Team:Franconia/HP
Our HP projects this year were diverse and palpably profound. All team members engaged in those projects with great enthusiasm and we think that we did some great work presenting the field of synthetic biology and the iGEM competition in general to the public.
Integrated Human Practice
Throughout our Human Practice projects starting from lab courses at school to presentation of our work to a broad community at the “Lange Nacht der Wissenschaften” we received a strong feedback from the people, what we must consider and how we can improve our project. Overall, visualization of our project was challenging in the first place. Here the school children showed us multiple ways, how people can understand our project better, without using to complex terms, which can only be understood by scientists. The Lego brick concept was convenient to demonstrate the working principle of our catcher tag system as well as the formation of our polymer and was further well- understood by non-scientists. Out trip to the “Bionicum” gave us an impression how nature fulfills motion and how we have to adjust our system to work as a muscle. Here, we realized that our attempt of a light-driven muscle is inferior to our electric device as the thickness of our muscle system limits the transmitting light. Hence, we focused more on the development and the pattern how we can fold the DEAs to reach high strength with low amounts of material. Finally, we have demonstrated the principle of our work at the “Lange Nacht der Wissenschaften” to a broad community. We could apply, what we have learnt during our Human Practice and our work in the lab. We were faced with many questions and bright ideas how to scale up the process and the purification by secretion of the protein instead of lyses to create a continuous supply. It was a crucial factor for the evaluation of our gaming app, where we benefited from the enthusiastic crowd of people.
This year we visited local schools to introduce pupils to practical biological work. We decided to do so, because in this lab-workshop we saw the biggest potential for us to be helpful and make an impact. A few years ago the German school system was reformed and the former nine years of “Gymnasium” were cut short to just eight years. We, the Team Franconia, live in Bavaria, a federal state who executed this reform as one of the first, fourteen years ago. This brought with it a lot of changes in the curricula of all grades, especially the last two years before graduation. To get most of the important topics into only eight instead of nine years, practical work experience was nearly completely withdrawn from curriculum. So, before graduation most pupils in Germany know the theory behind modern biological work in laboratories, but have never done it nor seen it in practice. To change that and fascinate soon-to- be university students in natural sciences we decided to visit local schools and do a small workshop about biological work. ´
Since we were planning to do the workshop in the school building– not in our laboratory at the university – almost every experiment was unsuitable because of safety aspects. After long brainstorming sessions, we found three interesting experiments, neither demanding too little nor too much from the pupils: a simple DNA- extraction from strawberries, a gel electrophoresis of a plasmid in different conformations with a harmless DNA-dye and our “microcakes”, mixing ingredients, usually used to bake cakes, in Eppendorf tubes by using microliter pipettes, micro scales and vortexers. After contacting two schools in Erlangen, discussing the possibilities with the responsible biology teachers, planning the experiments and preparing the workshop, we held our very first workshop on the 24th of May 2017 at the Marie-Therese- Gymnasium Erlangen.
Marie-Therese-Gymnasium Erlangen
The teachers assembled a group of 13 interested pupils from their 11 th grade biology courses who were willing to spend their – usually free – Wednesday afternoon learning about iGEM, synthetic biology and how to work in laboratories. We prepared the DNA extraction, the gel electrophoresis and a power point presentation about us and the theory of the two experiments, everything being photographed by Alex. Starting the afternoon Alena told the pupils about iGEM, synthetic biology, our own project and why we do the workshop. Then Ariane took over to give them the theory behind the soon-to- be done experiments, covering what a gel electrophoresis is, how it works, why biologists use it that often, what one has to do to extract DNA and where the difficulties lay.
After these theoretical 20 minutes, we started the practical work, supervised by Hannah, Bastian, Leonard and Ariane from our team, with preparing the gel run. We poured the gels before the workshop started, as this would have taken too long to have it done by the pupils. First the pupils had to be introduced to the microliter pipettes and train their pipetting skills. Therefore, we gave every student a stripe of parafilm with three drops of water on it, which they had to pipette up and down until they felt secure enough to take on the task of loading the gel with our DNA sample. After adding the loading dye to every sample, each pupil had to fill two gel pockets and the last to do so also had to start the gel run. While the gel ran, the DNA extraction was to be done. To get good results and as much visual DNA as possible, we decided to use strawberries, an octoploid organism. The protocol we used, was given to us by Dr. Hanh Nguyen, an employee at our university, who has already done this experiments at a school and could share her experiences with us. For this we want to thank her. In contrary to the gel electrophoresis, which had been done in groups of three to four, did their own DNA extraction. We proceeded step-by- step, every step followed by an explanation and depiction of what has been done and what it has been done for. Right in time to stop the gel run, we finished the DNA extraction, luckily, or probably more because of great work by the pupils, with good results, seeing strawberry DNA in almost every experiment. To visualize the results of the gel electrophoresis, we used an UV-transilluminator. Ending this afternoon of practical biological work, the pupils analyzed the DNA samples and determined the length of the plasmid used. After tidying up and cleaning all the tables, the pupils gave us their feedback about the workshop. All in all, this was a very successful afternoon, we learned a lot from it ourselves, had fun and hope that we helped the pupils getting an insight in the occupational field of genetic engineering. We want to say thank you to the Marie- Therese- Gymnasium Erlangen and the biology teachers for letting us organize this workshop, being so helpful with and enthusiastic about the idea. Of course, we were mindful of safety, too. We worked in a biology room, where eating and drinking is prohibited. Every student had to wear safety goggles and gloves, they had to change at least two times, during the whole workshop. We used no harmful substances and had safety sheets put on display.
Christian-Ernst-Gymnasium Erlangen
On Juli 11th, 2017 members of our iGEM team then visited the Christian-Ernst- Gymnasium in Erlangen, giving a workshop on iGEM and genetic engineering. Alena, Ann-Sophie, Benedikt, Hannah, Steffen, Ariane, Luise, Eva, Alex and Jonas met at 7:30am to get all the last minute preparations done. After Alena, Ariane and Steffen informed the students about iGEM, genetical engineering and therefore ist risks and benefits. But the workshop should not stay as theoretical is that – basic biologic work techniques were coached by our team with the aid of a micro cake recipe: The students were able to “bake” a cake under laboratory like circumstances. Afterwards, our team members provided the students with information about university life and possible courses of study. All in all: a verysuccessful human practice project!
Marie-Therese-Gymnasium Erlangen 2.0
On July 13th 2017 we once again used the chance to promote our iGEM-project to the greater public: Again we visited the Marie-Therese- Gymnasium in Erlangen to offer our DNA extraction workshop. But not we were standing in front of the crowd to explain – but rather the students with whom we had held our workshop in May were pointing out the important steps to the visitors of the school’s Project Day “TraumVision 2017”. Our team members and students of MTG worked together as a “teaching team” to carry out the DNA extraction with parents, teachers of other subjects, siblings and other interested individuals. Not only small inquiries but also bigger problems could be solved by the teaching teams. Everybody was concentrated and the biological work flow could not be stopped, whether it would have been due to the heat (it was a very hot summer day) or due to loud music being played by the school’s marching band in the adjacent schoolyard. In the end everybody helped to clean up the classroom – all in all: another very successful Human Practice project and we also got featured on the school’s website
Pathologia
As more and more multi-resistant bacteria emerge and the amount of therapeutics rises, it is crucial for everyone to better understand human health and how diseases are caused. This especially includes knowledge about human pathogens, their effect and how they can be treated. To improve education in this field we decided to develop a card game, that teaches about the complex system of the human organism and its interaction with pathogens in an entertaining and direct way. In the first stages of the development process, we agreed that the game should meet certain demands.
- The rules of the game should be easily understandable while still enabling an interesting play process.
- The cards should contain an overview of information about the represented pathogen or cure, but no long texts. This is because during a game, reading longer texts disrupts the flow of the play.
- The information should be easy to grasp and not take long to read.
- The rules and concept should provide a basic understanding of the interactions of pathogens and treatments against it.
Keeping these demands in mind, we created the concept and basic card layout. The former is based on the idea that each card should represent something that effects human health. Thus, we designed three different types of cards: red cards, that show pathogens, blue cards, that represent a cure or preventative, as well as yellow cards that include special preconditions or events. We chose this partitioning, because we think that it best represents the different influences on human health. To model the overall health of each human, we decided to base the game on a common “health-currency”, that we called health points. To each card we assigned a certain amount of health points, negative or positive, depending on the effect and its power.With this, we designed three different layouts that include all important information on the card, exemplary shown on the cards for Ebola, Painkiller and Mutation, depicted below.
With this layout, all important information on the card is easily visible and the player gains a basic impression on the represented effect on the first sight. For each pathogen, a depiction and information on its spread, lethality, symptoms, possible cures and some extra facts are shown on the cards next to its assigned health points (HP). Thus, every player gets a very basic understanding on the pathogen’s effect only be seeing its health points. This basic understanding again can be deepened by looking at the additional information. Similarly, to the red cards, the blue cards – representing cures – give information on possible side effects or other interesting properties. The yellow cards, as they represent preconditions or events, show an extra information section for possible explanations. With this, we developed a basic set of cards as well as suitable rules for an exciting play. This basic set of cards we then used as the foundation for our collaborations. More on this can be found under the Collaborations segment. We also advanced the general English version with different features. We – for example – introduced grey cards to the set. These cards are included to the set to make the game flow more unpredictable and entertaining. As the normal flow of the game starts at a certain player and always goes on to the next one, cards like “Change of Direction” make the game more fun for more players. This is because not every player always has to wait for a whole round to take its turn and because one does not always take a card from or give cards to the same person. We think, that this card game educates in an entertaining way about diseases, how they are caused and how they affect us.
All files needed to play this game, the set of all cardsas well as the rules with explanations of the gamecan be downloaded.
If you want to download the card game in other languages, check out the collaborations which arose from the card game!
After our interview with the blog „meineFAU“ from the FAU has been released, we received a very nice email from one the employees at the “Bionicum” in Nuremberg. The Bionicum is an institution of the Bavarian Environment Agency, dedicated to bionic, with a visitor centre in the Nuremberg Zoo. They cooperate with different research groups, that work on movement mechanism borrowed from the animal or plant kingdom. One of these research groups works on developing bionic Dielectric Elastomer Actuators, which is why they took notice of us and our work. After exchanging some emails about our project and their work, our team was invited to visit the Bionicum. On a sunny day in August six of our team members drove to the Nuremberg Zoo and were warmly welcomed by the employees of the Bionicum. After showing us around the visitor centre and providing us with very interesting insights into the world of bionic, we sat down to drink a coffee and talk – all between giraffes and meerkats!
After explaining our project, we learned about their experiences with bionic research and their public engagement. We received great feedback on how we could use what we already know from nature in our project. Thereby, we i. A. realised that for our chemical approach to achieve muscle like movement of the tissue, a molecular machine triggered by a voltage – as it is in all animals – instead of light would be more effective. We also heard how they teach school classes about bionic and connect with the public on this topic. After this very productive exchange, we explored the interactive exhibition in the visitor centre, where we learned a lot about mechanisms in nature that are used in technology. We realized, that the basic idea of bionic – making technology that resembles nature – is the exact inverse of the idea of synthetic biology and iGEM – making biology that resembles technology. This is precisely the reason why the combination of both should lead to a successful implementation, as it combines what already works in nature with individual adjustments. Our tour through the visitor centre ended with a very enjoyable performance of Nao, the sweetest robot we have ever seen. Here, we were told that after 15 minutes of performance he had to be charged for at least two hours to refill its batteries. Thus, we experienced the drawbacks of currently used robot drives, having a very high energy consumption, that we prior only knew theoretically.
To sum up, we had a very interesting and good time at the Bionicum. We learned a whole lot of things, many of which we could integrate into our project. We can very much recommend visiting the Bionicum in the Nuremberg Zoo to anyone, as it has a very thought-through and fascinating exhibition. Finally, we again want to thank the Bionicum and its employees for inviting us, talking to us and doing such great work. We really hope that we can plan a public engagement project together next year with the iGEM 2018 team!
Scientific institutions holding lectures and demonstrations for the general public – that’s the main concept of what in Germany is called a “Long Night of the Sciences”. From 6 p.m. to 1 a.m., the public can visit campuses, lecture halls and other premises of the universities and get to know about current research topics and results. In the area of Franconia’s cities of Nuremberg, Fuerth and Erlangen there is also one of these “Nights of the Sciences” – in which our iGEM-team was able to participate this year regarding a presentation of iGEM itself, our project and our results. We were able to get the whole team to look after our stand and tell the general public about our time with iGEM. It also served as some kind of rehearsal for our presentation at the iGEM Giant Jamboree. Team members from Erlangen presented the biological and chemical parts of our work as well as our engagement in collaborations and Human Practise projects – our colleagues from Würzburg presented their app and enacted a survey about what they could improve in the app for the presentation at the Giant Jamboree. Our project met with great interest and many visitors wished us the best of luck for the Giant Jamboree.
As our system can be implemented in multiple devices outside the lab it is a crucial factor to guarantee
that it will not cause damage to the environment. A crucial factor is to prevent the genetically
modified microorganisms from entering the environment. As we were working with two stems Geobacter
sulfurreducens and Escherichia coli we had to rely on two different approaches for this goal. As
Geobacter sulfurreducens can only survive under strictly anaerobic conditions, that task is simple to
achieve as the culture dies immediately when exposed to the atmosphere.
For E. coli we chose a cell-free approach for our tissue to prevent contamination of the
environment. This consideration takes into account that cells in the tissue lower the performance of our
azo-dye based muscle as the cells in the tissue will not be contracted but remain as buffer likely
preventing a strong contraction. In the dielectric elastomer actuator tissue the E. coli cells will not
survive the mechanical stress in the tissue, which will rapidly lead to ruptures in the device. A
further aspect to work with a cell-free material is to prevent damage to the material by the bacteria
themselves as they may consume a significant amount of the proteins.
To obtain this cell-free protein material lyses of the E. coli cells is necessary followed by
purification via nickel NTA column chromatography. This procedure leads to pure protein solutions, which
can further be manufactured to the desired tissue.
| Species name (including strain) |
Risk Group | Risk Group Source |
Disease risk to humans? | Part number/name | Natural function of part | How did you acquire it? | How will you use it? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| E. coli DH5 alpha MCR | 1 | 2014.igem.org/safety/ Risk_Group_Guide |
None | Spytag-Streptavidin-ELP5-SnoopCatcher | None; artificial production | IDT | Monomer for biopolymer matrix; tag for cross-linking molecular machines with the monomer |
| E. coli DH5 alpha MCR | 1 | 2014.igem.org/safety/ Risk_Group_Guide |
None | HisTag-Snooptag-ELP5-Spycatcher | None; artificial production | IDT | Monomer for elastomeric protein structures of the dielectric elastomer actuator and the molecular machines tissue |
| E. coli DH5 alpha MCR | 1 | 2014.igem.org/safety/ Risk_Group_Guide |
None | Spytag-Streptavidin-ELP5-SnoopCatcher | None; artificial production | IDT | Monomer for biopolymer matrix; tag for cross-linking molecular machines with the monomer |
| E. coli DH5 alpha MCR | 1 | 2014.igem.org/safety/ Risk_Group_Guide |
None | Kationisch kurz | None; artificial production | IDT | Conductive monomer for tissue development |
| E. coli DH5 alpha MCR | 1 | 2014.igem.org/safety/ Risk_Group_Guide |
None | Spytag-Streptavidin-ELP5-SnoopCatcher | Anionisch kurz | IDT | Conductive monomer for tissue development |
| E. coli DH5 alpha MCR | 1 | 2014.igem.org/safety/ Risk_Group_Guide |
None | Spytag-Streptavidin-ELP5-SnoopCatcher | None; artificial production | IDT | Monomer for biopolymer matrix; tag for cross-linking molecular machines with the monomer |
| E. coli DH5 alpha MCR | 1 | 2014.igem.org/safety/ Risk_Group_Guide |
None | W51W54 | None; artificial production | IDT | Conductive monomer for tissue development |
| E. coli DH5 alpha MCR | 1 | None | Electroconductive Pili | Gift from University of Massachusetts Amherst, Departement of Microbiology |
Electroconductive layer of the
| ||
| E. coli DH5 alpha MCR | 1 | None | Electroconductive Pili | Gift from University of Massachusetts Amherst, Departement of Microbiology |
Electroconductive layer of the
|
Article in the regional newspaper ‘Nürnberger Nachrichten’
At the end of June we sat down with the editor Dr. Lothar Hoja of the ‘Verlag Nürnberger Presse’ to talk about our project.
We discussed our ideas, their realization as well as human practice projects. Not only did we get a lot of helpful tips and suggestions from Dr. Hoja,
but he also sent us a beautiful package with promotion pens. The article ‘Bacteria to build artificial muscles’ was published in the supraregional part of
the newspaper Nürnberger Nachrichten.
Therefore, we again want to thank Dr. Lothar Hoja!
Article in the magazine ‘frisch!’ from the Friedrich-Alexander-Universiät
Just as we started our practical work in the chemistry lab, one of the editors of the campus magazine ‘frisch!’ visited us in our lab. We showed him our work, the syntheses of the azo dye and discussed iGEM and our project. We want to thank the team of ‘frisch!’ for this great article. ‘Robotic muscles from the test tube’ can be found in the ‘frisch!’ magazine.
Interview with the blog ‘meineFAU’
Two of our team members, Alena und Steffen, were also interviewed by Milena, one of the writers of the blog ‘meineFAU’ from the University in Erlangen and Nuremberg. We told her about our experiences with iGEM, how we came to be part of the team, as well as iGEM itself. So, thank you Milena for interviewing us! The article can be read on the blog.
