Team:Bielefeld-Germany/Labjournal

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Revision as of 09:53, 23 September 2012 by Juvoss (Talk | contribs)

Starting the team

Beginning in January and February members of the former iGEM team from Bielefeld started seminars to inform interested students about synthetic biology, iGEM and the past Bielefeld projects. In March the final 2012 iGEM Bielefeld team was formed of 15 students and weekly meetings began. Our team was established and it was time to find a suitable project. The first weekly meeting were more like big group brainstorming and we discussed idea, which in some cases were totally different from each other. Everyone had to inform about ideas of others so that, in the end, we all could discuss together. First project ideas were:

  • the detection of multiresistent pathogens
  • communication between bacteria and fungi using quorum sensing
  • a bacterial hand warmer
  • a possibility to detect and destroy mold fungus
  • something about spontaneous combustion of hay bale
  • an enzyme dispenser

After some reports in media and press about the environmental effects of steroid hormones, we decided to go for hormones. From the beginning our aim was not to detect but to degrade hormones. We found several possible ways for degradation as there are the hydrolysis of estradiol-derivates with sufatases and glucoronidases. But we thought the best way to degrade steroid hormones would be with the use of laccases. Laccases have the ability to radicalize aromatic rings and can therefore be used to degrade or polymerize a broad range of substances, such as steroid hormones, special insecticides, polycyclic aromatic carbohydrates and aromatic acids. In nature laccases are often used for degradation or polymerization of lignin or pigments.

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