Attributions

Attributions and Acknowledgements

Our team

Our team successfully managed to make the first iGEM team Münster well-known at our university and beyond. Similar to building up a new research group, we reached out to several departments of our university, e.g., the financial- and marketing department but also to several research groups of the faculty of biology and chemistry and beyond. Additionally, we put a lot of effort into reaching out to the local community in order to spread the knowledge about synthetic biology. We also connected to different iGEM teams via social media and visiting the European Meetup in Hamburg. Beyond that we built a partnership with Dresden and hosted our meetup, the JuniorJam in Münster.

All in all, our team successfully built up a huge network. We installed contacts in several fields and created a robust basis for future iGEM teams at the University of Münster. Each member of our team put time and effort into different parts of our project as we were organised by interdisciplinary subgroups.

Here you can find out which team member contributed to which subgroup. In sum, we are proud that even though we have a large number of team members, everyone contributes as much as possible and equally to the success of MonChassis.

Our Team

Marvin Albers

• Project support

Henrike Brandt

• Lab group coordinator Y. lipolytica cytosol
• Human practices
• Wiki

Tobias Bröker

• Lab coordinator
• Lab group Y. lipolytica cytosol
• Promotion video
• Wiki
• Businessplan

Helen Ewald

• Lab group coordinator S. cerevisiae cytosol
• Education & communication - focus: education

Hendrik Franke

• Lab group Y. lipolytica cytosol
• Sponsoring
• Education & communication – focus: education

Felix Heumesser

• Lab group E-driven CYP
• Education & communication – focus: bioethics, public relation
• Group coordinator meetup

Antonia Irion

• Lab group E-driven CYP
• Group coordinator social media
• Modeling
• Meetup
• Education & communication – focus: public relation

Cara Jaeckel

• Lab group E-driven CYP
• Modeling
• Group coordinator wiki
• Meetup
• Education & communication – focus: bioethics, public relation
• Human practices
• Businessplan

Vincent Kaltenbach

• Lab group coordinator S. cerevisiae peroxisome
• Meetup
• Social media

Benedikt Kuhs

• Sponsoring
• Group coordinator education & communication – focus: bioethics, public relation

Carina Küstner

• Lab group Y. lipolytica peroxisome
• Group coordinator education & communication – focus: education, public relation
• Sponsoring
• Promotion video
• Businessplan

Mona Lippelt

• Lab group coordinator E-driven CYP
• Education & communication – focus: education
• Sponsoring

Marius Luttermann

• Project coordinator
• Social media
• Meetup
• Education & communication – focus: education, public relation
• Promotion video
• Wiki

Lasse Middendorf

• Lab group coordinator Y. lipolytica peroxisome
• Modeling
• Meetup
• Wiki
• Businessplan
• Social media

Florian Muhs

• Lab group Y. lipolytica peroxisome
• Group coordinator sponsoring
• Education & communication – focus: education
• Promotion video
• Businessplan
• Wiki

Simon Nimphius

• Lab group S. cerevisiae cytosol
• Group coordinator promotion video
• Education & communication – focus: education
• Wiki

Louis Schanzmann

• Project coordinator
• Lab group E-driven CYP
• Group coordinator businessplan
• Wiki
• Sponsoring
• Meetup

Sally Scherm

• Lab group S. cerevisiae peroxisome
• Group coordinator human practices
• Social media

Sophie Sedlacek

• Lab group S. cerevisiae cytosol
• Group coordinator education & communication – focus: public relation, education
• Sponsoring

Karla Schönfeldt

• Lab group S. cerevisiae peroxisome
• Meetup
• Social media

Erik Schüftan

• Lab group S. cerevisiae peroxisome
• Group coordinator modeling
• Wiki

Michel Westermann

• Lab group E-driven CYP
• Group coordinator wiki
• Modeling
• Businessplan

Theresa Wörmann

• Project coordinator
• Sponsoring
• Modeling
• Meetup

Principal Investigator

We want to thank our PI Prof. Jochen Schmid for initiating the first iGEM team at our university. Without his support and effort in arranging all administrative regularities it would not have been possible to set up the team to this extend. By providing us our own lab and office we had the opportunity to learn how to build up and coordinate an independent research group. Additionally, we got support of the whole research group of Prof. Jochen Schmid making it a lot easier to establish our team.

Administrative advice

Andrea Mersmann is the secretary of the institute of molecular biotechnology and microbiology and supported us in any situation. Any time we had a question or problem we could and did contact her which usually ends up in an easy solution. We want to thank her for the time and effort she invested in our team and for always having a smile on your face.

Advisors & Instructors

We want to thank our advisors and instructors Giulia Ravagnan, Meliawati Meliawati, Maximilian Zander, Jos Cox, Dr. Boje Müller, and Dr. Moritz Gansbiller who supported us in our daily lab work, starting from building up our lab to supporting us with their expertise in molecular biology, metabolic engineering, and analytics (GC-MS measurements) during our several troubleshooting sessions. Thanks for your support throughout the whole iGEM season!

Lab support

Besides advisors and instructors our lab work wouldn’t have been that smooth without the help of the technicians Katja Kemper, Rita Kapoor, and Christa Teckentrup of the research group of Professor Schmid and Almut Kappius from the research group of Professor Susanne Fetzner. They soon integrated our team into the general processes like ordering chemicals, primers, and devices for our lab. Furthermore, they introduced us to devices such as the autoclaves, microscope, or sterile bench which was an important requirement before we could actively start working in our lab. In this regard, we also want to thank Dr. Fred Bernd Oppermann-Sanio who gave us the general safety instruction and provided devices and protocols for our education and communication events. Our daily lab routine was also depending on the help of Brunni Ismail who supports us with the constant supply of clean laboratory vessels and devices and our facility manager Michael Sträter for repairing our laboratory devices. Thank you all for your support!

Scientific advice

During the course of the year, we reached out to several experts in the field of synthetic biology and bioinformatics to get feedback on our project idea and the design of our experiments. Depending on the specific topic we got support by many Professors, Postdocs, PhD students from inside and outside our university. We want to thank you for your time and effort. Your interest in our project motivated our team to go on even when we were facing difficulties during our lab work.

• Prof. Bodo Philipp, WWU Münster
• Prof. Till Ischebeck, WWU Münster
• Prof. Dirk Prüfer, WWU Münster
• Dr. Christian Schulze Gronover, Fraunhofer Institute for Molecular Biology and Applied Ecology IME
• Prof. Joachim Jose, WWU Münster
• Lars Eicholt, research group Prof. Bornberg-Bauer, WWU Münster
• Dr. Jürgen Eirich, research group Prof. Finkemeier, WWU Münster
• Dr. Steffen Klamt, MPI Magdeburg
• Dr. Nicolas Krink, DTU Denmark

Scientific support

• We want to give a special thanks to Dr. Simon Ernst from the research group of Prof. Susanne Fetzner. He supported our e-driven CYP group with his expertise in protein engineering. In the wet lab he provided us with plasmids, devices, and guidance for the purification process of the BM3.
• We want to thank Dr. Markus Buchhaupt from the DECHEMA Research Institute Frankfurt am Main for sharing the coding sequence for the Limonene-3-hydroxylase (L3H) with us and further advice.
• The research group of Prof. Johannes Kabisch provided us with the Yarrowia lipolytica strain PO1f. A special thanks is due to the PhD student Benedict Spannenkrebs of the respective research group, who was our direct contact person.
• Dr. Karin Mörl from the research group of Prof. Annette Beck-Sickinger at the Leipzig University sent us a plasmid coding for the BM3 which we used during our wet lab experiments.
• We want to thank Dr. Maria Bohnert and Mike Wälte from the ICDI lab Bohnert for supporting us with devices and guidance to perform fluorescence microscopy in their lab.
• Our e-driven CYP group also had the opportunity to cooperate with the research group of Prof. Joachim Jose where Haijin Tian and Dr. Florian Lenz supported our team by providing us with the autodisplay plasmid including a coding sequence for the BM3 enzyme and giving advice on how to test the system.
• We got further support from Dr. Johannes Holert from the research group of Prof. Bodo Philipp, by enabling us the use of the Tecan Plate Reader of their research group and giving us feedback on our project itself. Thanks for the time and effort to support our team.
• Thanks to Eugenio Pettinato from the research group of Prof. Berg, who provided us with devices, materials, and guidance to perform Bradford Assays and SDS-Page analyses.

Fundraising help

To cover the costs for the registration, conference tickets, as well as the upcoming costs for our lab work and materials for public events, we put a lot of effort in acquiring sponsors. We started to reach out for expertise and talked to Petra Bölling who is the head of the university funding office. She gave us useful feedback on our sponsoring portfolio and valuable advice on how to get in contact with industries and foundations. She also referred us to Thomas Middelanis, a fellow student leading the student project agroforest-monitoring. During our conversation he gave us useful tips on how to reach sponsors and made us aware of scholarships of the university which we could apply for. As soon as we got our first sponsor, we got in contact with the financial- and tax department to prepare the sponsoring contracts. In this regard we want to thank Jana Rohlfing and Anna Steckel for giving us an introduction about the official process and the underlying laws. During the iGEM season we were able to recruit several sponsors, which resulted in a lot of work for both of them. Thanks for your patience and constant support in setting up the contracts and clarifying our questions.

Education & Communication

In addition to our wet and dry lab activities we organized events in the field of education and communication. In this regard we want to thank Christina Waanders who is a teacher at the Schiller-Gymnasium in Münster. We had the opportunity to hold a school lecture in her biology class giving us the opportunity to inform the students about the biological background and possible applications of synthetic biology but also to gather feedback to our project idea itself.

We also want to thank Annemarie Schnitker for introducing us to her senior citizen sports group. We had a great afternoon with them, talking about microbiology and the use of biotechnologically produced compounds in our daily lives. Thanks to Tina Stroetmann from the St. Katharinenstift Alstätte where we got another opportunity to talk to senior citizens. Thanks for your openness to let us introduce your group to the relatively new research field of synthetic biology.

We reached out to a broad range of society by setting up an information booth. Detlev Husken and Bastian Weisweiler enabled us to put up a booth in front of the LWL museum, which is located in the center of Münster. The LWL museum provided us with tables and pin boards which simplifies the construction of the information booth. Thanks to Jörg Riehmann we also got the opportunity to set up an information booth at the Münster Zoo. Our information booth was integrated in the ongoing exhibition regarding the “Day of the Forest”, giving us a good base to underline the proposed implementation of our product verbenone.

Human Practices

Another key aspect of our project were the conversations we had with several people from different backgrounds. We learned about concerns and problems that people connected with our project idea which gave us new starting points for the further development of our project. By other interviews we have been made aware of up to that point unknown benefits and potential of our project, which helped us narrow our focus on certain aspects. Those conversations had a huge impact on our project. We want to thank all those again who took their time to give us an impression of their point of view.

• Dr. Dr. Gabriela Lobinger, LWF Bayern
• Dr. Christian Schulze Gronover, Fraunhofer Institute for Molecular Biology and Applied Ecology IME
• Dr. Johann Ach, WWU Münster
• Prof. Liv Jaeckel, TU Bergakademie Freiberg, HHL Leipzig Graduate School of Management
• Kilian Stöcker, Forest Operation District Manager, Bayrische Staatsforsten
• Jan-Otto Hake, deputy forest operation manager, Bayrische Staatsforsten
• Martin Hertel, deputy forest operation manager, Bayrische Staatsforsten

Collaboration

A highlight of our project was our meetup that we held in the Max-Planck-Institute of Molecular Biomedicine (MPI) in Münster at the end of August. In this regard we want to thank Martin Becker who is the manager of administration and technology of the MPI. He helped us on site with organizing the running of the whole weekend and initiated meetings with the facility manager and technician of the institute, who also earn a huge thank you for supporting us with devices and advice for the meetup.

The realization of the program we had planned would not have been possible without our guest speaker and guests for our panel discussion. In this regard we want to thank Dr. Britta Trappmann from the MPI for her scientific talk about the regulation of angiogenesis by the extracellular matrix, Prof. Dirk Prüfer from the University of Münster for his talk about the development of russian dandelion as an alternative rubber crop and Dr. Mirko Himmel for giving us an impression about safety and security concerns in the field of synthetic biology. Dr. Mirko Himmel was another participant of our panel discussion facing the question if synthetic biology is necessary for a sustainable bioeconomy. Our PI Prof. Jochen Schmid joined the discussion by representing the view of a scientist in the field of synthetic biology, whereas Dr. Joachim Boldt added his expertise in ethics of synthetic biology. Prof. Liv Jaeckel contributed with a different point of view as a professor of technology and environmental law, and Dr. Dennis Eversberg joined the discussion as an expert in the field of social-ecological transformations and conflicts. The panel discussion turned up to be one of the highlights of our meetup and we want to forward the positive feedback to those who were responsible for making it outstanding.

We also want to thank Anne Vortkamp and Friedrich Grimm from the REACH Euregio start-up center for organizing workshops about start-ups in the natural sciences and the art of doing storytelling right.

Throughout the whole meetup weekend, we got valuable support of René Inckemann, Jan Kalkowski and Marvin Albers from the German Association of Synthetic Biology, short GASB, by giving constructive feedback as jury members. They put a lot of effort in giving individual advice to each team’s promotion video, presentation, and team booth. In the name of all participants, we want to thank you again for sharing your experiences with us.

Based on the feedback we got and the experience we made with organizing the meetup, we summarized our experience to the “How-to-meetup guide” that we set up together with the iGEM Team Toulouse INSA-UPS and the iGEM Team Hamburg. Thanks for the uncomplicated, convenient and fruitful meetings we had via zoom.

We also want to thank the iGEM teams which followed our invitation to Münster. We are looking forward to meeting you again in Paris!

• iGEM Leiden
• iGEM EPFL Lausanne
• iGEM Goettingen
• iGEM Aachen
• iGEM Sheffield
• iGEM Duesseldorf
• iGEM Hamburg
• iGEM TU Dresden
• iGEM Aalto-Helsinki
• iGEM Braunschweig
• iGEM Vienna
• iGEM Leuven

Supports regarding soft skills improvement

Since iGEM is a well-known incubator for start-ups in the field of synthetic biology, the REACH Euregio start-up Center of the University of Münster wanted to support and collaborate with our iGEM team from right of the beginning. Throughout the iGEM year we got in touch with Dr. Anne Vortkamp and Dr. Jasper Wattjes, who gave us general feedback on our project. A special thanks is due to Anne since she is our first contact person, helping us in case we have any questions or organizing support if we need some. She invited us to be a guest in her podcast series. Our team member Henrike followed her invitation and used this opportunity to introduce our iGEM team and our project to the start-up community in Münster. To get further feedback on how to lead a large group of students and keeping them motivated Anne referred our project coordinators Theresa, Louis, and Marius to Friedrich Grimm, who could give them useful advice based on his many years of experiences in association work. Anne also referred us to Florian Dostert, the founder of the start-up SALES2B, who could give useful advice about building up a team and pushing it to succeed. Additionally, we were in contact with Christian Paus, who introduced us to their podcast equipment.

Now as we are at the end of our project, we are thankful for the support of Andreas Luthe, an experienced pitch and presentation coach. He works with us on our final presentation and helps us to establish a great pitch to convince the audience in Paris of our project MonChassis.

We want to thank you all for the effort you put in our team and hope that this year is just the beginning of a fruitful collaboration between the REACH Euregio start-up center and future iGEM teams at the University of Münster.

Proofreading support by former iGEM members

During the last phase of our project which focuses on writing texts and creating figures for our wiki, we reached out to gather experienced iGEM community members to support us by proofreading our wiki texts. We are happy and very thankful for the support of Bea Spiekermann, Maurice Knebl, Peter Gockel, Jonathan Funk, Yannick Kristiansen, and Sanjay Sunil Kumar. Your advice and comments during the correction process help us to optimize the documentation of our work. It is a great support during these days, which are characterized by long days and nights working on the texts and finalizing what was planned until the wiki freeze deadline comes. Your commitment for our team shows once more, that participating in iGEM goes far beyond the one-year experience but ensures a place in an open and collaborative scientific community that all iGEM team member will benefit from in the future.

Creative support

We want to thank the graphic designer behind the artist’s name ei8htz (Fiverr.com) who supported our team by providing us with our project logo for MonChassis. Furthermore, we want to thank Tim Stephenson for being the voice of our promotion video, letting it sound professional and thereby more convincing to the audience. Furthermore, we got a general advice and suggestions for our promotion video production from Deborah Behr and Patrick Gillitzer from Storytale Media. Thanks for helping us to choose the best equipment and software for our project.

Establishment of iGEM courses

As the first iGEM team at our university we reached out to the coordinator of our study programs, Dr. Robert Klapper. In order to avoid an elongation of regular studies as a result of the participation in iGEM, our university's PI Prof. Jochen Schmid and Dr. Robert Klapper developed new courses for master's and bachelor's students. Furthermore, our master and bachelor programs include courses which focus on methods and skills beyond the scientific knowledge, e.g., the project management course. Since the involvement in the team already covers many aspects of the course, we were able to use the participation in the iGEM project to test new methods in the field of organization and teaching techniques. Thereby, we could benefit from the direct feedback from our group to reflect our own skills in the respective field, but also to get new inspirations from other team members. In this regard we want to thank Dr. Miriam Pott for enabling us to integrate iGEM in the respective courses.

Sponsors

A special thanks goes to our sponsors, which either supported us financially or by providing us laboratory materials and devices.