab study with their results double-checked in a second attempt by Rick and Nicole. We also participated at the Vibrio natriegens InterLab Study which was organised by team Marburg. Anna and Illiana were responsible for these experiments.
Collaboration
Since it is our first year participating in the iGEM contest, we joined the mentoring program and received a lot of support and helpful advice from our mentoring partner, team Munich. The members of our organising team, Nicole, Rick and Annabel were responsible for the communication and checked the monthly mentoring documents. We thank team Munich, especially Enikö and Dominic for their effort and the beneficial exchange between our two teams.
Annabel stayed in touch with Vic from Tuebingen to get familiar with the iGEM contest within the first months of our project. This contact provided us with valuable information for the submission of various forms and official documents.
Annabel stayed in touch with Vic from Tuebingen to get familiar with the iGEM contest within the first months of our project. This contact provided us with valuable information for the submission of various forms and official documents.
Wiki
Annabel and Johannes created a filing system to work on the texts for the wiki. They wrote and reviewed together with Rick and Nicole most of the content to be displayed at our website. Lukas then used his coding skills to complete the wiki and upload the files.
Design Presentation and Poster
A professional-looking design is essential when presenting your work to the public. Maga put her passion for graphics design in our project and created a marvellous design for our logo and sponsoring brochure. Together with Annabel she designed our T-shirts and worked on the wiki-design.
Rick and Nicole used their inkScape skills to create our posters together with Annabel. Proofreading was conducted by Johannes.
Our presentation was created by the Giant Jamboree Delegation of Annabel, David, Johannes, Nicole and Rick.
Rick and Nicole used their inkScape skills to create our posters together with Annabel. Proofreading was conducted by Johannes.
Our presentation was created by the Giant Jamboree Delegation of Annabel, David, Johannes, Nicole and Rick.
Sponsoring
Finding sponsors for our project was a challenge that kept us busy during the whole year. Tobias did a great job in supporting us to get in touch with companies and local foundations. Illiana, Maga, Annabel, Rick, David, Chantal, Fabian, Batu, Anna and Susanna took this further by creating a sponsoring brochure, meeting company salespersons and applying for financial support. Annabel, Nicole and Rick never got tired of writing applications for academic sponsoring. They presented our project to faculties and student councils, and established cooperations with research institutions constantly increasing the outreach of our project.
We would like to thank Prof. Sauer, Prof. Hanke, Prof. Vogel, Prof. Gessler, Prof. Frosch and “Universitaetsbund Wuerzburg” for supporting us in every aspect of fundraising at our university.
We would like to thank Prof. Sauer, Prof. Hanke, Prof. Vogel, Prof. Gessler, Prof. Frosch and “Universitaetsbund Wuerzburg” for supporting us in every aspect of fundraising at our university.
Human Practice
Our main focus of our human practice program was set on education to make iGEM a well-known issue at our university and to create a fundament for following iGEM teams at JMU Wuerzburg in the future. Networking is a crucial part for this attempt because the most important thing for a newly funded team is to introduce your existence to as many people as possible.
Nicole, Annabel and Rick got in touch with the deans of the faculties of biology, medicine, chemistry and biomedicine to spread the news of our newly founded iGEM team and asked them for support. Nicole and Annabel also managed to create collaborations with research institutes at our university whose directors helped making other university members aware of iGEM.
Eli supported us with a news item in our university’s newspaper “Einblick” so that not only natural science faculties at our university were informed about iGEM and we could reach out to everybody.
In addition to spreading the news of our new iGEM team at our university we reached out to tell the citizens of our city about our work when Chantal organized two cake sales at the hospital.
Taking part in German and European meetups Nicole, Rick, Annabel, David, Maga, Johannes, Maria and Eli could present our project to other iGEM teams and get to know fellow iGEMers. Our official mentoring cooperation with Munich was introduced there.
Tobi, Maga, Chiara, Illiana and Chantal produced our introduction video.
Our iGEM lecture series was organized by Johannes, David and Alexandra.
Nicole, Annabel and Rick got in touch with the deans of the faculties of biology, medicine, chemistry and biomedicine to spread the news of our newly founded iGEM team and asked them for support. Nicole and Annabel also managed to create collaborations with research institutes at our university whose directors helped making other university members aware of iGEM.
Eli supported us with a news item in our university’s newspaper “Einblick” so that not only natural science faculties at our university were informed about iGEM and we could reach out to everybody.
In addition to spreading the news of our new iGEM team at our university we reached out to tell the citizens of our city about our work when Chantal organized two cake sales at the hospital.
Taking part in German and European meetups Nicole, Rick, Annabel, David, Maga, Johannes, Maria and Eli could present our project to other iGEM teams and get to know fellow iGEMers. Our official mentoring cooperation with Munich was introduced there.
Tobi, Maga, Chiara, Illiana and Chantal produced our introduction video.
Our iGEM lecture series was organized by Johannes, David and Alexandra.
Social Media
Chantal, Maga, Johannes and Annabel kept the public up to date about our project announcing accomplishments and upcoming events on the Internet. They made our Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts look fancy and appealing to online visitors.
Additional Support
Our PI Prof. Jochen Bodem supported us throughout our project year to help us deal with organisation issues, applications for academic sponsoring and his expertise when we had technical questions in our project.
We want to say thank you to Katharina Wifling and Luisa Kirschner who supported us in the lab with preparing buffers or teaching us how to use machines in the lab.
In addition, we would like to thank Prof. Janzen for giving an amazing lecture about Malaria as a part of our lecture series.
We would like to thank Dr. Silvia Portugal and Carrie Anderson from Heidelberg and Dr. Andrea Kreidenweiss and Johanna Griesbaum from Tuebingen for providing us with DNA samples for our work. As well as Dr. Neuweiler for providing us with competent cells for the InterLab study. The Institute for Orgaic Chemistry shared their dry ice wih us that we urgently needed for our InterLab study.
Mr. Jürges and Prof. Korte helped us get started with our bioinformatics part.
We also want to express our gratitude towards Oliver, Katharina, Andreas and Matthias for their contribution in the beginning of our project and for their advice regarding organisation and initial problems we had to face in the wet lab. Finally, thanks to Maria who wrote some texts we later used as sources for the wiki texts.
We want to say thank you to Katharina Wifling and Luisa Kirschner who supported us in the lab with preparing buffers or teaching us how to use machines in the lab.
In addition, we would like to thank Prof. Janzen for giving an amazing lecture about Malaria as a part of our lecture series.
We would like to thank Dr. Silvia Portugal and Carrie Anderson from Heidelberg and Dr. Andrea Kreidenweiss and Johanna Griesbaum from Tuebingen for providing us with DNA samples for our work. As well as Dr. Neuweiler for providing us with competent cells for the InterLab study. The Institute for Orgaic Chemistry shared their dry ice wih us that we urgently needed for our InterLab study.
Mr. Jürges and Prof. Korte helped us get started with our bioinformatics part.
We also want to express our gratitude towards Oliver, Katharina, Andreas and Matthias for their contribution in the beginning of our project and for their advice regarding organisation and initial problems we had to face in the wet lab. Finally, thanks to Maria who wrote some texts we later used as sources for the wiki texts.