Team:Bielefeld-CeBiTec

till the known mineable gold ressources are depleted1
till the known mineable silver ressources are depleted2

Medal Criteria

  1. We were in close contact and in a continous dialogue with a lot of scientific experts and stakeholders associated with our project. This Integrated Human Practice shaped our project and helped us to gain a lot of expertise.
  2. We improved the human ferritin, delivered by iGEM Calgary 2013, by mutating certain amino acid residues to change the affinity towards iron to an improved affinity for gold and silver.
  3. We modeled to get an impression on the toxicity caused by metal ions to design our ROS reduction system based on this model. Furthermore, we modeled certain process parameters to improve our hardware.
  4. During our project we were able to accumulate metal ions in Escherichia coli, while reducing the toxicity. We engineered ferritin to enable iron, silver and gold nanoparticle formation. Furthermore, we showed that nanoparticles could be used to print conductive paths.
  1. We submitted and characterized our copper importer CopD (BBa_K2638002) to work as expected.
  2. We collaborated with great iGEM teams, learned a lot through our mentoring of two teams and got a lot of feedback on our Outreach.
  3. We carrefully evaluated if our work is responsible and good for the world in both: our Outreach and Integrated Human Practice .
  1. We successfully registered for the competition, had a great season and will attend the Giant Jamboree.
  2. We delivered a wiki, completed the judging form, will deliver a poster and will present our results at the Giant Jamboree.
  3. We attributed by listing all our great supporters who helped us having a great iGEM experience.
  4. We successfully competed in the interlab study.

Achievements

2. Outreach on raising awareness on "Dual Use Research of Concern" issues in iGEM and to scientists worldwide.
3. We heterologous expressed ferritin to enhance iron nanoparticle formation in Escherichia coli.
4. Integration and characterization of metal importers to accumulate metal ions in Escherichia coli cells.
5. Cloning and characterization of several proteins which are able to reduce reactive oxygen species, for example caused by metal ions.
6. Development of a software for the prediction of siRNAs and RNAi for gene silencing in prokaryotes.
7. Development of a cross-flow bioreactor hardware to filter hugh amounts of mining drainage while accumulate metal ions in Escherichia coli.
8. Integrated modeling on toxicity through metal ions and hardware improvement.
9. Development of a siRNA target vector system for effective silencing in prokaryotes.
10. Construction of a promoter and RBS library and a testing vector to enable the comparison through normalization on a second reporter.
11. Dialogue to stakeholder and scientific experts throughout the whole project.
12. Creating achievements together with the great iGEM community.
1 Quote from Eugene King, analyst from Goldman Sachs
2 Sverdrup, H., Koca, D., & Ragnarsdottir, K. V. (2014). Investigating the sustainability of the global silver supply, reserves, stocks in society and market price using different approaches. Resources, Conservation & Recycling, 83, 121-140. DOI: 10.1016/j.resconrec.2013.12.008
3 Andreas Manhart, Markus Blepp, Corinna Fischer, Kathrin Graulich, Siddharth Prakash, Rasmus Priess, Tobias Schleicher, Maria Tür (2016). Resource Efficiency in the ICT Sector Final Report.