What is Cellock Holmes about?
Many young scientists dream about presenting their first big research project to a renowned professional audience. The prestigious iGEM competition provides us with an opportunity to make this dream come true. iGEM offers the ideal chance to expand our knowledge in different areas outside of our program, and to directly apply this knowledge to a current problem. Furthermore, we have the opportunity to learn modern research techniques, which go beyond the scope of our university studies. Working in an interdisciplinary team forces is to broaden our horizons, and we can learn from students studying different fields. Moreover, the competition will allow us to improve important soft skills such as the ability to work in a team, time and project management, and maintaining motivation throughout the project. We are looking forward to the international atmosphere of iGEM, and to meet like-minded student from all over the world. Lastly, it is the enthusiasm for fancy developments in synthetic biology that not only lead to new innovative products and a better life standard, but also to more sustainability.
Within the scope of our project, we want to develop a system with which pathogens on solid surfaces can be detected quickly and cost-effectively. This is essential in many respects, because presently there are no effective analytic methods for use in the health sector that can meet the increasing demands of affordability and speed. It is particularly important to detect microorganisms on solid surfaces in places where good hygiene is crucial, since—even after cleaning—microorganisms can still be present in dangerous amounts. This is demonstrated by the high number of 1.7 million infections per year in the US health sector, of which approximately 10,000 resulted in death (Klevens et al., 2002). A large number of these cases would be preventable, however, there is a present lack of adequate tools for practical application. We not only want to develop a detection system that alerts the patient to the presence of pathogens, but one that can also identify and quantify these microorganisms. Only in this way is it possible to reliably estimate the danger of infection.
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