Activities

Radio interview by "Harddisken" (The Hard Drive)

European workshop in Paris

Being visited by the Bielefeld iGEM team

Article in "Ingeniøren" (The Engineer)

On Friday October 1st the Danish magazine The Engineer published an article about us!
Below you'll find a translation of the article and a link to the original story. Press this link to read the original article in Danish.

Students aim for gold for their synthetic E. coli, that flee from blue light

Students from the University of Southern Denmark are currently developing a phototaxic bacterium that converts light into mechanical work.

By Robin Engelhardt, Saturday 02 October 2010 pm. 11:00

A team of bioengineer students from the University of Southern Denmark is getting ready for the annual iGEM competition to be held at MIT in Cambridge, USA, on November 5th-8th. They have created an artificial E. coli bacterium with a photo sensor which causes the bacterium to move away when you shine blue light on it.
There are still a few things missing, says instructor Mike Barnkob, but he is confident that they have a good project: "E. coli bacteria have some flagella they can flap. We found out that you can control them by combining genes from other bacteria and then expose them to light. Blue light causes them to turn about and if it is dark in a different direction, they move there."
The team from the University of Southern Denmark have just got the first proof that the system works and they are now conducting further characterization to see what types of light it responds to, and how quickly they can get the bacterium to move.
The pictures show two petri dishes, respectively a normal and a synthetic bacterial culture. Both have grown for 44 hours, and both have been half covered. One can see how the manipulated culture moves towards the dark area.
The idea is at some point to be able to create a flow in a micro tube by coating the tube with a layer of the new type of E. coli.
“It has actually proved to be a problem to mix liquids properly in very small areas,” explains Barnkob.
“By adding the bacteria, they can whip the liquid with their little tails, which means that you can control how liquids mix in small micro-tubes.”

Great interest
iGEM is short for International Genetically Engineered Machine and allows students from universities around the world to participate in the emerging field of synthetic biology, which is sometimes also called the do-it-yourself biology.
The competition has been held since 2004, and Denmark has been represented by two teams since 2009 - one from The University of Southern Denmark and one from the Technical University of Denmark.
“What we thought was really cool about this project, is the principle of converting light energy to mechanical energy by shining light on a bacterium,” says Barnkob.
“The important thing about iGEM is getting to grips with the biological programming language and find out what you can do with it and what you cannot.”
Over the past six years, students have built so-called BioBricks that make up the foundation for programming biological organisms, which range from bacterial cameras and bio-beer to biological landmine detectors.
Last year the students from Univerity of Southern Denmark made a bacteria-filled bandage that ensures a better supply of antibiotics to a wound. The team from the Technical University of Denmark got a gold medal in 2009 for the design of a ‘redoxilator’ that emits a green glow when the bacterial metabolism is high and ready for production.
“I will say, in all modesty, that we’ve got a super team with 14 students from physics to biomedicine, molecular biology and medicine to philosophy,” says Barnkob from the University of Southern Denmark.
“Of course we hope to win gold in Boston. Last year we got bronze, and this year we believe that we can make it a lot further.“