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Revision as of 16:43, 13 September 2010

Recent News

(09.13.2010) Radio interview on WDR5

A short radio coverage in the science broadcast of WDR5 "Leonardo" about our iGEM team is broadcasted today. Link's here: http://www.wdr5.de/sendungen/leonardo/s/d/13.09.2010-16.05.html and here's the podcast: http://gffstream-3.vo.llnwd.net/c1/m/1284390840/radio/leonardo/wdr5_leonardo_20100913.mp3

(08.30.2010) Interview with our team on biotechnologie.tv

Here is a short interview with our team in today's broadcast of biotechnologie.tv: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2SA-bTERR4

(08.04.2010) Leading article in Westfalen-Blatt

A two-sided leading article about our team and synthetic biology was published in today's edition of the newspaper Westfalen-Blatt.

(08.02.2010) Team up with the iGEM crew of Odense

Today, we had a video conference with the iGEM-Team of the SDU. We plan to cooperate by sharing knowledge and - more important - we plan to meet and have some party.

The Team

iGEM Bielefeld

The iGEM-Team Bielefeld consists out of 10 Master students from Bielefeld University studying Biology, Molecular Biotechnology or Genome-based Systems Biology. Supervisors of the team are Prof Karsten Niehaus and Dr Jörn Kalinowski. So far our Team was either succesful in recruiting regional sponsors as well as national organisations like BIO.NRW. In order to cover costs for consumable supplies and travelling expenses for the final presentation at the MIT the team still relies on external sponsoring.

The Project – MARSS (Modulated Acetosyringon Receptor Sensor System)

The iGEM-Team Bielefeld is assuming the challenge to carry out a modulation of an E. coli receptor in order to be able to detect capsaicin which is responsible for the degree of spiciness of a fare. The idea is to make this spiciness visible via a kind of stoplight system using the bacteria mentioned. The bacteria is to be red at an intense spiciness in food, orange at a moderate degree and green at a low leves. The idea is to make spiciness in fare visible via a gradient light signal applying a rapid test system.

The original receptor is the acetosyringone detection system of Agrobacterium tumefaciens. Acetosyringone is a secondary metabolite of plants used as bacterial attractant. Binding the acetosyringon receptor induces intracellular signal transduction. Using directed mutagenesis we aim to modulate the receptor binding domain so further, similar substances will be detectable. The ultimate system will be expressed in E. coli cells containing a light signaling gene.

In addition to capsaicin there are also other detectable substances in debate, for instance the neurotransmitters dopamine and epinephrine as well as their near derivatives. Furthermore, environmental toxins as well as allergy-triggering substances could be detected by the light emitting system.

After all, a broad range of traceable substances plus a high sensitivity of the latter would be the greatest possible aim of our working group. Such rapidly and sensitively reacting biological systems could for instance be applied in quality control in the production of edibles. A harmful and unwanted substance entering a production chain could be visualized by the light signalli ng system. Beneficially, there could be a rejection of effected products or a production interruption for preventing the product to enter the trade market.

Contact

Homepage of iGEM Team Bielefeld

http://www.igem-bielefeld.de/

info@igem-bielefeld.de

Frieder Hänisch

Tel.: +49521 78 09 819

fhaenisch@igem-bielefeld.de

Nils-Christian Lübke

Tel.: +49171 3819111

nluebke@uni-bielefeld.de

Supervisors

Prof. Karsten Niehaus

Dr. Jörn Kalinowski