Achievements

🥉 Bronze

Competion Deliverables

✓ As you can see, we created a Wiki presenting all information about our project MonChassis.

✓ Here you can have a look at our project promotion video.

✓ We’re joining the Grand Jamboree in person where we will hold our team presentation.

✓ We submitted our judging form on time, providing all information for our judges.

Attributions

✓ We successfully build up a network of people who supported our team in various fields. With their help and the motivation and commitment of each team member, we successfully established the first iGEM team at our university. Thanks to all of them to support us along the way!

Project Description

✓ We created a project description page, including all information about how and why we chose our project.

Contribution

✓ We designed, built, and tested a 3D-printed BioReactor for Enzymatic ElectroSynthesis (BREES). The provided STL files enable future iGEM teams to easily rebuild it by following our step-by-step guide.

✓ Furthermore, we submit the trans-Yeast collection, including five shuttle vectors which are RFC1000-compatible and enable an easy incorporation of a respective auxotrophy marker.

✓ Future iGEM teams can use our user-friendly software identify non-obvious genetic engineering targets for amplification that affect a metabolite of interest within a timeframe of a few hours.

🥈 Silver

Engineering Success

✓ We designed, built, and tested several new parts including a C-terminal SKL peroxisomal targeting signal-1 (PTS1) to relocate the mevalonate pathway inside the peroxisome. We verified the function of the PTS1 tag by creating a fusion protein with GFP and investigating its location under the microscope.

✓ We successfully used the design-build-test-learn cycle for the cytosolic and peroxisomal production of α-pinene and verbenone in S. cerevisiae.

✓ Within several iterative engineering design cycles, we optimized our colorimetric assay based on DNPH (2,4 dinitrophenylhydrazine) to detect and quantify verbenone.

Collaborations

✓ We hosted our own meetup, the JuniorJam with 70 attendees, at the end of August. Twelve teams from seven European countries followed our invitation and shared their project ideas with us.

✓ Together with the iGEM team Toulouse and the iGEM team Hamburg, we created a How to Meetup Guide to share our experiences in event organization with future iGEM teams.

✓ We joined the European Meetup in Hamburg where we shared our project idea with several other iGEM teams.

✓ As a new team within the iGEM competition, we initially met with the iGEM team Patras and Bochum to provide mutual guidance.

Human Practices

✓ We reflected our project from various points of views by talking to stakeholders and experts from different areas as well as the general public.

✓ In several occasion we took the initiative to present and talk about MonChassis with the general public to evaluate its impact in broader sense. One example is our information booth at our local zoo during their theme day of the forest.

Proposed Implementation

✓ With MonChassis, we developed an alternative biotechnological production approach for monoterpenes and monoterpenoids, replacing traditional, unsustainable, and inefficient production methods based on extraction from plants and further chemical processing.

✓ We developed a business plan as a basis for a possible commercialization of MonChassis.

✓ We decided to use our platform to produce the monoterpenoid verbenone, which can be used as a repellent to protect trees from bark beetle infestation and can thereby contribute to the preservation of millions of spruce trees in the Northern Hemisphere

🥇 Gold

Modeling

✓ We constructed genome-scale metabolic models (GSMM) to evaluate our four different strain designs.

✓ Based on this, we implemented and used an algorithm to screen 125 different carbon sources for the highest achievable α-pinene production flux for each strain.

✓ As follow up, we evaluated the best performing carbon source oleic acid in a wet lab experiment.

✓ Moreover, we used a model to estimate the oxygen demand of the top-ranking candidates, as it is a critical parameter for scale-up of fermentation processes.

✓ In a second model we used flux scanning based on enforced objective flux (FSEOF) , to predict the most promising genetic engineering targets in our strains’ genomes.

Proof-of-Concept

✓ Using GC-MS measurements, we were able to show that our metabolically engineered S. cerevisiae strains produce α-pinene as well as verbenone. Thereby, we proove that the biotechnological production of monoterpenes and monoterpenoids is possible.

Partnership

✓ Throughout our iGEM season, we built up a close partnership with the iGEM Team TU Dresden.

✓ Set of shared objectives

• Same chassis organism, S. cerevisiae
• Same cloning strategy, MoClo
• Cooperatively tackled problems regarding the genomic integration in S. cerevisiae
• Incorporation of thymol as a possible molecule of interest in both projects

✓ Joint achievements

• Each team developed a set of shuttle vectors based on the same design to enable easy application for future iGEM projects. Those are now combined in our new “trans-Yeast collection”.
• Our teams designed and built constructs for biotechnologically production of thymol in yeast on one hand and demonstrated its anti-bacterial properties on the other hand, supporting the proof-of-concept of both teams.

✓ Benefit for both teams

• Continuous exchange about everyday lab work, upcoming problems, and the experimental design during our regular meetings via Zoom.
• Advise and guidance about the cloning process based on the wet lab experiences, as well as getting feedback from an external point of view.
• We established a close network and a new circle of friends, based on the constant exchange throughout the past months, supported by personal meeting at the European Meetup in Hamburg and our meetup the JuniorJam sponsored by Promega in Münster.

Education & Communication

✓ We reached out and organized individual events for different generations to get an overview about the current state of knowledge about synthetic biology.

✓ We used hands-on experiments adjusted to the respective group of people and created detailed step-by-step guides which can be used by future iGEM teams and interested people of the education sector to teach about synthetic biology in any group of our society.

iGEM Special Prizes

Award for Best Software Tool

✓ We developed a user-friendly command line tool that comprises flux scanning based on enforced objective flux (FSEOF) for any metabolite of interest in a genome-scale metabolic model (GSMM). This software identifies non-obvious genetic engineering targets for amplification that affect a metabolite of interest within a timeframe of a few hours. With the descriptions and links to the code, we provide this tool for future use for other iGEM teams.

Nominated for Best Education

✓ In our education approach we reached out to a multi-set of different people. Beside teaching about biotechnology in schools, organising bioethics panels in our university, and educate the broad society in booths in the city centre, we focused on a special group of our society that is often left behind. Therefore, we visited elderly homes to give the residents a first contact to synthetic biology. We think this is of particular importance since as in an aging society these opinions have a growing influence.

Nominated for Best Part Collection

✓ We provide RFC1000-compatible level 2 yeast shuttle vectors. Those have a shared design with the RFC1000-compatible level 1 yeast shuttle vectors from iGEM Team TU Dresden. Using these shuttle vectors, an easy introduction of all yeast-specific selection markers is possible. Moreover, they are compatible with the parts from the Open Yeast Collection.

Nominated for Best Biomanufacturing

Nominated for Best Wiki

Nominated for Best Presentation