From Kaiserslautern to Paris - competition opens doors to the world of international research

What if an alga could put an end to water pollution? Six students at RPTU in Kaiserslautern asked themselves this question. They took part in the largest international synthetic biology competition with their idea. Team member Luca Langenberg reports in an interview on how this experience has shaped him both personally and professionally.

‘At iGEM, you acquire skills that you can't get anywhere else at such an early stage,’ explains Luca Langenberg, a Bachelor's student of molecular biology. The acronym stands for ‘international genetically engineered machine’. In fact, iGEM is the largest international competition for synthetic biology and takes place every year in Paris. Only Master's and Bachelor's students are allowed to take part, who are divided into overgrad and undergrad teams. No wonder the 23-year-old is so enthusiastic: ‘Students from all over the world can exchange ideas and make contacts with other universities, lecturers and companies.’

The six-member RPTU team spent a year working on their idea, with which they competed in the final of the competition in November 2023. They are still working on ‘CYPurify’ afterwards. What sounds complicated ‘is actually quite simple,’ says Luca Langenberg. The basic idea is to purify water from toxic substances using the CYP enzyme. ‘These CYP enzymes are found in different variants in every organism. Among other things, they are responsible for the breakdown and degradation of substances. There is such an enzyme for every toxic substance. In humans, for example, they are located in the liver and play an important role in detoxification.’

The iGEM team therefore asked themselves: why shouldn't this detoxification process also work in waters that have been contaminated by toxic substances? ‘Everyone talks about plastic in the oceans, but the many residues of insecticides, herbicides or medicines are at least as big a problem,’ explains Langenberg.

In fact, there is hardly a body of water that is free of such toxic substances. For example, oestrogen residues from the contraceptive pill cause male fish to produce eggs instead of sperm, thereby inhibiting reproduction. Such substances, which are toxic to bodies of water, have to be filtered in sewage treatment plants. This is where CYPurify comes into play: ‘Put simply, we selected the enzymes from different organisms and inserted their genes into the green algae Chlamydomonas reinhardtii,’ explains the student. The idea is to place the algae in the polluted water and purify it. ‘In the laboratory, we discovered that one of our enzymes breaks down the estradiol from the contraceptive pill. This should also be possible in water. However, the extent to which it could be used there would first have to be investigated.’

Most of the team's work took place in the laboratory, where they carried out toxicity tests and tried to implement the project as realistically as possible. ‘Ultimately, the genetically modified algae would have to be introduced into the water,’ says Langenberg. However, the team has not tested its project in practice, as genetically modified organisms may only be used in the laboratory due to EU regulations.

After months of work, the time had come in November. The team travelled to Paris for the final to present the project. ‘We were awarded a gold medal because we had an all-round good project and demonstrated excellence in the area of plant synthetic biology,’ explains Luca.

However, this success also came at a price: as the Kaiserslautern iGEM team was relatively small with six members, everyone had to make their own contribution.

Langenberg: ‘For almost six months, I worked seven days a week for around twelve hours, both in the lab and on my laptop. Even at home, I only thought about iGEM.’ A part-time job or pub crawls at the weekends, which are common for students, were difficult to fit into such a schedule. ‘I wouldn't do it like that again,’ admits Luca. ‘Nevertheless, this time has helped me both personally and professionally. If we had been a bigger team, I would probably have avoided the public events. However, iGEM meant I was constantly having to give presentations to represent the project at university or elsewhere.’ Some of these presentations took place in front of more than 200 people, an experience that only a few Bachelor's students have.

In addition, the team produced so many results through their work in the laboratory that they are working on their own scientific publication, a paper as it is known in the scientific community. Professor Dr Michael Schroda, who also supervised the students during the competition, drew their attention to this. For this paper, the students are still in the lab collecting data, for example on different temperatures at which they are investigating whether the efficiency of the enzymes can be increased. The students are still being supported by Professor Schroda and his working group. ‘We had a lot of freedom during the competition phase, regularly showed Professor Schroda our data and discussed the next steps with him.’ PhD students Dorothée Klein and Adrian Engels also helped the team with the laboratory work. ‘We knew and know that we can always talk to someone about our work who can give us a tip,’ emphasises Langenberg.

Whether the paper will be published is still up in the air. When it's ready, a specialist journal will have to accept it. ‘That's the nature of research,’ says the Kaiserslautern student. ‘You spend hours in the lab, put a lot of work and time into something and nobody knows what the end result will be.’ Even if the Bachelor student's first paper is still a long way off, the work has been worth it for the golden iGEM medal.