Team:BOKU-Vienna/Contribution
Contribution
Promoter quantification using mCherry in Lactobacillus
In addition to adding new parts to the iGEM registry, we also improved the documentation of existing ones. We used Golden Gate cloning to transform Lactobacillus plantarum with eight different plasmids expressing mCherry. Different promotors are provided in the document. Some constructs contained promoters which we newly added to the registry. Two contructs contained promoters which were added in 2017 by the iGEM team in Austin, Texas. They tested and compared the expression strength with other promotors in E.coli. However, comparison in Lactobacillus, the source organism of those promoters, is still missing in the registry. Thus, we wanted to close this gap, while simultaneously collecting information about our newly added promoters.
Troubleshooting guide
With this troubleshooting guide, we hope to help future iGEM teams on their iGEM journey! During our project we encountered an abundance of difficulties and to help other teams who encounter similar hurdles, we developed a step-by-step guide to assist them in reaching their project goal. What we aimed for with this guide, is to prevent future teams from losing too much time while trying to find a way out of the maze of challenges they may face during their project. This is the right guide for you if your project involves a Type-II-S assembly or cloning using PCR. Let us help you shoot your troubles!
Tips and Tricks for SimBiology
SimBiology is a useful tool for the modeling, simulation and analysis of dynamic systems. Models can be built with MATLAB language or using the block diagram editor. Further, it offers a variety of possibilities for analysis of ordinary differential equation-based models. SimBiology is a great tool with lots of potential for all iGEM teams. However, guidance for the software are often limited, with the exception of basic “getting started” guides. Togehter with the iGEM team from TU-Eindhoven we developed this "Tips & Tricks"-style guide for future iGEM teams that want to use SimBiology for their model. The tips act as supplementary information to the kinetic modeling webinars provided by iGEM. All tips are categorized in different topics, so they can easily be looked up.
Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village guide
Another contribution for future iGEM teams was created in collaboration with the teams iGEM TAU Israel, iGEM TUDelft, iGEM Vilnius-Lithuania, iGEM MTU-CORK, iGEM Hong Kong HKU, and iGEM Concordia-Montreal regarding the Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village (ASYV) a non-profit organisation supporting orphaned youth in Rwanda. After our successful lessons held for the ASYV students, all the teams noted down their experiences and tips in an ASYV guidebook. This guidebook should help future teams with how to best hold the contact with the village and to continue the virtual synthetic biology class. The guide will also be provided on the wiki of the iGEM team TAU Israel.
Our guide: organizing large iGEM teams
If there is one thing that we learned during our iGEM season, it is that teamwork can be challenging, especially when a lot of people are involved. Since our team consisted of 25 active members, we had to undergo a long learning curve towards successful teamwork and communication. In fact, we discovered that the size of our team gave us unexpectedly high flexibility and freedom to be creative. This guide aims at helping future iGEM teams with how to organize and communicate in order to make big teams work.
