External Support

• Marika Ziesack, M.sc. for giving us an introduction to Gibson Cloning
• Matthew Mattozzi, Ph.D. from the Harvard Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Center for Life Sciences in Boston who contributed helpful advice on genomic homologous recombination. Dr. Mattozzi also kindly provided the pET21c-pcc-acc-mmce plasmid.
• Prof. Dr. Herzig and his group at the German Cancer Research Center, Heidelberg for offering the possibility to use their electroporator.
• PD Dirk M. Nettelbeck, Ph.D. and his group at the German Cancer Research Center for his input on homologous recombination.
• Lei Fang from the Pfeifer Lab at the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, University of Buffalo, for providing the BAP1 strain and the pLF03 and pKD46 plasmids.
• the Gruss Lab at the Center for Molecular Biology at the University Heidelberg who kindly provided us with the E. coli BL21(DE3) (pLys) strain.
• Prof. Russels group for supporting us with a vial of real E. coli BL21(DE3) cells.
• Prof. Dr. Marahiel at the Philipps-University Marburg, for providing us with the Brevibacillus parabrevis ATCC 8185 strain.
• Prof. Dr. Thomas Höfers Group at the BioQuant, Heidelberg for providing a sample of E. coli BL21 pLys.
• Prof. Fussenegger for providing us with the expression plasmids for bpsA and svp, codon optimized for mammalian cells
• Prof. Groß at the mass spectrometry facility (institute of organic chemistry, University of Heidelberg) for providing his HR-ESI MS.
• Dr. Oliver Wichmann at the BioQuant, Heidelberg for supporting us with materials including his lyophilizer.
• Dr. Dirk Kohlmüller and Dr. Kathrin Schmidt at the neonate screening, University Medical Center Heidelberg for their support in amino acid level detection by mass spectrometry.
• Special thanks to Dr. Holger Schäfer from the Institute of Pharmacology and Molecular Biotechnology for scientific and moral support during cloning of Del constructs.
• We thank Prof. Dr. Zawatzky for his valuable feedback on safety considerations and ethical concerns.
• Thanks to Prof. Dr. Kleins lab at the Institute of Pharmacology and Molecular Biotechnology for giving us the possibility to use their Micro-TOF and especially Lena Weigel for her great support.
• Dr. Paul Oldman for supporting us with his expertise in text mining and for sharing his collection of synthetic biology terms with us.
• Special thanks to Dr. Wombacher's group at the Institute of Pharmacology and Molecular Biotechnology, especially Marcel Best for last minute supply of a rotary evaporator!
• We also thank Dr. Rackwitz from Peptide Specialties Laboratories GmbH at Heidelberg for insights in chemical peptide synthesis and valuable input on our project.
• Thanks to Dorothea van Aaken for opening up new ethical perspectives on synthetic biology.
• We also wish to thank Stafan Dewald and the Sekular Humansists Rhein Neckar!
• And last but not least special thanks to Thi Bach Nga Ly-Hartig who put us in touch with several research groups that work with mass spectrometry and bringing us cupcakes.