We collaborated with Team Düsseldorf Cologne and other teams worldwide to create and distribute our postcard making our sophorolipid research more accessible to the public. We created the graphics and composed the text for our postcard design. Team Düsseldorf Cologne generously provided for the cost of printing and distributing many copies of our postcard. Our postcard was mixed into the distribution of all participating iGEM teams’ postcards that was mailed to each of the 28 participating teams.

The front side of the postcard is shown below.

The text on the reverse side of our postcard reads:

Sophorolipids are non-toxic, biodegradable alternatives to current petrochemical-derived surfactants. Their anti-inflammatory, anti-cancer, and anti-microbial activities may enable therapeutic use. The difficulty of systematically changing their structures to find structure-property relationships and the challenge of producing homogeneous molecules rather than mixtures of different products have barred their previous use in therapeutics. Our project aims to produce uniform sophorolipid products with control over the fatty acid structure. With genetic engineering, we can selectively repress active domains of the MFE-2 enzyme. This could enable the yeast to make uniform sophorolipids with desired fatty acid structures while limiting metabolic stress on the yeast. We will then investigate purified sophorolipids to define structure-biological property relationships. Ultimately, we aim to identify potent new sophorolipid therapeutic agents.

Team Franconia (Biological themed card game)

We collaborated with Team Franconia to design a sophorolipid card for their educational card game. Working from a template file provided by Team Franconia, we provided an image showing the sophorolipid structure and the explanatory text for the caption. Team Franconia will print our card as part of the game that their team will bring to the Giant Jamboree in Boston. Our sophorolipid card is shown below.