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Dear participants of the panel discussion, dear docents, dear students, and dear guests.
On behalf of the entire iGEM Team of the University of Göttingen and on behalf of the ...
Göttingen Center for Molecular Biosciences (GZMB), I welcome all of you to our information event ...
... about synthetic biology and to "the legoland for scientists". My name is Bianca Genenncher and ...
... i will give you a short introduction. The iGEM Team is sitting in the front row.
We are twelve students of the master's program Microbiology and Biochemistry ...
... of the University of Göttingen. The motto of today's event is "Science creates Knowledge", ...
... according to Göttingen's motto "City, creating knowledge". We hope, that this evening ...
... will be informative, enlightening and entertaining for all of you.
Here, you can see today's schedule. Basically, the event is divided into three parts ...
... the first part will be a short introduction to the project of our iGEM Team ...
... after that, we will hear three talks of experts with different topics, regarding synthetic biology.
The first talk will be about "the chances and opportunities" of synthetic biology ...
... the second one will be a critical view , whereas the third will have "bio-ethics" as its topic.
After these three talks, we will have a short break of 15 minutes. You may use this break to have a snack ...
... or have a look at our poster or the provided information material.
After the break, we will start over with the panel discussion hosted by Niko and Erik.
Therein, we will provide you with the results of our survey.
Now, I hand over to Anna. I hope you will enjoy the event.
[Anna] Welcome again! I'm going to give you some information about the iGEM competition as well as
...our project 'Homing Coli' in particular. Often, people ask me: "What does iGEM mean?" ...
... it means "international genetically engineered machine competition". This contest is hosted by ...
... the MIT in Bosten each year. Entitled to participatie are students, that had formed a team ...
... and - what else could we have been expected - register by paying a fee.
iGEM was initiated by the MIT in 2003. At that time, the competition was reserved for MIT students only.
But due to the increasing interest worldwide, the competition was opened for external team ...
... the next year. In 2011, 165 participated in the competition, as you may see on this map.
In 2012, for the first time a team of the University of Göttingen attends the competition ... That's us!
The competition is decided on regional level, at first. Therefore, we will go to Amsterdam ...
... from 5th to 7th October. There, about 50 european teams step up at the European Jamboree.
The teams are sorted into a variety of categories. Ten of these teams are German, as well.
All teams have to create a wiki until this date, which is a homepage simliar to Wikipedia.
There, the teams are providing information about their project and daily labwork.
The next aspect is called "human practice", like we are doing today. Introducing synthetic biology to the ...
... society is a major part of the iGEM competition.
Furthermore, the topic of "biological safety" raises the question, if our project may ...
... harms us, the society, or the environment in any way.
Finally, it is very important that every team hands in at least one new BioBrick.
Those "BioBricks" I'll introduce to you later.
The best teams from all over the world will meeting up in November for the finals in Boston.
Of course, we are hoping reach the final round.
I already used the word "BioBrick". The synthetic biology connects the classical biology to the ideas ...
... of modern techniques of engineering. Therefore, molecular biologists are using the genetic parts, ...
... also called BioBricks.
Those are assembled in order to use them in a new context.
If you look at the pictured bacterial cell, this is an E. coli, then you see its genomic DNA here.
Those small ones are circular DNA, also called plasmids.
Molecular biologists use these plasmids as tools into with genes can be inserted.
Then the whole construct is brought into different organisms.
Assuming that such a plasmid is a BioBrick plasmid. Then, it would look as follows, schematically.
BioBricks function according to the Lego principle.
The green Lego brick in the middle could be a certain gene.
The two orange ones before and behind it represent a standard sequences, which is the same in all BioBricks.
Thousands upon thousands of those BioBricks exist and the number increases continuously.
In order to combine two of those BioBricks - this is very simple - just put them together like Lego bricks.
As already mentioned, many BioBricks exist. Thy are collected in sort of a catalog or library.
If a molecular biologist want to use such a BioBrick, he just has to order them online, like in a catalogue.
Then the BioBricks are sent to him and can be inserted into the own system.
From the BioBricks we come to our project.
First of all I want to tell how the team has developed and what we have accomplished so far.
It all started with 6 students of the master's program Microbiology and Biochemistry, ...
... which gathered together and achieved support by Prof. Neumann.
After the iGEM registration they designed a project together and named it 'Homing Coli'.
The projects aim is to train bacteria to swim fast and directedly towards a certain substance.
Therefore, the support of further team members was required.
And those were found in their own master's program. Thus, the team was complete.
The searching for an adequate laboratory, in contrast, was much more difficult.
But, suddenly we received the massage that the Max Planck Institute for biophysical chemistry, ...
... here in Göttingen, was willing to rebuild its Demo Lab to a suitable S1 laboratory.
Owing to this, we had a place to carry out research during the summer.
Shortly afterwards, further joyful tidings reached us:
Sartorius would become premium sponsor and KWS head sponsor!
At the end of April, all German iGEM teams received an invitation to the third ...
... annual congress of the strategy process "biotechnology 2020+".
This was hosted by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research and the BIOCOM.
Erik, Corinna and I, went to Berlin representing our team.
There, we presented our project in the form of a poster and in the afternoon we had a discussion ...
... with the other German teams.
On that day, it was decided to initiate a Germany-wide action day in order to ...
... familiarize the society with synthetic biology.
This day took place in the city center of Göttingen.
There, we had installed a stand with information material and asked passers by to attend our survey.
Perhaps, also you attended.
That survey will be evaluated this evening.
Next up on the agenda is the European preliminary decision in October and of course ...
... we sincerely hope to receive the invitation to Boston as well.
So, let's get to the project itself. I already mentioned that we want to let bacteria swim faster and ...
... thereby they shall recognize distinct substances.
On that account we had to deal with the underlying mechanism: Chemotaxis.
Let's have a closer look on a E. coli cell. Here, we see those sensor like antennas, ...
... which function as a bacterial nose, since it serves the recognition of chemical substances.
The signal can then be transferred to the flagella.
Flagella are the drive motor of those bacteria. With that they can move.
Thus, bacteria swim either in order to improve their surroundings or to escape a toxic substance.
We divided our project in three parts.
The first group deals with the optimization of the swim medium.
As you might know, bacteria grow in such petri dishes, as you see here.
To produce the perfect swim medium, many different receipts had to be tested.
The second group addresses the improvement of the flagella.
Here you see that the mutant possesses much more flagella, which also look longer.
The third group approaches the mutagenesis of the chemoreceptor so that it can recognize further substances.
This way, a mixture of E. colis emerges, which are able to detect quite different substances.
Those three topics form as a whole an E. coli, which can detect different substances very quickly.
To give you an idea of how such an experiment in the lab looks like, you see here a peri dish, ...
... with a piece of quadratic paper in the middle.
This paper can be soaked with a certain amino acid for instance.
Then, we drop a solution containing bacteria with the distinct chemoreceptors on three positions.
On one position we drop a solution that does not contain such a chemoreceptor.
This is quasi the control.
Those plates are incubated over night at 35°C and ideally they look like this the next day.
Here you see that the bacteria swim towards the paper containing the amino acid.
The control strain, in contrast, is not able to swim directedly due to the lack of the chemoreceptor.
Its receptor is this not able to recognize the amino acid.
To give you an idea how fast such bacteria can actually swim, here a funny video:
Here you see in the bacterial Olympics the final of the hundred micrometer freestyle run ...
... conducted in the Olympic stadium of the Oxford microscope pool.
Prior to this, I should say that one concurrent was eliminated in the preliminary round ...
... for he had eaten up another fellow campaigner.
Two further bacteria were eliminated for they had failed the anti pathogeny control.
And now you can start to bet who will win here.
Yes, that was probably a little too fast, but for the sake of fairness we wait till the second last has reached the goal.
I guess track three will never reach the goal.
And then, we will watch the video again in slow motion.
Perhaps you already saw it, but I have prepared a photo finish.
As you see, track 6, meaning Rhodobacter spaeroides is with 2.02 seconds is the gold medallist.
The chimeric E. coli has reached the second place with 2.08 seconds and ...
... Pseudomonas aeruginosa the third with 2.12 seconds.
Last but not least, we'd like to express our sincere thanks to our supporters again and ...
... thus I give the floor to Bianca.
[Bianca] Thank you very much, Anna, for the presentation!
Now, I want to introduce the contributors of the today's evening.
The first speaker is Professor Bölker who leads a research group at the University of Marburg.
He will talk about the chances and possibilities of synthetic biology.
Professor Bölker received his diploma as well as his PH.D at the Free University of Berlin and ...
... had focused on the fields of biochemistry.
Afterwards, he habilitated at the University of Munich and subsequently held a professorship ...
... at the University of Marburg.
Currently, he leads the iGEM team Marburg and his research group additionally is part of the SYNMIKRO.
The SYNMIKRO is a center for synthetic microbiology, a collaborative project of the University Marburg ...
... and the MPI for terrestrial microbiology in Marburg.
Furthermore, we could win Sascha Karberg, as speaker.
The freelancer journalist is from Berlin and he will explain critical aspects of synthetic biology.
Mr. Karberg is Diplom-Biologist and science journalist and studied at the Free University of Berlin as well.
Having a scientific university education and is active as a science journalist for the radio, the internet, ...
... as well as print media. Examples are "radioeins", "Inforadio", FAZ, Financial Times ...
... and "GEO-WISSEN" to name but a few.
His work was already awarded with several journalism awards.
Currently, he simultaneously maintains two web portals:
The German Knight Science Journalism Tracker and the "Medien-Doktor".
The latter evaluates the quality of medical-journalistic articles in order to improve reporting.
In several articles he already has reported about synthetic biology.
We also want to welcome the last speaker, the bioethicist Dr. Anna Deplazes-Zemp ...
... from the Center for Ethics in Zürich.
She will give information about ethic questions in the context of synthetic biology.
Mrs. Deplazes-Zemp studied microbiology and bioethics at the University of Zürich from 1998 to 2003.
Afterwards, she did her Ph.D. at the Institute for biochemistry, where she worked as a post doc for a year.
Additionally, she started to study philosophy in 2008 at the University of Zürich.
She has a particular interest in the ethical observation different biotechnologies, especially on synthetic biology.
In the evenings second part, the discussion, we welcome a further guest: Dr. Günter Strittmatter.
He is the leader of the research and development department of KWS in Einbeck.
Dr. Strittmatter received his Ph.D in biology at the University of Freiburg ...
... and subsequently, he worked as a postdoc at the Rockefeller University of New York, ...
... where, he dealt with plant molecular biology
Afterwards, he took a position at the Max Planck institute for breeding research in Köln.
Here, he worked in the department for Biochemistry, where he investigated the genetic generation ...
... of fungal resistance in plants.
In 1995, Dr Strittmatter entered the business world and was employed for the company ...
... Planta Genetic Systems in Gent (PGS) in Gent.
Since 1997 he is leading the research and development department of KWS in Einbeck.
Now, that you got an overview about our guest speakers I want to say again ...
... on behalf of iGEM Göttingen:
Enjoy the presentations and the panel discussion.
Also I am already very curious and hand over to Prof. Bölker.
Thank you very much!