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Welcome to the Wiki of Team Tuebingen!

Blood transfusion is (and has been for quite a while) an important method in modern intensive care. Since blood transfusions are often a matter of life and death, shortages of donor blood are always a great concern for medical practitioners - not only in countries with weak medical infrastructures or in crisis regions after natural disasters but also in regular hospitals in Central Europe.

The main problem is that not every patient can accept any type of blood. When only considering the ABO system and Rhesus factor there are the blood types A, B, AB and O, either with or without the Rhesus factor antigen (Rhesus factor positive or negative). Generally, an individual always has antibodies against antigens that are not expressed on the surface of the own erythrocytes. Thus, the transfusion of incompatible blood would cause a very harmful immune response.

Luckily, erythrocytes of blood of type O do not have a specific antigen thus there are no antibodies against this blood type. Therefore, blood of type O usually serves as emergency donor blood when the blood type of a patient is unknown or the stocks of donor blood of the patient's blood type are running low. Because of its use as emergency blood, blood type O is very precious for trauma centers worldwide.

There are naturally occuring enzymes that can cut off the blood-antigens corresponding to blood types A, B and AB thereby creating blood of type O. These enzymes are valuable for the artificial creation of emergency donor blood using old or excess amounts of blood bottles of type A, B or AB.

For this year's iGEM competition we have set out to create a viable system for the conversion of any blood type to the emergency blood type O using enzymes that are able to cut off the blood type antigens corresponding to blood types A, B and AB.

In order to prevent the mixing of the bacterial enzymes with donor blood we wanted to immobilise the enzymes on an activated glass matrix by attaching a so called N-intein to the enzymes and fusing the C-intein (a short oligopeptide) to the matrix.

Have a look around our wiki to find out more about the reasons why we wanted to pursue this project, the enzymes we have used for our system, and the intein we have decided to use for immobilisation-purposes! Of course, iGEM would not be the same without activities engaging the general public - find out, what we have planned this year.

Sponsors

We want to warmly thank the following sponsors of our iGEM2014 project (in no particular order):