Team:TU-Munich/Team/Attributions

The research group at the [http://biologische-chemie.userweb.mwn.de/index.html Chair of Biological Chemistry] at TUM works in the biochemical field of protein engineering and design with its objectives set on the construction of artifical proteins with novel functions through rational as well as deductive research approaches. In this context, a range of methods facilitating the functional and structural analysis of native proteins was developed over the last years, with an increasing role of protein crystallography.

Prof. Skerra kindly provided us with space in his laboratory, and generously advanced us money to loan to pay for team registration, travel expenses and laboratory resources. Moreover he visited our team meeting and gave advice on our project.

Laboratory of Prof. Dr. Helmreich

[http://www.sww.bv.tum.de Sanitary Environmental Engineering] is a horizontal discipline comprised of civil engineering, process engineering and chemistry/biology. Research and teaching include the fields of water suppy, sewage and rain water treatment, water quality and the modelling of aquatic systems.

In our interview with Prof. Helmreich, she explained us several characterization techniques to assess water quality. Furthermore she kindly provided us with water samples from sewage treatment plants.

Laboratory of Prof. Dr. Langosch

The [http://www.wzw.tum.de/biopolymere Chair for Chemistry of Biopolymers] focuses on the structural biochemistry of integral membrane proteins. Core themes are molecular interactions between membrane proteins, strucural dynamics of membrane bound protein helices, membrane protein/lipid interactions and structure/function relationships of integral membrane protein complexes.

During the planning phase of our project we asked Prof. Langosch for advice concerning the design of the transmembrane domain of our constructs.

Laboratory of Prof. Dr. Rost

Prof. Rost works in the field of bioinformatics and computerbased biology, focussing on the prediction of strucure and function of proteins and genes. His team´s specialty is the linkage of artificial intelligence with machine learning including evolution.

After developing a prototype version of our AutoAnnotator [LINK HERE], we presented our work to Prof. Rost. He gave us some advice what features we could add and provided us access to his ProteinPredictsoftware server.

Laboratory of Prof. Dr. Schwechheimer

The [http://www.sysbiol.wzw.tum.de Chair for Systems Biology of Plants] investigates a range of queries concerning the ubiquitin proteasome system of plants applying a combination of genetics, molecular biology and cell biology with both genomic and proteomic approaches.

Together with Prof. Schwechheimer we discussed several different signal transduction pathways that could be utilised for our kill-switch [LINK HERE]. Moreover he kindly granted us access to a fluorescence microscope.

Laboratory of Prof. Dr. Reski at Freiburg University

The team at the [http://www.plant-biotech.net/ Chair for Plant Biotechnology] is working on gene expression in the bryophyte model plant Physcomitrella patens (Hedw.) B.S.G. at different levels in correlation with phenotype analysis and additionally employs comparative genomics approaches.

We would especially like to thank Dr. Gertrud Wiedemann, who kindly took the time and patience to teach us the protoplast transfection method at her lab. Also a big thank you to Omar Saleh, who helped us with the osmometer and to Anja Kuberski.

Laboratory of Prof. Dr. Fussenegger at ETH Zurich

The research group at the [http://www.bsse.ethz.ch/groups/group_fussenegger/index/ Chair for Biotechnology and Bioengineering] is implementing progress in basic research to achieve generic and prototypic advances in human therapy by focusing on mammalian cells and capitalizing on an integrated interdisciplinary systems approach.

They kindly provided us with the pSH21 (IRES) plasmid.

Laboratory of Dr. G.D. Wright at McMaster University

The [http://www.thewrightlab.com Wright Lab] is trying to understand fundamental aspects of how antibiotics work, their sources and how bacteria become resistant to them.

Kindly provided us with the plasmids pDEST14_ereA and pDEST14_ereB.

Laboratory of Prof. Dr. Arndt at Potsdam University

The team at the [http://www.uni-potsdam.de/index.php?id=13895 Chair for Molecular Biotechnology] investigates the factors that mediate interactions in coiled-coil proteins in order to target coiled-coil domains of proteins e.g. involved in tumorigenesis, tumor proliferation and metastasis.

Sven Hagen kindly provided us with the pBad-mVenus (RFC 25) plasmid.

James Padolsey

We used [http://james.padolsey.com James Padolsey´s] jQuery extension for [http://james.padolsey.com/javascript/cross-domain-requests-with-jquery/ Cross-domain AJAX requests] in the AutoAnnotator.