Team:Heidelberg/Attributions


Attributions
We want to say thanks
Here we want to thank everyone who supported us this year and thus helped us make our project come true. Numerous individuals, research groups, departments and companies supported us throughout the entire project and here we want to say thank you for this! A special thanks goes to Prof. Dr. Roland Eils, Dr. Irina Lehmann and Dr. Dominik Niopek who instructed our team and to Carolin Schmelas, Max Waldhauer, Mareike Hoffmann, Michael Jendrusch, Stefan Holderbach, and Daniel Heid who mentored us this year as advisors.

Students

All results presented on our Wiki, including wet lab and software, were achieved solely by the members of the iGEM Team Heidelberg, if not otherwise stated.

Moritz Przybilla was working on the characterization of PACE and PREDCEL, designed and cloned our toolbox constructs and cared about sponsoring.

Catharina Gandor performed OptoSELECT, established phage detection and propagation assays and helped in cytochrome c experiments.

Jan Mathony designed most cloning strategies including our toolbox, developed CRISPR PACE and validated our software in the wet lab using beta-lactamase and beta- Glucuronidase.

Lukas Adam initially set up the PACE equipment including the sensors for living cell density. Subsequently, we designed and compiled our Wiki, incorporated the web-based interactive tools and developed SafetyNet.

Marita Klein performed the crucial PREDCEL experiments regarding cytochrome engineering and helped in Human Practice.

Julius Upmeier zu Belzen initially set up PACE with Lukas Adam. Subsequently, he generated all of our models and developed GAIA.

Max Schwendemann characterized the PREDCEL experiments in regard to phage propagation and performed the protein interaction PREDCEL experiments. He designed many cute icons for our Wiki and created the videos explaining our project.

Thore Bürgel is the mastermind of the neural networks behind our software. He developed DeeProtein, AIGEM and SafetyNet.

Pauline Pfuderer developed Destructase PACE, helped in cloning the toolbox and created and implemented the concept of our Human Practice approach.

Lukas Platz synthesized the carbon-silicon compounds with the help of Fabian Ebner and Dr. Lutz Greb. Furthermore, he tested the activity of the carbon-silicon induced riboswitch.



Advisors

Michael Jendrusch supported us in every aspect of our efforts concerning the software. He was the one we consulted, when all the others floundered. In this way he was the only one having a clear picture of how to get SafetyNet based on neural networks to work in the browser.

Stefan Holderbach profoundly advised us in our Deep Learning and Modeling efforts. He was a crucial figure in initiating our neural network based software and helped us in our daily struggle in fighting the ever-present bugs.

Daniel Heid is a genius in recruiting sponsors and knowing about all the details of lab equipment and reagents. He supported us in many projects that required complex procedures, as the purification of proteins, in vitro transcription, the synthesis of organosilicons and many more.

Max Waldhauer is the mastermind of the wet lab experiments, he was supervising and profoundly shaping the wet lab experiments in certainly every project. From the very beginning, he gave crucial advise in the conceptualization and implementation of our experiments.

Carolin Schmelas advised us in our experimental project design and daily lab work. She always kept a backup plan in her mind, if experiments would fail. She profoundly supported our efforts in Human Practices and sponsoring.

Mareike Hoffmann helped us with organizational effort of any kind. She helped to shape our projects and is a Speedy Gonzalez in correcting texts.

Dominik Niopek organized our team, allocated resources and shaped our project with enormous expertise. He was keeping the general overview of our team and experiments, yet he was informed about most details as well. Dominik cared for motivation and team spirit when the work was overwhelming.

Roland Eils and Irina Lehmann are the organizers of iGEM in Heidelberg. They provided us with the lab space and equipment, offered profound organizational support and expertise. Both encouraged us to pursue our experimental and informational aims.



Helping hands

Many people helped us in the course of our project. We sincerely want to thank for all the support!

A special thanks to Kai Ludwig who designed our terrific logo and slogan.

Paul Rothhaar, a third year bachelor student in Molecular Biotechnology, helped us evaluating our surveys and created graphs to visualize the results to provide an illustrated overview of the public opinion towards our project.

Sebastian Degner, a Molecular Biotechnologist in his third year of his bachelor studies, cut all video sequences for us and helped to record our short Human Practice expert videos. He had the idea for the impressive video introduction and translated the videos if necessary.

We acknowledge the help of Maik Schauerte, who supported our wet-lab team for two weeks. He performed testings for our PREDCEL experiments and carried out PCRs, transformations and sequencing preparations.

Tobias Stadelmann was our trainee for two weeks. Not only we educated him, but also he helped us with PREDCEL experiments and performed some PCRs for us.

We warmly thank Jana Tegethoff, who helped in our PREDCEL experiments.

A heartfelt thank-you goes out to Lara Schlegel, for designing and drawing our icons and thereby performing a great contribution to the overall successful wiki layout.

As we have implemented lots of interactive tools on our wiki, we thank Jonas Koneczny and Alex Mattausch for testing them and helping with debugging. We also kindly thank Jakob Kreft and Ilia Kats as last minute support for uploading wiki content.

Great thanks to Jules Bartl for helping us with graphical visualization of our ideas for the Darwin-intro sequence in our first project explanation video.

We thank Thomas Wollmann for his vital input and support in the development of our Deep learning model. Thomas always stood present as an advisor, pointing the teams efforts in fruitful directions.

We thank Antonio D´Isanto for his introduction to Deep Learning and the profound discussions of the subject

We enjoyed the visit of Dr. Kevin Esvelt and his very inspiring talk about his current work. We appreciate his evaluation of our PACE setup and his valuable advise on phage contamination and washout.

We appreciate the support of Karlheinz Gross who helped in setting up the Geneious server and providing hardware.

We thank Dr Johannes Werner, who helped us in setting up the organisational structure behind our team with the phabricator software.

We thank the Dickinson Lab (University of Chicago) for their friendly support and the provision of plasmids.

We thank Prof. Dr. Frances H. Arnold for sharing her engineered cytochrome c plasmids for the organosilicon project with us.

We very much appreciate the support from the Liu lab, especially Tim Rothand and Michael Samuel Packer , for plasmids and advice on phage production.

We acknowledge Dr. Maik Brune for lending use the syringe pumps required for our PACE setup

We acknowledge the work of Dr. Lutz Greb and Fabian Ebner on the synthesis of the silicon educt for its use in the organosilicon project. We would like to thank them for their expertise, not only in the synthesis but also in the analysis of the produced substances. The collaboration facilitated a tight network of shared knowledge, biologically and chemically, and enabled us to successfully perform our experiments.



Interviews

We want to thank all interview-partners who invested their time in sharing their knowledge with us, inspiring us in many different ways and pathed new ways in various chapters of our project. Without your advice, input and experience, our project would not be the same!

Dr. Michael Ernst, Director of the Agricultural Department, University of Hohenheim
Dr. Dorothea Kaufmann - IPMB, Heidelberg University
Prof. Dr. Michael Wink - IPMB, Heidelberg University
Prof. Dr. Dr. Edith Huland - Managing Director of Immunservice GmbH
Prof. Dr. Philipp Stoellger - Theological Department, Heidelberg University
PD Dr. Ullrich Köthe - Visual Learning Group, Heidelberg University
Dr. Lorenz Adlung - PhD in Systems Biology, Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel
Birgit and Dr. Jens Degner - Judges, Ordinary Jurisdiction North Rhine-Westphalia
Dr. Ingo Janausch - Department for Biological Safety, Heidelberg University