Team:TU-Eindhoven/Thoughts

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Issues concerning Material Transfer Agreement

We obtained the plasmids for the GECO proteins^[1] via Addgene. Addgene is a non-profit organization which is dedicated to providing the scientific community with access to plasmid research tools. The nominal fee for ordering plasmids is used to cover operating costs and improve the repository. There is no fee for depositing plasmids. All requests through Addgene require a Material Transfer Agreement (MTA), covered under the Uniform Biological Material Transfer Agreement (UBMTA). By signing this MTA, we were not directly able to distribute our GECO-BioBricks^TM to the Registry.

The MTA only allows distribution of modified plasmids to nonprofit organizations for research and teaching purposes only. This distribution to a third party will require a new MTA. However, both the Registry as well as iGEM does not make use of MTAs. Once we found out about this dilemma, we feared we would not be able to send in our GECO-BioBricks^TM to the Registry.

Luckily, however, there was one way to avoid the dilemma by asking the providing scientist, Robert Campbell from the University of Alberta, for permission to distribute the modified GECO-plasmids to the Registry. His response to our request was: 'You have my permission to add the GECO variants to the Registry. I would just ask that our paper describing them^[1] is cited in any published work that involves the use of the GECOs.' We hereby would like to thank Robert Campbell for his permission to add the GECO-BioBricks^TM to the Registry! Although both Addgene and the Registry provide services to non-profit organizations and aim to help scientists around the world, there are subtle differences. Addgene is not completely open-source and requires MTAs for distributing their plasmids. The Registry, however, does not make use of MTAs. It is interesting to experience these differences in the world of science and does make one wonder whether a general set of rules or guidelines should be enforced.

Registry

The manner in which the BioBrick^TM Registry collects the BioBricks^TM is not the most practical way. Every single team has to send their newly synthesized BioBrick^TM, ligated into the standard BioBrick^TM plasmid. The shipment of all of these BioBricks^TM is basically unnecessary, because during the last couple of years synthesizing DNA sequences has become much cheaper. The DNA sequence of the BioBrick^TM, which is registrated by every iGEM team, can be synthesized for 10 eurocent per base pair. The shipment of the BioBricks^TM is not needed if every team will synthesize the desired parts by themselves. This procedure will decrease the costs for the BioBrick^TM Registry and will also prevent the Registry containing and distributing nonworking parts.

Besides these advantages for the BioBrick^TM Registry, there are also advantages for the participating teams. The ligation of the BioBrick^TM into the standard BioBrick^TM plasmid takes time. The enzymes, which are delivered with the BioBrick^TM kit, can be used to cut the insert DNA and the plasmid. However, these are not suitable for all DNA strands. Some of them will cut at a restriction site which also occurs in the insert DNA. As a result of this unintended cutting the BioBrick^TM will be inoperative. Even though this issue will not occur on a regular basis, the BioBrick^TM ligation will take extra time. This extra time can be put to better use for further project research.

In addition to the decrease of time and money for both parties, skipping the shipment of the BioBrick^TM in the standard plasmid will have another last advantage. The collaboration between the different teams will increase because teams will approach each other for their desired parts. Teams can synthesize the desired parts by themselves but they can also approach other teams for working vectors which can lead to more collaboration between teams.

Sharing sequences instead of plasmids therefore has several advantages, which makes it a more practical way for registering and sharing BioBrick^TM parts.

References

• [1] Y. Zhao, et al., An expanded palette of genetically encoded Ca2+ indicators, Science 333: 1888-1891, (2011)