Marburg

It Takes a Village: Automating Plasmid Purification for iGEM

Posted on by Promega

Today’s blog is guest-written by Wihan Adi, a Master’s student majoring in physics at Justus-Liebig-University in Giessen and team member of iGEM Marburg. Although his background is in nuclear and particle physics, his research interests shifted toward affordable biosensors for point-of-care cancer detection, which is how he ended up doing microbiology for iGEM.

Back in March when the iGEM season had just started, Maurice, a fellow iGEM Marburg team member, told me that he was exchanging emails with Margaretha Schwartz from Promega. Given my background as a physics student, Promega was not a household name for me at the time. “So, are you interested in automating a plasmid purification protocol?” asked Maurice. He told me that Promega was willing to supply the Wizard® MagneSil® Plasmid Purification System for this purpose; that was another name that added to my confusion.

Wihan Adi
2019 iGEM Marburg Team

This year, iGEM Marburg is aiming to establish a fast phototrophic organism as a synthetic biology chassis. For this goal we chose Synechococcus elongatus UTEX 2973, with a reported doubling time of 90 minutes. More specifically, we are creating an easy to use toolbox to empower rapid design testing, including genome engineering tools, self-replicating plasmid systems, natural competence and a Golden Gate-based part library. Our team chose to work on phototrophic organisms because we envision accelerating research in this particular field. (Note: Last year, Marburg’s iGEM project won the Grand Prize!)

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Promising Treatment for Marburg Virus Hemorrhagic Fever

Posted on by Sara Klink

I admit to some trepidation about the diseases that may be harbored in my backyard. For example, do the mice in my yard and, despite my and my cats’ efforts, in my house carry deer ticks that harbor the bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi, which causes Lyme disease? Should I be keeping an eye on the vitality of the birds around my property and density of my local mosquito population for potential risk of West Nile Virus transmission? As troublesome as these infections can be, mortality is low for infected humans. Contrast that with the mortality rate of up to 90% for the filoviruses Ebola and Marburg. I find it easy to dismiss these viruses because the reservoir (asymptomatic host) is not in the Upper Midwest but rather Africa, but the tragedy of the Ebola outbreak in the West African countries of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea demonstrates the number of lives lost in an epidemic. Currently, there is no therapy or vaccine to treat these deadly viruses other than transferring antibodies from survivors to those infected. Therefore, the article in Science Translational Medicine about an antiviral treatment that protected macaques injected with a lethal dose of Marburg virus was welcome news.

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