Achievements

We are proud to announce that we achieved the following goals

General Achievements

• We designed a novel system for detection of circulating tumour cells in blood samples using genetically modified bacteria.
• We designed a genetic circuit that integrates two different cancer specific signals (lactate and AHL)in an AND gate.
• We implemented a method to do single cell analysis of cancer cells by expressing Annexin V in the E. coli outer membrane, which enables them to selectively bind to apoptotic cancer cells.

Medal Criteria

	We registered for iGEM, had a great summer so far, and now we are looking forward to attending the Giant Jamboree!	Going for it!
	We completed and submitted the Judging Form
	We created a description of our project in time.
	We documented 20 parts taken from the Registry of Standard Biological Parts
	We are going to present a poster and give a talk at the Giant Jamboree.	Going for it!
	We created this website for you to learn about every aspect of our iGEM project.
	We documented and submitted two new basic parts to the iGEM parts registry and created a part collection with 14 parts.
	These new parts we also submitted to the iGEM Parts Registry.
	We characterized two newly designed hybrid promoters and were able to show that one of our combined promoters, Plac-lldR (K1847010), reacts in a clear AND gate fashion to a combination of lactate and IPTG. To our knowledge, combining these two elements has never been attempted before.
	Our Human Practices Efforts: We went to two different schools, thaught the children about what DNA is, performed experiments with them and published an article about it in the local newspaper. We told the ETH-student magacine polykum about iGEM and gave an interview. We contributed to the Newsletters from Amoys team, met with the Darmstadt team, helped with a survey from EPFL and provided Colombias team with protocols and advice when their transformations did not work.
	More Human Practices Efforts: We interviewed many different experts from various fields, such as medical doctors, an expert from the ethics commission, the founder of a start-up or an expert in patents law and integrated the advice and ideas we got from them into the design.
	We collaborated with the team from Stockholm by testing their constructs.
	We Improved and characterized variants of the E. coli LldR promoter lldPRD-operon, on which there is only a limited amount of information present in the Parts Registry and in the literature.

Further Experimental Achievements

• We designed a chip for future application of our MicroBeacon E. coli.
• We participated in the interlab study.
• Our experiments complied with the safety instructions at the Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering D-BSSE in Basel where our lab is situated.

Modeling Achievements

• We separately modeled two different signals of our cancer detection system, the Lactate Module and the AHL Module.
• We defined and estimated all relevant parameters for our models.
• We integrated the two modules into a Combined Compartment Model to simulate a logical AND gate.
• To account for the diffusion and degradation of signaling molecules under real-world conditions we designed various Reaction-diffusion Models.
• We optimized our model by integrating experimental data gathered by the characterization of our LldR promoter constructs.
• We showed that the successful detection of cancer cells with our system is feasible in principle.