Prologue

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.

Find a 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

For most of the ideas little information was available. For example spontaneous combustion of hay bales is probably a combination of the metabolisms of different microorganisms and fungus. 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 polymerisation of lignin or pigments.

Molding together to a team

After we found our project idea we decided to have a get-to-know-weekend with some presentations about iGEM, important methods and ideas for human practices. We also held presentations about other possible iGEM projects to extend our horizon, as there were: e.g. RNA aptamers and magnetotactic bacteria. But the most important part of this weekend was the growing as a team. We realized that we all had one summer to work together, have fun together and most important to stand up together as a team.

Find the right

Now it was time to organize the work and find a suitable task for everyone. In a developing team a lot of different jobs have to be done, e.g.:

finding sponsors
communication with the public
human practices
wiki- and homepage-design
modelling
a forum for exchange of information
a joker, who entertains the team and lifts the mood

And finally lab work began, feel free to follow us in our weekly labjournal and have a look how our labwork, results and of course problems and their solutions, evolved.

Labjournal