Team:ETH Zurich/Team/Overview

From 2008.igem.org

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Revision as of 18:38, 27 October 2008

How the Team met

Part of the team learned about iGEM during the [http://www.vvz.ethz.ch/Vorlesungsverzeichnis/lerneinheitPre.do?lerneinheitId=48939&semkez=2008S&lang=en Synthetic Biology Lecture] given by our instructors at ETH. Another part of the team applied after receiving the following ETH wide e-mail promoting iGEM

What is the most exciting thing natural scientists and engineers can do together? - The iGEM summer competition!
iGEM is an international student competition in the field of synthetic biology, organized by MIT. Each participating university sets up an interdisciplinary student team consisting of 8 to 10 biologists,chemists and engineers.
Half of the team has to be undergraduate students, but also MSc and PhD students can participate.
The team's goal is to collect ideas on a novel biological system, analyze the biological and engineering design alternatives, including mathematical modeling of the system, and choose the 'best' design.
This system is then translated into DNA code, put into a cell and tested experimentally.
In November, all teams present their projects at the MIT in Boston. In 2007, there were 57 teams from all over the world, including teams from MIT, UCSF, Caltech, Duke, Stanford, TIT, Princeton, Cambridge, Imperial, Harvard, UC Berkeley, and more teams from the US, Australia, India, China, Japan, and Europe (http://parts.mit.edu/igem07/index.php/Main_Page ).

After major successes in 2005 (best engineering), 2006 (best device) and 2007 (best presentation), ETH is participating again this year, and professors Sven Panke and Jörg Stelling are assembling a mixed team of engineers and natural scientists from the Bachelor, Master and PhD level. If you want to be part of the iGEM experience, apply until April 11th on

For this year's team nine students got selected and on Wednesday, April 16th, the first meeting was scheduled.
As you can see on our Team Members Page, students from very diverse fields were offered the possibility to participate in the ETH iGEM team.

Boot Camp

The following weeks were what last year's team had refered to as "Boot Camp". Our advisors organized two weeks of an intense crash course into the field of syntetic biology, during which we learned about the diverse aspects of the field:

The "Bootcamp" Scedule
Date	Topic1	Topic2
Mo, 21.4	Syntetic Biology: [http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v438/n7067/full/nature04342.html Foundations for engineering biology] [http://www.nature.com/msb/journal/v1/n1/full/msb4100025.html Refactoring bacteriophage T7]	DNA de nova design:
Th, 24.4	Distance: [http://www.pnas.org/content/101/17/6355.abstract?ct Spatiotemporal control of gene expression with pulse-generating networks]	DNA circuits:
Mo, 28.4	Modeling biological systems:	Network dynamics:
Wed, 30.4	Identification & Robustness:	Synthetic circuit design:
Fr, 2.5	Oscillators:	Hysteresis:
Tu, 6.5	Noise/single cells:	mRNA tools, protein tools:
Fr, 9.5	Meeting - reduce Topics from Brainstorming	Restriction enzymes Cloning strategies Biobrick standard
Th, 15.5	Meeting	The MIT registry
Wed, 21.5	Meeting	Protein half-life, specific proteases, epPCR to adapt systems Parameter manipulations
Th, 29.5	Meeting End of Planning Phase - Submission DNA Sequence	GFP - protein and measurements. Chemical/physical basis of XFP. Flourescence, excitation and emission spectra of various proteins, measurement techniques
2.-5.6	LABCOURSE at CNB	Basic hands-on modelling

Lab Course at CNB

Additionally, one week of lab crash course was integrated into the "Boot Camp" in the beginning of June. The aim of this course was to introduce non-biologists to basic techniques of microbiology and molecular cloning. That way they were able to assist the biologists so that the latters could concentrate more on experimental planning and interpretation of results. The idea was to grasp this chance of an interdisciplinary project in order to offer the students the possibility to get an insight into a field that is totally different from their university background. Therefore, the modellers got comfortable in the lab, and the biologists learned about modelling.

@@ Line 17: / Line 17: @@
 </html>
 == How the Team met ==
-Part of the team heard of iGEM during the [http://www.vvz.ethz.ch/Vorlesungsverzeichnis/lerneinheitPre.do?lerneinheitId=48939&semkez=2008S&lang=en Synthetic Biology Lecture] given by our Instructors at iGEM. The rest of the team that didn't originate from this lecture applied after receiving this ETH wide mail promoting iGEM<br>
+Part of the team learned about iGEM during the [http://www.vvz.ethz.ch/Vorlesungsverzeichnis/lerneinheitPre.do?lerneinheitId=48939&semkez=2008S&lang=en Synthetic Biology Lecture] given by our instructors at ETH. Another part of the team applied after receiving the following ETH wide e-mail promoting iGEM<br>
 <html><table><tr><td width=40px></td><td><i></html>
 What is the most exciting thing natural scientists and engineers can do together? - The iGEM summer competition!
-iGEM is an international student competition in the field of Synthetic Biology, organized by MIT. Each participating university sets up an interdisciplinary student team consisting of 8 to 10 biologists/chemists and engineers.
+iGEM is an international student competition in the field of synthetic biology, organized by MIT. Each participating university sets up an interdisciplinary student team consisting of 8 to 10 biologists,chemists and engineers.
 Half of the team has to be undergraduate students, but also MSc and PhD students can participate.
@@ Line 31: / Line 31: @@
 In November, all teams present their projects at the MIT in Boston. In 2007, there were 57 teams from all over the world, including teams from MIT, UCSF, Caltech, Duke, Stanford, TIT, Princeton, Cambridge, Imperial, Harvard, UC Berkeley, and more teams from the US, Australia, India, China, Japan, and Europe (http://parts.mit.edu/igem07/index.php/Main_Page ).
-After major successes in 2005 (best engineering), 2006(best device) and 2007 (best presentation), ETH is participating again this year, and Profs. Sven Panke and Jörg Stelling are assembling a mixed team of engineers and natural scientists from the Bachelor, Master and PhD level. If you want to be part of the iGEM experience, apply until April 11th on
+After major successes in 2005 (best engineering), 2006 (best device) and 2007 (best presentation), ETH is participating again this year, and professors Sven Panke and Jörg Stelling are assembling a mixed team of engineers and natural scientists from the Bachelor, Master and PhD level. If you want to be part of the iGEM experience, apply until April 11th on
 <html></i></td></tr></table></html><br><br>
-Nine Students got selected and on Wednesday, April 16th, the first meeting was scheduled.<br>
+For this year's team nine students got selected and on Wednesday, April 16th, the first meeting was scheduled.<br>
-As you can see on our [https://2008.igem.org/Team:ETH_Zurich/Team/Members Team Members Page], students from very diverse fields got selected for the team.
+As you can see on our [https://2008.igem.org/Team:ETH_Zurich/Team/Members Team Members Page], students from very diverse fields were offered the possibility to participate in the ETH iGEM team.
 === Boot Camp ===
-The following weeks is what last year's team refered to as "Boot Camp".
+The following weeks were what last year's team had refered to as "Boot Camp".
-Our advisors organized two weeks of an intense crash course into the field of syntetic biology during which we learned about the diverse aspects of the field:
+Our advisors organized two weeks of an intense crash course into the field of syntetic biology, during which we learned about the diverse aspects of the field:
 <html><center></html>
@@ Line 92: / Line 92: @@
 === Lab Course at CNB ===
-Additionally, one week of lab crash course was integrated into the "bootcamp" in the beginning of June. The aim of this course was to introduce the non-biologists to basic techniques of microbiology and molecular cloning. That way they were able to assist the biologists so that they could concentrate more on experimental planning and interpretation of results. The idea was to grasp this chance of an interdisciplinary project in order to offer the students the possibility to get an insight into a field that is different from their university background. Therefore, the modellers got comfortable in the lab, and the biologists learned about modelling.
+Additionally, one week of lab crash course was integrated into the "Boot Camp" in the beginning of June. The aim of this course was to introduce non-biologists to basic techniques of microbiology and molecular cloning. That way they were able to assist the biologists so that the latters could concentrate more on experimental planning and interpretation of results. The idea was to grasp this chance of an interdisciplinary project in order to offer the students the possibility to get an insight into a field that is totally different from their university background. Therefore, the modellers got comfortable in the lab, and the biologists learned about modelling.
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