Trinity On Tour

Monschau

Our first common journey with the team led us to the small resort town Monschau in the Eifel region of western Germany. For the weekend from the 2nd to 4th of March we stayed in the castle of Monschau for team building purposes. We traveled with bus and train via Aachen to Monschau. During the ride it started snowing which is why it 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 explained 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 thing about the area of responsibility in which we can use our abilities the most. 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 for every person how the team members would categorize this person and if they agree with the self-assessment. After lunch we explored snowy Monschau in daylight, took pictures together and looked for souvenirs. Back at the hostel we met again to hold our next seminar connecting to our previous one. Now we started to plan the structure of our team and decided that it is beneficial to have three main coordinators for our “trinity” with three different tasks: 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 is called “Gordian Knot” where we all stood in a circle and had to grab two random hands. Then the challenge was to unknot everyone without letting go of the hands in order to rebuild the circle. The next game was a bit more difficult. We divided the team into 4 groups and decided on a leader in each group. Each member of each group got different cards from a normal card-set and we had to sort them in a specific way. During the game we were not allowed to speak and only the leader knew the task we had to do. We were only allowed to communicate with little notes, which was not easy for us. The team who used the fewest number of notes 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 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 of Mosbach "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 our professors, Matias Zurbriggen (Dusseldorf). 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 since there is something for everyone. 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 science talks: One interesting talk was 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 represented 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 motivated those interested to apply for their university iGEM-team next year or even to form an iGEM team themselves.

A visit from iGEM Bielefeld

Since it’s a long established custom that iGEM Bielefeld and iGEM Düsseldorf come together for a small meet up, we continued this tradition and invited the team of iGEM Bielefeld to Düsseldorf. After a long train ride and a few delays due to the Deutsche Bahn five Bielefelder finally arrived out of nowhere at our Heinrich Heine University of Düsseldorf. After we let them glance through the windows of our laboratory, we quickly made our way into the iGEM room to discuss our project and similar problems while eating delicious cake and other snacks. It quickly became clear that not only our humor matches but also our interest in science.

Armed with a crate of beer we started our tour of the Botanical Garden of our university that was actually led by Levin from Bielefeld who somehow knew more about the park than we did.
When the sun became clouded we quickly headed back to the iGEM room where we started our famous team building Gordian knot game. 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 45min until we realized that we had terribly failed. I’m sure it wasn’t our fault though since we were still heavily trained from our Burg Monschau event.

After the big loss 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 a role play and takes places in a town in which several unknown werewolves strike terror into its inhabitants hearts by killing random people. Each round the residents are allowed to execute one person in the hope of getting rid 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 Old Town of Düsseldorf is widely known for its many bars next door to one another which is why it’s also called the “longest bar in the world”. What is only known to most residents of Düsseldorf though is a special shot called “Stress”. The name is program 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.

Tiredly everyone went home and four of the team members set their bed for the night in Carina’s 15m² (150 square foot) room. It was crowded to say the least…
but well worth it!

After a successful and fun stay the Bielefelder iGEMers were guided to their train in the morning and went back to Bielefeld, probably to catch up on their sleep.

...and they lived happily ever after.

Lab Supply Frankfurt at the Main

We visited the Lab Supply trade fair in Frankfurt on the Main to initialize the contact to different exhibiting companies and to talk about our project. The Lab Supply 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 allures many people because of its talks.

For the 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 unit of loan from the company Implen, which later on helped us a lot during growth curve measurements and mini preps. It even has a vortexer!

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 Düsseldorf is a 2h ride away (which is a lot in Germany) and is located in a different state, 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 sorts of autoclaving systems and their function and advantages. Afterwards, we learned how different kinds of pipettes function and how to handle them right in the lab to prevent diseases caused by wrong pipette handling.

Besides all that, we met the iGEM teams of Marburg and Bielefeld for the first time and had the chance to talk about our projects and the experiences with sponsoring. It was especially interesting for us newbies 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 very valuable insights.

VAAM Wolfsburg

Due to the annual conference of the association for general and applied microbiology, our member Miriam, our advisors Kai, Anna, Max and Nic and our PI Jun.-Prof. Dr. Ilka Maria Axmann visited the congress. Since the congress assembles scientists from several subcategories of microbiologists, microbiology scientists offered a huge variety of research at the congress. Thus, famous researchers like Harald Engelhardt from the Max Planck Institute of 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 TU München, who co-cultivated Pseudomonas putidae and Synechococcus elongatus (cscB strain from Daniel Ducat) for efficient production of bioplastics. As we also want to take advantage of a sucrose over-producing cyanobacteria strain the research of Hannes Löwe showed us an optional product of our co-culture. In addition to that, we listened to talks which involved parts of our project. Therefore, we visited the talk of Katja Bettenbrock from MPI Magdeburg who used the glf importer of Zymomonas mobilis in Escherichia coli and tested if the type and capacity of glucose transport influences succinate yield and productivity in two-phase cultivations. Since we use glf as an exporter in S. elongatus, Katja Betterbrock’s talk showed us an interesting usage in E. coli. 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 Ustilago maydis, Max presented his biotechnological work on triterpenes in cyanobacteria and Nic held a poster talk concerning the origin of the circadian clock and the earth-moon system. As our PI Jun.-Prof. Ilka Maria Axmann participated in the congress, too, she held a talk concerning the diversity of timing systems in bacteria and gave a short overview over the circadian clock in cyanobacteria.
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 hearted or claustrophobic folks because people are locked inside a room until they make it 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 min!

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. A third of the human population has been infected by a deadly virus. Millions of people are on the brink of dying. But there a 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(s) 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 other 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 10th to 13th of April and three members of the 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 about news on the market. Especially interesting for us were MicroPlate readers that could help us with our project to quantify the growth of our co-cultures. We informed us about fluorescence measurement for the determination of the proportion of our different organisms in a joint media. As a small highlight there was homemade ice made of nitrogen during the break.
After the lunch break we met iGEM teams: Bielefeld 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 on the numerous stages. 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 till the 24th June. Nearly all German teams were present in Marburg. We arrived at Marburg in the afternoon and were friendly welcomed by the local iGEM team. While enjoying the great weather we build our tent for the weekend. After everybody had arrived we were splitted in smaller groups and explored the small city. This was an awesome opportunity in order 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 awesome talks from Steffano Vecchione and Daniel Frank and a poster session where each team presented their awesome project. We learned a lot from 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 will 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 in the iGEM competition.

European Meetup Munich 2018

For the European Meetup four members of our team went on a trip to Munich. We begun our travels very early at 4:30 a.m. on Friday in order to arrive in Munich at midday. After our arrival we quickly had to check-in at our hostel and went directly to the meetup. Luckily, we were greeted with a nice goodie bag and a cup of coffee - and to be honest, we all needed that coffee after the 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 the presentation of the schedule for the weekend was held.
The 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 brezels. 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 eating sausages.

The program for Saturday started at 9 a.m. with breakfast and the first talks of the day. In between breaks we were able to discuss the talks with other teams. Within the lunch break we had longer conversations with other teams and were able to socialize 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 this methods and the toolboxes were the topic of our workshop. The participants had a lot of questions and we showed them with a few examples how to deal with virtual cloning, how to design the needed primers etc. After the long meetup 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 had some last talks and of course a lot conversations regarding the topics. At the end we were surprised with 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 of 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!