Team:Goettingen

Welcome to iGEM Göttingen

iGEM is a international competition hosted by the MIT in Boston, USA, for undergraduate students of disciplines related to molecular biology. iGEM stands for International Genetically Engineered Machine competition. One the one hand, it targets to combine aspects of education and social collaboration among undergraduate students, on the other hand, it provides a library for standardized and interchangeable parts which can be used in living systems, particularly in model organisms like E. coli. Student groups from all over the world will receive a requested kit of biological parts, also called "biobricks", and work over the summer on an individual research project. Every year, the "Registry of Standard Biological Parts" is upgraded with further biobricks by the participating iGEM teams. These biobricks will be accessible to the iGEM community in the following years in order to use these parts for their own projects.

The iGEM competition started in 2003 as a course for students of the MIT only. 2011, already 165 universities from all over the world competed against each other. This year, it is the first participation of University of Goettingen, Germany. The iGEM competition is a great opportunity for students to gain and improve a multitude of skills that are necessary during a carrier as a molecular biologist. Such skills would be planning and organizing a project, including fund raising and team recruitment, coordination of lab work, designing experiments and working together as a team. Next to intensive lab work during the summer, also literature search and well-structured documentation of the experiments is crucial.

Homing Coli

Escherichia coli is a commonly used bacterial model organism. It has lots of beneficial traits like a short generation time and it can be easily manipulated. Most E. coli strains that are used in laboratories do not exhibit high motility. The crucial element for motility is the flagellum, which is rotated by a molecular motor within the cell wall. Consequently, these are reduced in cultivated E. coli strains.

Our goal is to create an E. coli strain with increased swarming motility on special agar plates. Therefore, we will perform directed mutagenesis techniques of motile E. coli and enhance their swarming ability. The fastest E. coli strains will be selected and further improved. At the same time we will then be able to create an effective motility-selection method.

Now, you are probably wondering what the advantage of a fast E. coli might be. The beneficial fast phenotype can be combined with the ability of this bacterium to sense specific compounds in their environments. Chemo-receptors enable it to move towards or along gradients of such substances. The combination of speed and chemotaxis allows us to identify E. coli strains, which can find interesting compounds. Thereby, an easy method for the detection of pollutants, toxins or even tumors could be provided.

News

04 May 2012, KWS SAAT AG is now headsponsor

The IGEM-Göttingen Team is happy to welcome the KWS SAAT AG as head sponsor! For more informations click here.

04 April. 2012, Sartorius AG is now Sponsor

The first sponsor of our IGEM Team is the company Sartorius AG. More informations about our sponsors are here..

Sponsors