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Team:Bielefeld-Germany
From 2010.igem.org
Contents |
Recent News
26
October
Public Discussion
We had the great opportunity to present ourselves and our project in a café in Bielefeld to the general public. There, about 100 interested visitors listened to Prof. Dr. Alfred Pühler's introduction to synthetic biology and to our talk about iGEM and our MARSS project. The feedback was awesome! Prof. Dr. Pühler and we answered loads of questions of the curious audience concerning both technical and ethical aspects of our research.
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19
October
Waffles!
As the deadline is pretty close and time is rare, we decided to bake some waffles. Besides making about 1000 delicious waffles, we took the chance to present our iGEM-project to the local students and folks of our university. Combining food and public relations was very successful... and tasty!
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15
October
Public Talk on October 26th
On October 26th the iGEM Team Bielefeld will give a public talk about the comoetition and the project. After a brief introduction in Synthetic Biology by Prof. Dr. A. Pühler we are going to explain our iGEM approach. The Event is hosted by Bielefeld Marketing.
Donwload the Flyer here. |
11
October
Radio interview on WDR5 - part 2
And the show is going on. There is another interview about iGEM and our team available at the science broadcast of WDR5, called "Leonardo".
Listen to the german podcast here. |
8
October
TV team number 1
Today we had a TV team in our lab - they were shooting some scenes and interviews with us. The coverage about our team will be in the science broadcasting "nano" on 3sat (german TV station) during the Jamboree in november.
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24-26
September
Meet the iGEM team from Odense
(SDU Denmark) We visited the iGEM team from the SDU Denmark in Odense this weekend. We had a lot of fun (there will be some photos soon) and agreed upon broadening our cooperation for the remaining iGEM competition (e.g. test each others BioBricks).
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13
September
Radio interview on WDR5 - part 1
A short radio coverage in the science broadcast of WDR5 "Leonardo" about our iGEM team is broadcasted today. Link's here and here's the podcast
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30
August
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
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4
August
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.
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2
August
Team up with the iGEM crew of Odense
Today we attended a video conference with the iGEM-Team of the SDU. We plan to cooperate with them by sharing knowledge and - more important - we plan to get to know the people personally and to have some fun together.
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The Team
The iGEM-Team Bielefeld consists 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 both successful 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 accepting 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 food. The idea is to make this spiciness visible with the help of a developed stoplight system using the bacteria mentioned. The bacterium is supposed to turn red at an intense spiciness in food, orange at a moderate degree and green at a lower leves. A rapid test system involving a gradient light signal will be able to make the spiciness of edibles visible.
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 signaling system. Beneficially, there could be a rejection of effected products or a production interruption for preventing the product from entering 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
