We would like to express our deepest gratitude to everyone who helped and supported us in any way on our iGEM journey. This does not only include everyone who helped us design our project, supported us in the lab or gave us invaluable advice, but also our friends and family, who patiently listened to us ramble about iGEM for nearly a year now. Thank you!
Prof. Dr. Stefan Wölfl did not only tackle the organizational and bureaucratic obstacles tied to the iGEM competition, but also contributed with encouragement and insightful advice.
Prof. Dr. Gert Fricker invited us into his laboratory for the production of liposomes and offered us guidance. He was invaluable for our project with his insights into liposome production and implementation.
All of our team members were involved in the conceptualization of our project as well as the ongoing background research in each sub-group of the team. We also decided that each member would contribute to the wiki by writing texts about their areas of expertise.
In the following table, we present the contributions each team member made to our project. Early on we divided ourselves into sub-teams to work more efficiently on each task, while staying in constant communication with the other teams. Those sub-teams, which can be seen in the column “Main team”, included Design, Drylab, Finances, Human Practices, Safety, Social Media, Wetlab and Wiki. Following the recommendations of iGEM, we included categories to further illustrate the involvement of the members. Finally, specific tasks of the contributed work were detailed in the column “Involved”.
| Member | Main Team | Categories | Involved | Helping in teams |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Anastasiya | Drylab | Analysis, Background Research, Conceptualization, Investigation, Software, Writing | Search of single cell RNA datasets, Data analysis and data preparation, Comparison and analysis of multiple binary classification algorithm, Neural network model building, analysis and evaluation | |
| Anouk | Wetlab | Background Research, Conceptualization, Investigation, Writing | cell culture team, establishment and maintaining of cell stocks, kill curve protocol, siRNA team | Wetlab, siRNA, Cell Culture |
| Bianca | Wetlab, Safety | Analysis, Background Research, Conceptualization, Fundraising, Investigation, Lab Maintenance, Safety, Writing | Liposome team (design of experiments, production and analysis), Communication with the Lieberman Laboratory, Interviews with Prof. Massing and Prof. Dr. Fricker, Safety | Wetlab team siRNA |
| Binnur | Design, Wiki, Wetlab | Background Research, Conceptualization, Fundraising, Investigation, Lab Maintenance, Visualization, Writing | Liposome team (design of experiments, production and analysis), Project proposal, Wiki design, Wiki organization, Team sweatshirt design, Project poster, Communication with Lipoid, Interviews with Prof. Dr. Fricker | |
| Darius | Drylab, Wiki | Background Research, Conceptualization, Investigation, Lab Maintenance, Software, Visualization, Writing | Web developement, Data search, Communicaton with David Ibberson (RNA-seq) | Wetlab teams siRNA and liposome |
| Franzi | Human Practices, Wetlab | Background Research, Conceptualization, Investigation, Lab Maintenance, Public Engagement, Writing | siRNA team, Science communication (Science booth), Interviews with Alnylam, Interview with Ellecom GmbH, Inclusivity | Design |
| Heinrike | Human Practices, Finances | Background Research, Conceptualization, Investigation, Writing | Science Communication & Education (Science booth, School workshop, Herpes Quiz), SVH Interview, Sponsor acquisition | Social Media |
| Johann | Human Practices, Wetlab, Wiki | Analysis, Background Research, Conceptualization, Entepreneurship, Investigation, Lab Maintenance, Public Engagement, Writing | Liposome team (design of experiments, production, analysis and troubleshooting), siRNA team, Interviews with Massing, Project proposal, Assistance in wiki coordination, Organization of various interviews und projects, Integrated human practices, Education & communication, Partnership with the iGEM team Tirupati | |
| Laura | Human Practices, Wetlab | Background Research, Conceptualization, Investigation, Entepreneurship, Lab Maintenance, Public Engagement, Writing | Liposome team (design of experiments, production and troubleshooting), Establishment of new three-step centrifugation method for liposome production, Education & communication, Responsible for collaboration with Merck and Ellecom GmbH, Entrepreneurship | Wetlab team siRNA |
| Linda | Human Practices, Wetlab | Background Research, Conceptualization, Investigation, Lab Maintenance, Public Engagement, Writing | Cell culture team, siRNA team, Kill curve, Event organization of the school workshop, Interviews with EMBL | |
| Clarissa | Finances, Wetlab, Wiki | Analysis, Background Research, Conceptualization, Fundraising, Investigation, Lab Maintenance, Writing | Cell culture team, siRNA team, Sponsoring by Messer Stiftung and Hopp Stiftung, Establishment of Bradford assay | |
| Marcel | Wetlab, Safety | Team leader, Analysis, Background Research, Conceptualization, Entrepreneurship, Fundraising, Investigation, Lab Maintenance, Project Administration, Safety, Writing | Cell culture team, siRNA team (design of experiments, production and analysis), Plasmid design, Primer design, qPCR, WesternBlot, PCR establishment, Analysis of experiments, Troubleshooting, Design transfection protocol, Transfection, Interview with Ellecom GmbH, Partnership with iGEM team Tirupati, Safety, Management | Finances |
| Michel | Drylab | Background Research, Conceptualization, Investigation, Software, Visualization, Writing | MD simulation, Microfluidic Device, Interview with Dr. Pashapour, scRNAseq, Project promotion video | |
| Nina | Wetlab, Safety | Analysis, Background Research, Conceptualization, Investigation, Lab Maintenance, Public Engagment, Safety, Writing | Cell culture team, siRNA team, Kill curves, Biospektrum article | Social Media, Human Practises |
| Patrick | Wetlab, Social Media | Background Research, Conceptualization, Investigation, Lab Maintenance, Public Engagment, Writing | Cell culture team, siRNA team, Kill curves, Transfections, Team presentations on social media, Developing draft for the implementation of our therapeutic | |
| Paul | Design, Drylab | Background Research, Conceptualization, Investigation, Visualization, Writing | MD Simulation, Microfluidics, Interview with Dr. Pashapour, Design of Microfluidic tabletop device render, scRNA-Seq record search, Project promotion video, BTS Photoshoots, Collaboration videos, Organization of wiki, Project proposal, Meeting with iGEM team Toulouse | Wetlab team siRNA |
| Sebastian | Design, Finances, Social Media | Background Research, Conceptualization, Investigation, Fundraising, Public Engagement, Visualization, Writing | Project promotion video, Collaboration videos, Photography and videography, Social media, Communication with other iGEM teams, Sponsor acquisition, Communication with sponsors, Organizing travel and accomodation |
Duc Thien Bui is a first year master student of molecular biotechnology known from Heidelberg’s last year’s team who supported us by advising our drylab. Furthermore, he always managed to keep morale high by spoiling us with cake and his contagious, cheerful character. He often offered us company during long wetlab hours or other activities.
Elizaveta Bobkova is a hardened iGEM veteran who just can’t get enough of this exciting journey. It’s a pity that she couldn’t be here in person this year as she recently transferred to Marburg to pursue her PhD studies in biophysics. Despite the distance in space she was always close to us. Be it her virtual advice and council or her knowledge passed down to our other advisors.
Jonathan Herth, a student in his second year of pharmaceutics, also participated in last year’s competition. He was fundamentally involved in developing our plans for human practices, our wiki and managing the wetlab. Available day and night for questions and input he spared none of his time to support us.
Laura Sanchis is currently finishing her Bachelor’s thesis at Heidelberg. She was mainly responsible for advising our social media and design teams and took a personal interest in her Spanish citrous fruit imports and supervising the establishment of our western blot experiments.
Marilena Wittmack provided our liposome team with unwavering support. She introduced us to the various lab machines and was always available for questions or further explanations. Moreover, she made the long hours in the lab more exciting by telling stories from her year as an iGEM team member or mentioning obscure facts.
Michelle Emmert took responsibility for our social media, design and drylab team. It is rumored that she didn’t choose bioinformatics but sarcastic and hilarious comments as a major. Additionally, she was responsible for considering red-green-blind people for our design choices.
The Lieberman Laboratory of the Boston Children’s Hospital provided us with the sequence of the plasmid pGEX-4T-1-p19-T7. We would like to offer special thanks to Prof. Dr. Judy Lieberman, Prof. Dr. Linfeng Huang and Zhenwei Shi, who was responsible for communicating with us.
Prof. Ulrich Massing is the inventor of the dual centrifuge, which we used for liposome production. In several interviews he answered a multitude of our questions and offered advice.
People from the Fricker laboratory explained the mechanisms and handling of machines needed for liposome production in detail and provided us with the safety instructions for the liposome laboratory. They were always available for further questions and presented us with suggestions for the optimization for our liposome production.
Hedwig Sauer-Gürth and Heidi Staudter, technical assistants in the IPMB (Institute for Pharmacy and Molecular Biotechnology), supported us unwaveringly by conducting trouble shootings and allowing us extensive access to lab materials on the fourth floor in the IPMB.
Eric Meinhardt supported us on top of his tasks as a staff scientist in a number of ways. He provided us with the plasmid pRK5, gave us important advice and played a fundamental role in helping us design our experiments.
Biljana Blagojevic is a PhD at the University of Heidelberg. She helped us with our project by giving us instructions for the fluorescence microscope and IncuCyte.
Felix Bubeck, a PhD student of Heidelberg, gave us advice on several aspects of our project. He especially helped the siRNA Team.
Prof. Dr. Walter Haefeli, director of the department of clinical pharmacology and pharmacoepidemiology, suggested the use of a nasal sonde to apply our pharmaceutical and consulted us on the topic of clinical and preclinical trials.
Dr. Sadaf Pashapour is the head of the Microfluidic Core Facility. She provided us guidance in designing our microfluidic device as well as in the initial stages of production.
Dr. Vladimir Benes, the head of the Genomics Core Facility, gave us advice and support in the execution of bulkRNA-Seq.
Dr. Hanh Vu is a group leader at EMBL, who lended us laboratory materials, in particular PCR columns.
Prof. Dr. Christine Selhuber-Unkel gave us valuable advice on approaching the microfluidics device, especially which pumps are suitable for our project.
Jochen Hernandez-Bücher, a PhD student in Heidelberg, offered us further insight into microfluidics and the feasibility of our project.
We are grateful for everyone taking part in our expert interviews and helping us decide which project was worthwhile pursuing. We would like to offer our sincerest thanks to:
The call for applications was sent out on 22nd of November 2021 by our advisors, who had previously participated in the iGEM competition. The poster advertising the participation at iGEM can be seen in figure 1. After the applications were closed in the middle of December, each member that had been accepted into the iGEM team of the University Heidelberg received an invitation for our first virtual meetup.
In December and January we started brainstorming ideas about possible projects. To do this efficiently, we divided ourselves into sub-groups and researched different ideas. After narrowing our selection of possible projects down, we held expert interviews. We invited leading scientists of a broad range of fields to discuss our project idea with us. This helped us determine which project was worthwhile pursuing and possible in the limited timeframe.
After deciding on our project “siRNA Tech for neuroinfections”, we dove into finding sponsors, finishing our project proposal and planning the next steps of each sub-team. The siRNA team as well as the cell culture team started working in the lab in May. The liposome team began their work in the laboratory in June. We concluded our lab work at the beginning of October. Simultaneously, we continued to work on tasks in the Drylab, Finances, Human Practices, Design, Safety, Social Media as well as our Wiki.
This year we found a new partner, which has grown very near and dear to us. Founded by the Frankfurt born entrepreneur and philanthropist Dr. Hans Messer, the Hans-Messer-Foundation is actively sponsoring scientific research, promotes popular and vocational education and is especially involved in supporting students of German universities. The support of the Hans-Messer-Foundation has been invaluable and was the key to the success of our project. It allowed safe planning at an early stage and brought certainty into the project, which helped the team to focus on what iGEM is all about: the research. Once more, we want to thank the Hans-Messer-Foundation for supporting this year’s project and having the courage to believe in a group of young students. We look forward to working with you again any time possible. We could not have done it without your support.
As iGEM is all about local people addressing local problems, we want to live by this ideology in our sponsorships as well. Therefore, we want to thank the Dietmar-Hopp-foundation, the most important foundation in the surrounding area of Heidelberg, for supporting us two consecutive years in a row. Founded by Dietmar Hopp, a Heidelberg-born entrepreneur and co-founder of SAP, the foundation supports medical research, educational programs and institutions for children, social institutions caring for children and young people with disabilities, institutions for disadvantaged children and young people, but also clubs in a multitude of sports, as well as initiatives fighting climate change. Without the support of the Dietmar-Hopp-foundation, the project would have been substantially more difficult, if even possible at all. Therefore, we want to thank you, for allowing us to rely on you once again, while giving us all the support that we needed. Thank you for the partnership.
The Studierendenrat, also known as StuRa, is the legislative body of the constituted student body of the Heidelberg University. As such, the StuRa decides on positioning, budgeting and financial proposals as well as bylaws and regulations. Furthermore, they elect mandate holders to represent all students in the various committees of the University. The StuRa has supported us substantially right from the beginning of the competition, when financing was yet to be figured out. We thank our fellow students for their trust in us and their willingness to support us, year after year. We are most grateful.
Another Sponsor that we connected with for the first time is Heidelberg iT. As local internet service providers, data center operators and IT-systems experts, Heidelberg iT has a wide range of products and services on offer, ready to support any company or private household. As a licensed Adobe-product dealer, their support enabled all creative work and design jobs that were necessary for social media and internet presentation of this year’s project. Not only did the project promotion video benefit heavily from the software Heidelberg iT was supporting us with, also the Wiki-page you are currently reading was designed with those very same programs. Therefore, we want to thank you very much for your support. You helped us improve the quality of our representation to the outside world tremendously and we would be glad to work with you again.
We also want to thank another local company from Karlsruhe. Carl Roth, a drogist and businessman opened a material-, colonial-, paint-, and drugstore which bears his name in 1879. About 50 years later the company expanded its product range to laboratory chemicals. Since then Carl Roth has evolved away from paints and drugs to laboratory materials, life science products and chemicals. Today its product range includes more than 30.000 items. Carl Roth supported us with their high quality laboratory materials, giving us the resources to carry out our project. This makes Carl Roth an important sponsor and we want to thank you for your generous support. We would be happy to work with you again in the coming years.
Support can be given in different ways. Foundations supported us financially and companies supported us with their products. Ellecom however supported us with their knowledge and services which was exceptionally helpful for our Entrepreneurship work. Ellecom is a 360°-service provider which has made the vision to homogenise businesses all around the world to make cooperation simpler. In terms of our project Ellecom invested time and resources in our online meetings and also a face-to-face meeting in Frankfurt. They provided us with information about how a product launch process works in general and even specifically for our planned microfluidic device. Ellecom continuously showed interest in our progress and we are very thankful for all the effort they have put into our project. We are greatly interested in further collaboration for the future.
As a Platinum Partner Sponsor of the 2022 iGEM Competition Twist Bioscience supported not only our Team but all iGEM Teams all over the world. Twist Bioscience is a customer-oriented producer of synthetic gene fragments and can variably fulfil the needs of its customers while ensuring a high quality of their products. We want to thank Twist Bioscience for their support to all iGEM Teams including ours. We immensely profited from the service you provided and by that you greatly helped us carry out our project. We hope the collaboration between iGEM and Twist Bioscience will continue in the next few years.
We are grateful to Geneious for giving us a licence of their bioinformatic software Geneious Prime for free. As the name suggests the software is genius. It is an essential tool to manage the amount of data created in the lab. With its focus being on ease-of-use and user friendliness it saves a lot of time and is a perfect solution for scientists who are not bioinformatics. Founded in 2003 the company from New Zealand has developed tools that have already become indispensable in research laboratories all over the world. Thank you to Geneious for providing us with this essential software and easing our Primer design, Plasmid design etc. tremendously.
Lastly, the iGEM Team Heidelberg 2022 wants to thank the companies that have given us discounts on their products and made it possible for our team to get the most out of our funding. New England Biolabs is Corporate sponsor and partner of the entire iGEM event series. Our Team was supported this year by discounts on our enzyme orders, which we are very thankful for. QIAGEN, a company founded in Düsseldorf, Germany is known in laboratories all around the world for their high quality kits. We are grateful for the discount QIAGEN gave us on our kit order. An immense discount was offered to us by Proteintech. The company’s goal is to provide their customers with top quality reagents to ensure reliability. We can confirm that our ordered antibodies worked well and helped us advance in our project. We are thankful for all the discounts and services that were made possible for us and hope for further collaboration in the future.