Our Contribution
Our team has made several contributions to the iGEM competition to make its participation valuable for present and future teams. Through participating in many activities organized by other teams and iGEM HQ, we raised awareness of the Anatoxin-a and interrogated this topic with other teams and professors. Among other things, we were at the European Meet-Up in Hamburg, making new connections with other teams and learning from experienced members of the iGEM Community. Our social presence on Twitter and Instagram also gave us many possibilities to interact and collaborate with other teams. Some of these collaborations led to building up new connections or gaining trust from a sponsor company that will be important for the following year's iGEM Team Tübingen. We were also always ready to help other teams on their social networks by participating in their challenges or translating some of their content into German.
Above all, we contributed to the shared data pool by participating in the Interlab Study 2022. The results we gained through the study together with the results of other teams, will enable all future iGEMers to get better reproducible results.
Besides, we added new parts in the registry that will be useful for future teams pursuing research in hybrid receptors, whether it is the expression of the PctD ligand binding domain for characterization of interaction, or an inducible expression cassette of that can also be induced by a widely-accessible compound that is acetylsalicylic acid, the active compound in aspirin. Therefore, it will be easier and faster for the next generation of the iGEM Community to build their biosensors with the bio bricks we designed.
Talking about the implementation of our project, the great potential of transforming our biosensor into a portable kit must be mentioned. In our interview with the public health authority of Baden-Wuerttemberg and in the following talk with the chemical facility (CVUA) we got plenty of advice on how to bring our biosensor onto the market. The officials confirmed that the kit would be helpful in the water testing facilities. All this information, techniques and contacts will empower the future iGEM team to develop a valuable product that can be used to ensure water safety.