Science is all about sharing and we believe that sharing knowledge is the most efficient way to move forward and develop new ideas. On this page we highlight our contributions to the iGEM community that future teams can use to make the world a better place. We contributed on different levels, first by enhancing the iGEM registry by adding interesting parts. Second, we learned a number of skills during our project and want to pass these on to the next generations to give them a head start. We developed a workshop for primary schools to arise interest to future scientists and we wrote an entrepreneurial guide to help iGEMers turn their project into a successful start-up. Moreover, we made an easy-to-use consent form that is adaptable to everyone’s need. Finally, in collaboration with cancer and nutrition experts we created a cookbook to help prevent colorectal cancer!
We decided to build our living diagnostic in Escherichia coli Nissle 1917 and tested various expression systems and biocontainment methods in this strain. We worked on different systems that can all be found in the results section but we thought it would be nice to highlight the most interesting systems that we developed so that future iGEM teams can build upon those results to design their project.
Kill switchThe system that shows the most promising results is the temperature dependent kill switch. This system allows the bacteria to live only in environments within body temperature (~37 °C). This composite part (BBa_K4244023) is an essential element in our project as it confines the bacteria within the human body. For future teams who want to keep their system confined to areas with constant body temperature, this system can directly be used!
promoterAdditionally, we added a promoter that can sense lactate in a colonic environment, the ALPaGA promoter (BBa_K4244020). This is a good alternative to PlldPRD (BBa_K822000) as this promoter is sensitive to lactate in the presence of glucose and absence of oxygen, perfect for developing a biosensor to detect colon cancer!
chromoproteinBesides the promoter, we also added one chromoprotein to the iGEM registry. We noticed that monomeric variants of chromoproteins are not as well researched as multimeric chromoproteins. We wanted to work with a blue protein that is monomeric, as we considered it would be more likely to develop its colour upon secretion. We looked in the literature and found one that met our needs. Therefore, we would like to share with the community Ultramarine (BBa_K4244001), a blue monomeric chromoprotein that develops colour in less than 24h with an absorption at 586 nm and an emission at 626 nm [1]. It is a good alternative to the multimeric meffBlue (BBa_K1033902), aeBlue (BBa_K864401), and amilCP (BBa_K592009) if you want to use a blue monomeric chromoprotein as a reporter.
modellingFinally, we built a model that imitates the colonic environment. This model can be used by anyone who wants to test different strains and situations to see how they alter the microbiome inside the colon. For more information on the model please visit the modelling page.
To have a better understanding of the used systems and reporter please visit the results section. Furthermore, we introduced several other parts in the iGEM registry and are happy to share these with the iGEM community. All the parts added to the registry can be found here.
Education was a key element during our project. We invested a lot of effort in making workshops and lectures to reach every level of education. For the primary school we developed an easy to perform protocol for DNA extraction that can be done safely by children. As the children really enjoyed it we thought it would be for anyone’s interest to make our DNA extraction protocol available. This step-by-step protocol aims to inspire children, make them appreciate what the world is made of and give them a little idea of what science entails. This protocol has been made public and is distributed through Ekoli, a non-profit organization that provides science workshops at schools. If you want to try this experiment yourself, you can download it here.
During our project we contacted multiple companies at different levels of development to understand how we could turn our idea into a successful start-up. We were interested by the path of one of them, a start-up that begun with a group of students just like us that participated in iGEM in 2017, Scope Biosciences. Since we are in the same situation, we spent time discussing their experiences and tried to understand a bit of the behind the scenes of creating a start-up. We learned a lot and wrote an entrepreneurial guide helping us and future iGEM teams to know step-by-step what actions to take. This guide aims to explain to iGEMers what a start-up is, the mistakes to avoid and how to turn your idea into a successful company. This guide is based on the experience of the iGEM start-up and on the interviews we conducted with both companies investing in start-ups and successful companies, click here to download our guide! Additionally, while conducting interviews it is important to have a consent form that follows the three R principle: responsible, responsive, and reflective. We made our consent form adaptable to every team’s needs and therefore it is available for anyone to use, click here to download the consent form!