Classically, contributions to the iGEM environment include parts and gene sequences that are useful to other teams. We of course are more than happy to share the sequences for our bioemulsifiers, as they might be very interesting for other iGEM teams. However, we wanted to pass down more of the knowledge we gained over the last nine months. For this reason, that we also put together two guides: a molecular docking guide, and a “How to iGEM” guide.
Moreover, as a team, we put a lot of emphasis on good organization and team management. Part of this tradition are the template documents we created and wanted to share with the world, which helped us increase our team’s cohesiveness and efficiency. Lastly, we wanted to point other teams to the decision trees we designed to facilitate choosing a project for future teams.
Hydrophobins are proteins with a small molecular weight but with great importance in various industrial applications, ranging from drug delivery, food processing or emulsion formation in cleaning products1. We acknowledged the great power harnessed by the physical properties of these small proteins and generated a part collection with natural and mutated protein coding sequences of hydrophobins, as well as one other promising protein with demonstrated biosurfactant properties2. Taking inspiration from our strategy, the greater community can adapt our list of basic parts to their own hydrophobin expression systems, or use the composite parts we generated to monitor the behavior of cells expressing a fusion between hydrophobin sequences and a superfolder version of the Green Fluorescent Protein. More details on the characteristics of our basic and composite parts can be found on our Parts page.
While conducting our enzyme screening (check out our Model page for more information), we decided to use molecular docking, among other techniques, to investigate the enzymatic reaction of our interest. Despite the apparent simplicity of the docking process, we encountered many challenges during our analysis. At times, unexpected errors would arise, or the software's user-friendliness left much to be desired. Navigating through the docking itself was relatively straightforward, but what to make of the results? How should they be interpreted?
Our initial inclination was to consider the result with the highest score as the best outcome. However, this perspective only holds partially true. What we often overlook is that most docking tools rely heavily on statistical models and frequently fail to account for the biological implications of a given docking result. Throughout our journey, we asked ourselves (and our experts) many questions like these. As a result, we have decided to compile a molecular docking guide, complete with practical tips. Our hope is that this guide will assist future iGEM teams in executing their projects more effectively, providing valuable insights into the challenges and considerations associated with molecular docking. If the PDF doesn't appear below, you can download it here!
As an iGEM team, you acquire an enormous amount of knowledge and experience when participating in the competition. We thought that it would be very sad if this experience got lost, and decided to write down everything in what we called a “continuation document”. The idea here is truly to ensure good knowledge transfer, but also to reflect on our mistakes and what we would have done differently. It would be a waste of time to keep making the same mistakes, after all.
The document can be found below. Please note that it is written from a KU Leuven perspective and for a KU Leuven team, but we still think that its contents can be very useful for other teams. Moreover, information that isn’t relevant (such as the location of our office) can still serve an inspiration for other teams if they want to write their own continuation document. If the PDF doesn't appear below, you can download it here!
As can be read on our integrated human practices page, our team put a very important emphasis on good team management, organization, and documentation. This is why we decided to adopt fixed templates for certain recurring things. These include templates for the general team meetings, subteam captain meetings, and a documentation template for the wiki. We share them here for other teams to adapt to their own needs and take inspiration from to better organize their own projects.
Note that the templates for meetings are called “agenda and report”, as we would write the report under the titles mentioned in the same file as the agenda. They are annotated so the reader can easily understand what we mean by each subtitle. If the PDF doesn't appear below, you can download it here!
Coming up with a good iGEM project is hard. The problem partially lies in the fact that you know what a good project is once you have completed the competition, as you gather a lot of experience in hindsight. To make this process easier for other teams, we decided to document our thinking progress and things we wished we considered at an earlier stage. We did this in the form of decision trees, that can be found in the "Before YarroWCO" section of our Integrated Human Practices page. They should be a great help for new teams to orient themselves towards a successful project and further improve the overall quality of the competition!
Our attempts at contributing to the overall quality of the competition wouldn’t be complete without having a serious impact on the next KU Leuven team. First and foremost, the next team will have the new continuation document to work with. We think this will save them multiple weeks of figuring stuff out, leading to an increase in the quality of their project. Furthermore, we will be recruiting and coaching them. Some of our current team members intend to remain as advisors and make sure the next team presents an amazing project in 2024!