Achievements

On this page, we summarized all things we accomplished throughout our project "Cellock Holmes - A Case of Identity", and present the medal criteria we have fulfilled for the iGEM competition 2014:

Medal Fulfillments

Bronze Requirements (6/6)

1. Our team was registered successfully.
2. The Judging form was completed.
3. Team Wiki was created.
4. We are looking forward to present a poster and a talk at the iGEM Jamboree.
5. We successfully participated in the Measurement Interlab Study.
6. Several parts were submitted to the partsregistry.

Silver Requirements (4/4)

1. Experimentally validated that at least one new BioBrick Part or Device of your own design and showed that the construction works as expected.
2. Documented the characterization of this part in the “Main Page” section of that Part’s/Device’s Registry entry.
3. Submitted this new part to the iGEM Parts Registry (submissions must adhere to the iGEM Registry guidelines).
4. During the project we addressed several important questions beyond the bench. Together with students of the Kaiser-Karls-Gymnasium and the Gymnasiun am Neandertal and people at the MakerFaire and the iGEM Meetup we discussed several issues regarding our project, microorganisms in our environment and synthetic biology. Since we use genetically engineered bacteria to detect human pathogens safety was an important aspect for us throughout the whole project. Together with other german iGEM Teams we encountered an issue regarding intellectual property rights in context of the legal status of Biobricks.

Gold Requirements (3/1)

1. We demonstrated a substantial improvement in cost efficiency of our OD/F Device in comparison to commercially available spectrophotometers. For more information see Economical View.
2. We increased the accessability of our new measurement techniques by sharing instructions to build our DIY devices WatsOn and the OD/F Device.
3. Helped three other iGEM Teams:

   • We built a low-cost DIY methane sensor for Team Braunschweig.
   • We built Data Matrix Masks for Team Freiburg
   • We tested different expression vectors constructed by Team Heidelberg

Biosensor

We developed and optimized a novel method of reading out biosensors on a two dimensional level. The sensor cells are therefore immobilized in an agar chip. It was experimentally validated that this method works for different kinds of reporter cells, induction substances and readout methods including our newly designed system WatsOn.

To improve the response of our reporter cells to induction we designed and engineered a novel reporter system using a TEV protease to activate a previously synthesized reporter protein by cleaving off a quencher. A faster response in comparison to regular expression of the reporter protein was shown by modeling as well as in our experiments. All parts needed to build this kind of reporter system were submitted to the partsregistry.

WatsOn

WatsOn is a measuring device designed to read out novel two dimensional biosensor.

OD/F Device

In addition to our main project we built an OD/F Device capable of measuring optical density and flourescence. It beats commercially available devices in cost and weight. It can be built with common, inexpensive and easily available parts. An instruction manual is available on our wiki.

Interlab Study

Since we compete in the Measurement Track of this year's iGEM competition, one of our bronze medal criteria was to participate in the Measurement Interlab Study.