Team:TU Kaiserslautern/Attributions

2021 has been the third year in which the TU Kaiserslautern provided an iGEM team so far. Our team, consisting of ten students of different semesters and fields of study, is united by the love for what we do. We all put so much time and effort into our project and learned a lot on our way, not only about working in the lab, planning and implementing our own projects, but about science communication, the world of science itself and how the everyday life of a young researcher might look like. We learned that putting a lot of effort into something does not necessarily mean to succeed, and that this is totally fine. Even though it has sometimes been difficult to communicate with each other, we grew together as a team and learned a lot about interpersonal relations and, last but definitely not least, ourselves.

On our way, we were also helped by many people who were essential for the success of our project.

Team members

Bastian Hinkel

Bastian Hinkel is our 2nd speaker.

He worked mainly in the biotechnology lab and was responsible for the domestication of the destination vector. He also designed and produced parts using the Modular Cloning system. He participated in the purification of proteins and prepared Western blots.

Helped
  • school lectures
  • STEM fair
  • sustainability week
  • junior university
  • science slam
  • Wiki

Benjamin Ziehmer

Benjamin Ziehmer worked in the Leishmania laboratory. Besides transfecting and culturing Leishmania, he prepared Western blots.

Outside of the lab, he took care of the podcast. He was also a part of the organisation of the STEM Fair.

Helped
  • school lectures
  • sponsoring
  • article for the magazine Unispectrum
  • Wiki
  • survey

Jonas Klein

Jonas Klein worked in the biotechnology lab on the domestication of the destination vector. He also designed and created parts using the Modular Cloning system. He participated in the purification of proteins and prepared Western blots.

Outside the lab, he was mainly responsible for creating the Safety Form.

Helped
  • escape room
  • STEM fair
  • website
  • sponsoring
  • Wiki

Julia Spänle

Julia is our 1st speaker.

She mainly worked in the biotechnology lab and produced parts with the Modular Cloning system, which were later transferred into Leishmania. She also took care of the purification of the expressed proteins.

Outside the lab she was taking care of many of our sponsors. She planed events and always keept track of all deadlines. She was mainly responsible for the communication with the university management. She was responsible for evaluating the results of our survey. She kept the morale up in the team and made sure that no one missed out.

Helped
  • school presentations
  • science slam
  • article for magazine Biospectrum
  • junior university
  • sustainability week
  • STEM fair
  • promotion video
  • Wiki
  • presentation video
  • article for the magazine Unispectrum

Julian Stieß

Julian Stieß is our Web Designer and was responsible for our Wiki.

Katrin Hieronimus

Katrin Hieronimus worked in the Leishmania laboratory. She transfected and cultivated Leishmania. In addition, she also prepared Western blots.

Outside the lab she was responsible for the promotion and presentation video. She created the logos and other design work for our project together with the design team, was mainly responsible for the pictures and animations on our Wiki and part of the social media team.

Helped
  • school presentations
  • website
  • Wiki
  • STEM fair
  • presentation video
  • promotion video
  • social media
  • design team

Nicolas Bayer

Nicolas Bayer worked in the biotechnology lab on the Modular Cloning system and worked on the domestication of the destination vector. He designed and created parts and was also responsible for protein purification.

Outside of the lab, he contributed to the podcast and was part of the design team. He was also responsible for the parts registry.

Helped
  • website
  • Wiki
  • STEM fair

Paul Moroka

Paul Moroka worked in the MoClo lab.

Helped
  • sponsoring
  • science slam

Salina Kibrom

Salina Kibrom worked in the MoClo lab, helped with the domestication of the destination vector and was responsible for the activity assay of the RBD with the ACE2 overexpressing human cells. She participated in the purification of proteins and prepared Western blots.

Outside the lab she was part of the design team and sponsoring team.

Helped
  • STEM fair
  • Wiki
  • school presentations
  • promotion video
  • presentation video

Tabea Donauer

Tabea Donauer worked in the Leishmania laboratory. In addition to culturing the Leishmania, she transfected parts into the Leishmania and did Western blots.

Outside the lab she took care of some of the sponsors and the necessary orders of the materials for the Leishmania lab. She was also the main person responsible for writing the laboratory journal for the Leishmania team and was part of the social media team.

Helped
  • school presentations
  • German Meetup
  • escape room
  • STEM fair
  • promotion video
  • Wiki design
  • social media team
  • design team

Instructors

M. Sc. Anna Kiefer

Anna Kiefer played a major role in the implementation of our project. She showed us how to work with human cells. This allowed us to perform an activity assay with our purified protein.

M. Sc. Anna Probst

Anna helped us with domestication of our backbone and also her extensive knowledge of the Modular Cloning system.

M. Sc. Christina Huber

Christina helped us with protein purification and always had an open ear for our problems with purification.

M. Sc. Justus Niemeyer

Justus Niemeyer always helped us with his extensive knowledge of the Modular Cloning system in the lab. In addition, he gave us food for thought in the planning of various experiments and thus actively supported the project.

M. Sc. Luzia Schneider

She showed us how to deal with Leishmania. In addition, she was always ready to help us with problems regarding Leishmania. She helped with different experiments and showed us different laboratory methods, which were essential in handling Leishmania.

M. Sc. Nora Georgiev

Nora gave us an introduction into protein purification and always helped us with troubleshooting and interpreting our results of our Western blots.

Primary Advisors

Prof. Dr. Michael Schroda (Molecular Biotechnology & System Biology)

A special thanks goes to our professor Dr. Michael Schroda, who allows the students of the TU Kaiserslautern to use the equipment of his department to participate in iGEM every year. We really appreciate that we could come to you anytime if we had questions and that you take such good care of us and our project.

Secondary Advisors

Prof. Dr. Marcel Deponte (Comparative Biochemistry)

Special thanks also goes to Prof. Dr. Marcel Deponte. He enabled us to work with Leishmania in his laboratory. We also appreciate that you always had an open ear for us when we had problems and did not know what to do.

Jun.-Prof. Dr. Felix Willmund (Molecular Genetics of Eukaryotes)

Jun.-Prof. Dr. Felix Willmund attended our regular lab meetings and always helped with troubleshooting and always had tips on how to improve our results.

Prof. Dr. Nicole Frankenberg-Dinkel (Microbiology)

Prof. Dr. Nicole Frankenberg-Dinkel supported us very much with the purification of the proteins. We thank her for her commitment to our project and our team.

Thanks to everyone else from the departments of Molecular Biotechnology & Systems Biology, Microbiology and Biochemistry!

Special iGEM Advisors

Dorothée Klein & Adrian Engels

We especially thank the former iGEM members of the 2019 team Dorothée Klein and Adrian Engels. Both have been very supportive in organizing our team and have always helped us with questions and problems around iGEM.

Special Thanks to…

... Anja Meffert. She has ordered laboratory materials for us.
… Helen Wegner, she helped us with purification from E. coli.
... Karin Gries. She makes cells for us competently and explained a lot of things to us.
... Melanie Kissel. She managed orders and invoices for us.
... Sophie Möhring. She supported us in the Leishmania laboratory, where she autoclaved media and laboratory material and gave us instructions on laboratory equipment.
... Dr. Susanne Zehner. She helped us with transfecting dam-negative E. coli.
… AG Prof. Hermann. He provided our team with two incubators.