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From 2012.igem.org

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Project

Overall project

Since April 2012, we are working in the field of so called TAL effectors in our lab. TAL effectors are molecular machines that are fused to DNA binding proteins in order to restrict their acticvity to specific loci in a genome. In particular, we develop a strategy to cheaply create novel TAL effectors in an extremely short period of time. This new method will enable us to test numerous novel effectors in human cells and to assess their therapeutic potential for genetic diseases, epigenetic alterations and cancer.

What we are planned to do:

We took the sequences of the four already known TAL Repeats A,C,G,T and combined them to 16 new so called direpeat sequences. These 16 direpeats were orderd as gene synthesis products. But to start building TAL Proteins we needed to expand our 16 direpeats a second time. Each of the 16 direpeats needed to be split into six versions, one version for every place of our final six direpeat respectevly twelve monorepeat TAL Protein. Because we didnt wanted to buy six times 16 different synthesised direpeats we came up with a plan to produce them by ourself. We created six primer pairs each primer with a common part matching everyone of the direpeats and an unique overhang to extend the direpeat it binds to.

After finshing these 96 different direpeats we had to ligate them into the orignial igem biobrick vektor and start experimenting.

Promote Synthetic Biology

For us working on iGEM is not only staying in a laboratory and trying to create the best bio brick ever it’s also a great opportunity to promote synthetic biology.

In that context we teach students the basic ideas of SynBio in order to direct and enhance their motivation to study life science. Within the visit we go into dialog with the students to clear things up concerning the ethnical dangers and economic chances of this big arising research area. The presentation of our project as well as the introduction to iGem in general is our third aim for the school visits.

So maybe we met some future iGem winners.

Lastly we want to thank all classes, those we visited and those we are going to visit, because it’s inspiring when next generation researches meet enthusiastic students.