Freiburg University 2006

Welcome! We are Alife Mutants.

This term was invented by Martin Schneider on the Rule 110 Winter Workshop in 2004 [http://www.rule110.org/amhso/index.html]. We play without rules. We discover the rules that govern life, the universe and everything to exploit these rules and to create Artificial Life. Our short-time aim is the trip to Boston in November 2006 to take a prize in the iGEM. The long term goal now is to REALLY do it in 2007!

The hive #101

The Freiburg Team (well, at least half of it...) from left to right: Irina Petrova, Andrei Kouznetsov, Daniel Hautzinger.

• Daniel Hautzinger
• Olga Soboleva
• Irina Petrova
• Yutthaphong Phongbunchoo
• Mona Klein

• Andrei Kouznetsov
• Tamara Ulrich (ambassador, ETH Zurich)

• Svetlana Santer

Projects

No.1 - The Pipe

The idea is to design a strand of DNA such that it wraps into a specific shape.
There are three different stages for this project: First, the DNA should fold into a two-dimensional rectangular sheet. Secondly, this sheet should wrap itself up into the shape of a short pipe. And last, these little pipes should hook themselves up to each other such that they form one single long pipe (more details).
The DNA sequence for the Pipes design can be found [http://omnibus.uni-freiburg.de/~kouznet/pipe/Tube-M13mp18-NEB-d.txt here], design picture is [http://omnibus.uni-freiburg.de/~kouznet/pipe/pip6.jpg here], the set of staples is [http://omnibus.uni-freiburg.de/~kouznet/pipe/StapleTube.txt here]. We’ll put the AFM pictures on the wiki as soon as we receive the DNA from the company...

No.2 - Haute Couture: Barbie Nanoatelier

Barbie Nanoatelier - Open Source DNA-nanotechnology

Once the process of DNA folding into 3D structures is understood, shapes can be chosen arbitrarily. The idea of the Barbie Nanoatelier is that the DNA should wrap into a 3D T-Shirt, 3D Pants, etc.

We need a library of molecular primitives that could be interchanged in the desirable way for a bottom-up design on the nanometer scale. Registry of DNA molecular parts and standardization is an actual question of bionanotechnology. We just put first examples of new class of BioBricks - ORIGAMI BioBriks into [http://partsregistry.org/cgi/partsdb/pgroup.cgi?pgroup=iGEM2006partsregistry.org/cgi/partsdb/pgroup.cgi?pgroup=iGEM2006&group=Freiburg depository] and publish basic ideas [http://omnibus.uni-freiburg.de/~kouznet/DNA-plug.txt], [http://omnibus.uni-freiburg.de/~kouznet/T-shirt.txt], [http://omnibus.uni-freiburg.de/~kouznet/DNA-NanoSwarm.txt].

We also try to pump some aesthetic principles and rules (symmetry, periodic patterns, recursion, and plasticity) into our creatures.

We like it because it needs a huge of imagination and really very difficult. Nobody can build a bra! - von Neumann's self-reproducing ... bra :))

Scetches - T-Shirt

Step 1

Step 2

Step 3

Step 4

Olga Soboleva, presentation in Bremen

The DNA sequence for the T-Shirt design can be found [http://omnibus.uni-freiburg.de/~kouznet/t-shirt/T-shirt_M13mp18_NEB_d.txt here], the picture is [http://omnibus.uni-freiburg.de/~kouznet/t-shirt/T-shirt.jpg here], and the staples are [http://omnibus.uni-freiburg.de/~kouznet/t-shirt/T-shirt_staples.txt here] there.

Hey, venture capitalists, where are you? The price of all of 50 billion T-Shirts would be only 7200bases x €0.17/base = €1224. Don’t miss the chance. It could be a great business tomorrow!
Jobs: Still looking for catwalk models!! Oh, aroma of [http://uncomp.uwe.ac.uk/genaro/DJ_Ice.html the podium music]!

No.3 - Individual projects

Other projects and prices could be found on individual Mutant's pages (Wafer, Blouse, Spy). In addition, you can find some hot information on ‘GEM Freiburg Fellow 2006’ page. The other toys will be unconventional computing, cryptography, nanoelectronics, nanooptics, drug delivery systems, smart nanomaterials, nanoswarm, and eventually an artificial life. Time is money!

Club

• [http://omnibus.uni-freiburg.de/~kouznet/iGEM.htm Manifesto, Self-education program]
• [http://omnibus.uni-freiburg.de/~kouznet/Fellow06.htm GEM Freiburg Fellow 2006]
• [http://omnibus.uni-freiburg.de/~kouznet/GEMnews.htm News]

SB Preliminary

• DNA plug-and-play platform [http://omnibus.uni-freiburg.de/~kouznet/DNAplatform6.pdf 24.05.06] [http://omnibus.uni-freiburg.de/~kouznet/DNAplatform6-1.pdf 27.06.06]
• [http://omnibus.uni-freiburg.de/~kouznet/BioVLSI.pdf Very Large-Scale Integration design in Biology]
• [http://omnibus.uni-freiburg.de/~kouznet/GS-design.pdf Genetic systems design from the DNA modules]

• Life with a price of 6000 €
• Argo-machine, especially for hackers

The easy and serious way

• [http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge187.html#church George Church CONSTRUCTIVE BIOLOGY] - a nice paper about the challenges of modern biology
• [http://webcast.berkeley.edu/events/details.php?webcastid=15766 The webcasts from SB2.0] [http://openwetware.org/wiki/Synthetic_Biology:Synthetic_Biology_1.0/Videos and SB1.0]

These people do great things

Albert Libchaber [http://www.rockefeller.edu/research/abstract.php?id=93] Carlos Bustamante's lab [http://alice.berkeley.edu/] David Deamer [http://www.chemistry.ucsc.edu/deamer_d.html] Eric Kool’s group [http://www.stanford.edu/group/kool/] Erik Winfree [http://www.dna.caltech.edu/~winfree/] Fred Menger’s group [http://www.chemistry.emory.edu/faculty/menger/index.html] Jack Szostak’s lab [http://genetics.mgh.harvard.edu/szostakweb/] Norman Packard’s Protolife [http://www.protolife.net/] Pier Luigi Luisi’s group [http://www.plluisi.org/index.html] Radhika Nagpal [http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~rad/] Steven Benner’s group [http://www.chem.ufl.edu/groups/benner/]

Local

An Analysis of Synthetic Biology Research in Europe and North America [http://www2.spi.pt/synbiology/] DNA synthesis: ATG-Biosynthetics [http://www.atg-biosynthetics.com/] febit [http://febit.de/europe/en/] The Spiegel about the iGEM competition on August 14, 2006 [http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/0,1518,431399,00.html] New GEM on the simiki wiki page [http://ernie.imtek.uni-freiburg.de/simiki/GeneticallyEngineeredMachines]