TU Braunschweig & Dr. Hust

Once our project was designed, we sought advice from specialists in the field. We reached out to Dr. Hust von Technische Universität Braunschweig (Department of Biotechnology). Dr. Hust specializes in building antibody gene libraries and purifying antibody scFvs in E.coli. Through a skype conference, he reviewed our project, advised us on our experimental design, and helped us build a story around antibody scFv secretion in E.coli. After this discussion, we focused our project on Salmonella detection and Dr. Hust sent us antibody scFvs targeting Salmonella proteins. These scFv were produced by Dr. Hust through antibody phage display. We wish to thank our collaborator for receiving us with attention and for such strong contribution to our work

Conference at Carnegie Mellon University

On September 6, our team travelled to Pittsburgh to participate in a conference at Carnegie Mellon University, along with other iGEM teams from the University of Pittsburgh, Montgomery High School, and Pennsylvania State University. During this conference, all teams presented their projects and then gave and received feedback about the content and delivery of these presentations. We also participated in a wiki and presentation workshop in which we received advice from other advisers. Finally, there was a panel with past iGEM participants and current advisers, which gave us the opportunity to ask questions about what new participants could expect from the competition in November. Ultimately, this conference gave our team the opportunity to interact with other iGEM members and forge relationships with other teams, which helped us start a collaboration with the Montgomery High School team. This conference also allowed us to practice our presentation and identify how we could improve before heading off to Boston.

Collaboration with USTC

We collaborated with Fangming Xie while he was participating in a physics REU program at U of M. He was a member of the iGEM team at the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC). Before leaving to go back to China he visited our lab where we discussed the progress of our work and potential future collaboration opportunities. We plan to aid USTC with translating and preparing their project for the conference in Boston.

Mentoring Montgomery iGEM

We are collaborating with Montgomery High School, a team we met at the conference in Pittsburgh, and are advising them for this school year. We are in close contact with the team’s president and have been answering their questions about iGEM and their current project, aiding with protocols, and how to get involved in wet lab work in the high school division.