Team:Tuebingen/Attributions
Attributions
On this page, we documented who helped us during our journey. We dearly thank every single one of you for your support, we wouldn't have gotten where we are if not for you.
Team
Primary Instructors
Uener Kolukisaoglu
One of the main sculptors of our project, who gave us the idea to express our AMPs in tobacco. He was always ready to answer our questions, of which we had a lot. He supported us with lab space to infiltrate the plants as well as the plants themselves and did not shy away from giving us criticism when it was due.
Harald Gross
His input about and broad knowledge of antimicrobial compounds encouraged us to carry out our plan to work with antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) and inspired us to have a closer look at highly fascinating cyclic peptides from plants, the so-called cyclotides. He generously shared his expertise in all kinds of fields with us and provided us with technical guidance and labspace for the extraction of our peptides. He also provided us with the idea of Genome Mining.
Lucas Mühling
Lucas always had a suggestion to help us move forward when something was bothering us in the Wetlab. He knew, which methods could or could not work inside the lab and helped us in learning from our mistakes.
Heike Brötz-Oesterhelt
Prof. Brötz-Oesterhelt supported us especially regarding the antimicrobial properties of our AMPs. She was very interested in our topic and provided us not only important knowledge regarding antimicrobial testing but also sponsored our Wetlab team very kindly with consumables.
Dr. Hubert Kalbacher
Even though Mr. Kalbacher may not be officially registered as one of our instructors, we received a great deal of help and advice from him. We originally contacted Mr. Kalbacher to ask if we could measure a few samples at the MALDI-TOF mass spectrometer in his former institute. Despite his retirement, he was eager to help us with our project and had loads of ideas on how we could reach a proof of concept. Deviating from our original expectations, he allowed and helped us to measure around 20 samples at his mass spectrometer and provided us with equipment to concentrate and purify the samples. Just two days before the wiki freeze, Mr. Kalbacher himself performed an ELISA assay for us when we were busy writing on our wiki documentation. We want to thank Mr. Kalbacher for his spontaneity and the passion he brought up for our project!
Student Members
Maximilian Pellegrin
Maximilian took care of the enormous task of ordering our chemicals quickly and also when needed called immediately the responsible company to make sure our lab was provided with everything we needed. He was an indispensable part of the Drylab from the inception of the project until its conclusion.
Elias Ball
Always a source of motivation and inspiration for the whole team, Elias made a huge effort in creating our portfolio, website, and wiki as part of the Wiki/Design team. He also pushed forward the Drylab section despite only being in the first year of his studies. He and Julius organized our excursion to NOMAD Bioscience in Halle.
Teresa Müller
Being a great captain of team Finance, Teresa steered us successfully through many ups and downs. She took care of uncountable telephone calls and mails to possible sponsors, kept in touch with the administration of our bank accounts, and took care of many of our orderings for the Wetlab. On top of that, she played an active role in the lab whenever she could and helped enormously in organizing the panel discussion of our HP subteam.
Catia Harnack
Catia worked within several teams and with her random anecdotes or facts about literally anything, she helped to loosen the tension. Her acting capabilities impressed us all as she became one of the main actors in our promotion video. As part of our social media team, she inspired various posts and stories on our Instagram channel and was responsible for selecting either the funniest or most interesting answers to our weekly questions. She also assisted us with great effort in the Wetlab in between her lab courses and exams for her studies.
Erik Zimmer
Erik knows so much about biochemistry and was always one of the leading team members in the Wetlab. Whenever you had a question (and we had many), Erik was always there to help. His tremendous expertise and ways of problem-solving as well as his magical ability to stay calm even during stressful times made him our pillar of strength and someone you were always able to count on. He was a very valued member of Wetlab and HP and we are very thankful for what he provided for the team. He also was the brain behind our info posts on Instagram. He also temporarily helped the Drylab team and was always there for questions. As part of the Wiki/Design team, he made huge efforts on the portfolio and helped create the website and the wiki.
Mirjam Höchel
Mirjam joined our team in a critical phase of our project design and immediately was part of the inner circle of the project planning team, which designed our cloning schedule. With her huge knowledge of biochemistry, she played a key role in creating our whole project. Later on, she structured our Wetlab meetings always very well so we could plan the lab work efficiently. She was also one of the leading members of the Wetlab crew, who made working with her extremely easy as she knew at all times which tasks had to be done when and her ability to think ahead kept us from doing the one or other mistake. However, she always was up for some fun, no matter if it was watching children's tv series during incubation times in the lab or her exquisite taste in music, which led us to the Händel museum in Halle during our field trip.
Inga Leske
Because Inga proposed the idea of doing research on AMPs, she was a key figure in our project right from the beginning as she also made contact with Prof. Groß, our secondary PI. In addition, she did a great job in the finance team and she played a huge role in planning, organising and realising our HP projects, like the panel discussion or the podcast. Without her talent and eye for detail, the episodes would not sound even half as nice. We also valued her work ethic greatly as well as her will to always help out and even do over-time when things sometimes did not go according to plan. Additionally, Inga was the head of the Social Media team and always had creative ideas for new posts and stories and she took on the big task of answering all our messages. If all of the above-mentioned facts don’t convince you that Inga was really committed to our project, just watch the promotion video to see the joy she has when working for iGEM.
Julius Dangelmaier
Without Julius's eye for detail and aesthetic design, our promotion and project presentation videos would not have been such masterpieces. He planned and coordinated the whole filming process and kept track of the deadlines for it as well, which we would have probably missed otherwise. Additionally, he made the contact to Prof. Gleba and the company NOMAD and successfully planned the trip to meet them. This helped us a lot regarding our Wetlab work and still more, it was very inspiring to see that and how a project like ours can be translated into large-scale production. Regarding his own contribution to our work in the lab, he didn’t mind working late-night shifts to get the purification of our peptide done. Julius was also a big part of the Wiki/Design Team and helped create the portfolio, our website, and the wiki. All in all, he always kept an eye out for everything.
Kira Zetzmann
Kira was the queen of our human practices team; without her guidance we would have totally lost track. She took care of contacting most of our podcast guests and was a great interviewer as well. Furthermore, she helped a lot with organizing our panel discussion as well as other team events, which would not have been such a success without her. Always kind and well organized she also helped to tackle finance problems and reviewing all kinds of texts, we had to write during the course of the competition. Plus, as part of the social media team, she always had funny and original ideas for our team pictures.
Alicia Geier
A kind and hard worker in the Wetlab, with whom it was a joy to work alongside. Always kept track of our assays. As part of the Wiki/Design team, she helped get the portfolio into print and helped design the postcards for our postcard collaboration. In addition, for the finance team, she contacted various possible sponsors and took care of browsing homepages of companies for the best (and at the same time cheapest) chemicals and materials for our lab work.
Kurt Anton Garcke
Toni took care of tasks inside the lab as part of the Wetlab team and also contributed to the Drylab and finance team. With his passion for photography, he produced some nice footage of us working in the lab.
Hannah Van Santvliet
Hannah was always motivated and enthusiastic to organize teambuilding events. She helped to hold the team together and her countless doodles allowed us to meet in presence and not only via Zoom. She also drew the design of our postcards and helped built the portfolio, the website, and the wiki as part of the Wiki/Design team.
Adrián Vojtaššák
As we started thinking about working with plants, a miracle happened: Adrián, being in his masters in plant science, contacted us and wanted to participate in our project. He quickly became a central figure of our Wetlab team and worked tirelessly to purify and detect our constructs. He did a great job in pouring Tricine SDS gels. Adrián also supported the video team with his skills as a cameraman and as one of the screenwriters. He was also a loyal and reliable member of the Drylab team.
Dilara Ceran
She helped a lot in the Wetlab team and inspired us with her motivation and scientific questions.
Laura Bader
Laura helped in the Wetlab team and did labwork fast and proficiently. Her experience inside our lab at the Forchhammer group was a great advantage, as we could learn quickly, where to find everything.
Dennis Köhn
Dennis took part in the Wetlab team and being in his PhD in organic chemistry, all things related to solvents or other chemical agents and reactions come pretty easily for him, which helped inside the lab.
Antonia Schumacher
Antonia helped the Drylab team during the early stages of the project. She played a crucial part in our podcast as well as our promotion video, as she became the voice of our team, guiding through the promotion video.
Jakob Franz
A good inspiration in the wiki-team, asking the right questions and working precisely. He only became part of our team in the late stages of our project, but we were happy to get some more support regarding all things related to programming and computer science.
Advisors
Aarón Alexander Refisch
As the main mentor for our project, he brought us on the right track at the start of the project, always reminded us of upcoming deadlines and important details about the intricacies of iGEM. He was a great resource and mentor helping our project throughout the whole year. He also provided us with translations for our videos. He was never getting tired of giving us examples of past project parts and information regarding general possibilities on how to do human practice. We are especially thankful for the advice on how to prepare for a tough meeting with possible collaboration partners to adequately communicate our ideas and goals.
Luiselotte Rausch
If you needed someone to proofread your texts, Luise was always there to help out. She also supported a lot with reminders about deliverables, ideas on what to do, and suggestions of which of our ideas were total nonsense. Especially when it came to advice concerning fundraising, Luise was indispensable. She guided us throughout the process of finding sponsors and keeping track of registration fees. Without the introducing presentation, she gave us about financing we would not have been able to register our team or to raise money to realize our project. We could always contact her when we needed any information about using the bank account or about the fundraising projects of the last years.
David Keßler
David gave us great advice during the project planning phase of our project. His scientific knowledge and ideas were a great help to us.
Outside support
Project support and advice
Prof. Dr. Erik Schäffer
He advised us in the early stages of our project during our project finding phase.
Dr. Philipp Thiel
He gave us advice regarding Molecular Dynamics Simulations and access to the supercomputer BinAC.
Prof. Nadine Ziemert
She gave us advice on genome mining and our project in general.
Elias Schreiner
As part of the previous iGEM Tuebingen team, he gave us great advice and resources on building the Website and the Wiki. He also provided us with great resources, great advice, and contacts regarding our Drylab work.
Lukas Heumos
As part of the previous iGEM Tuebingen teams, he provided us with advice and resources for building the Website and the Wiki.
Fundraising help and advice
Famke Bäuerle
She gave us crucial advice and support concerning our bank accounts managed by the university.
Lea Vogt
As part of last years finance team Lea provided us with advices and guiding information on how to raise money and receiving material and financial support.
Anirudh Natarajan
He provided us with contact information of previous sponsors. Without this help we would not have been able to gain crucial sponsors.
We would like to thank Klaus Möschel, Birgit Kiesel, Alexandra Maurer and Martina Rodi for the administration of our bank accounts. Without their help we would not have been able to participate in iGEM.
Lab support
Manuela Haußmann (lab assistant at Prof. Groß’ lab)
Thank you for guiding us during the extraction of our peptides.
Jan Straetener & Tatjana Wommert (at Brötz-Oesterhelt Lab)
They both helped us regarding the antimicrobial assays.
Prof. Karl Forchhammer
He provided us with our main lab space in his practical rooms, without him our project might not have been possible in the way it was.
Dr. Iris Maldener
She gave the laboratory safety instruction to our lab space and provided us with advice on safety aspects.
Claudia Menzel (lab assistant)
She helped us with our ordering of materials and chemicals.
Leander Rohr (AG Harter, ZMBP plant physiology)
Thank you for providing us with the necessary constructs for the GoldenGate cloning.
Dr. Andreas Maurer
We want to thank Dr. Mauer, group leader at the Werner Siemens Imaging Center, for his spontaneous help by letting us measure our samples at his LC-MS.
WG Kai Dimmer
The working group of Dr. Dimmer at the IFIB spontaneously provided us with anti-His-tag antibody, thank you.
Our Lab Space
Farewell my dear, oh place of my
despair, delight and foolery.
Where shall I stay until it's late,
now that I lost your open gate.
To other students, you may remain
a site to share some Mate,
to find new friends, find love and pain,
bye bye, may your concrete pillars sustain.
👋
Drylab support
iGEM Team IISER Kolkata
During our partnership, they built and prepared the systems for our Molecular Dynamics all-atom membrane simulations and gave us further advice on them. They also gave us advice when it came to running Molecular Dynamics simulations in general and brought us back to the idea of Molecular Docking. The discussions with them were very useful in guiding our Drylab work.
Human Practices support
Podcast
We would like to thank all our interview partners for participating in the AMPodcast. We are grateful for all the deep insight into their field of work and the new perspectives we were able to gain.
Episode 1
Our fellow team members Mirjam Höchel, Adrián Vojtaššák und Erik Zimmer - Thank you so much for being our guinea pigs!
Episode 2
Dr. Uener Kolukisaoglu – Thank you for your insight into your work as well as into ethics and legislation in biotechnology.
Episode 3
Prof. Dr. Nadine Ziemert - Thank you for broadening our knowledge on bioinformatic approaches, source organisms, and finding new biomedical compounds to fight diseases.
Episode 4
Dr. Andreas Dräger - Thank you for your explanations of systems biology and its usefulness in fighting antimicrobial-resistant pathogens.
Episode 5
Prof. Dr. Thomas Potthast – Thank you for your help and important insights on bioethics, morality, and ethical boundaries in science.
Episode 6
Shi-Jie Nga, Tzu-Yang Chuang, Ting-Yi Yeh, and Hsuan-Che Hsu from the iGEM Team CCU Taiwan - Thank you for collaborating with us in this episode as well as sharing your ideas and knowledge.
Episode 7
Prof. Dr. Heike Brötz-Oesterhelt – Thank you for your insights in the process of antibacterial drug discovery, research in industry and academics as well as being a woman in science.
Panel discussion
We would like to thank our contact at the Science center “experimenta”, Dr. Robert Friedrich, who made a cooperation between our team and the experimenta possible. He guided us through the organization of our panel discussion and we are very grateful for the time he sacrificed for us and the advice he gave.
And of course, our guests Dr. Peter Welters (CEO Phytowelt Green Technologies GmbH), Dr. Martha Mertens (expert for genetic engineering from the BUND Germany), and Prof. Dr. Stefan Schillberg (head of division Molecular Biotechnology at the Fraunhofer Institute for Molecular Biology and Applied Ecology) for sharing their knowledge and opinions with us during a fruitful discussion.
Trip to Nomad Bioscience
We would like to thank Prof. Dr. Jurijus Gleba, CEO Nomad Bioscience GmbH, who was extremely generous with his time and resources. Prof. Gleba gave us the opportunity to visit the company Nomad Bioscience and gain insights into current research topics. There he provided us with broad knowledge about plant-made pharmaceuticals. We learned a lot and could transfer many aspects to our topic to receive an idea on how our project could possibly evolve in the future.
We also would like to say thank you to Victor Klimyuk, Ph.D., Managing Director Icon Genetics GmbH, who established the contact with Prof. Gleba and also met us at Nomad Science to discuss our project and through whom we were able to gain new insights on many aspects of it.
Thanks a lot to Dr. Simone Hahn and Anett Stephan for showing us around in the laboratory and providing us with numerous advice concerning the purification process.
We would like to thank Dr. Franziska Jarczowski for showing us around at the greenhouses and for answering our numerous questions concerning upscaling and safety regulations.
Dr. Anatoli Giritch guided us through the day at Nomad Bioscience and Icon Genetics. We had a fruitful discussion about our project and he gave us a lot of useful advice. Therefore, we would like to thank him!
We also would like to thank Thomas Prochaska who met us at Nomad Science to discuss our project.
Tools that helped us build/are used in the Wiki
Bootstrap
A HTML/CSS/JS framework for quickly building beautiful and responsive websites, used for building the wiki.
https://getbootstrap.com/
Start Bootstrap Bare Template
HTML/CSS/JS starter template for building websites with Bootstrap. Building our Wiki leveraged this starter template for our first steps in Bootstrap, and its awesome PUG/SCSS/JS compiler functionality for compiling our code.
https://github.com/StartBootstrap/startbootstrap-bare
Roboto Font
The Roboto font is used for our text bodies.
https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Roboto
Spartan Font
The Spartan font is used for our headings.
https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Spartan
Font Awesome
A vector icons and social logos pack. Used for the social logos and further icons throughout the wiki.
https://fontawesome.com/
hilite.me
A tool that adds html/css syntax highlighting to source code, used for highlighting our scripts.
http://hilite.me/
Pure CSS Buttons
HTML/CSS code used for animating our social buttons.
https://codepen.io/ishaansaxena/pen/WoJGRK
JavaScript Code Snippet: Check if element in ViewPort
A code snippet we found on StackOverflow which checks if an HTML element is in the users viewport. Used for fading out the sidebar when reaching the footer.
https://stackoverflow.com/a/54630055
JavaScript Code Snippet: Apply offset when clicking a link
A code snippet we found on StackOverflow which applies a small offset when a link that refers to a certain ID is clicked. Used to compensate the height of the navbar, so that it does not obscure the heading the user jumped to.
https://stackoverflow.com/a/17535094
Team Training and Project start
The Eberhard-Karls University Tuebingen offers courses in synthetic and molecular biology. However, there are no direct connections between those courses and our iGEM project.
We started brainstorming on January, 20th. Our project finding day, on which we started working on our project, was February, 27th. The first day in the lab was July, 22nd.
Thanks and acknowledgments to all other people involved in helping make a successful iGEM team!
About Us
We are the iGEM Team Tuebingen, a group of motivated students who are working on creating a fast screening platform for stabilized peptides. We are aiming to provide a system that gives everyone the ability to stabilize peptides such as antimicrobial peptides to create better medical agents.
