Collaboration Aboa - Emoji Challenge and Virtual Meet-up
Keeping up with the fun internet challenges we participated in the Emoji Challenge organized by iGEM Team Aboa. We sent them a series of emojis that would describe our project as best as possible, and a short explanation so people could learn about our project in a fun way. You can see our choice of emojis down below. Would you have guessed our project correctly? In a virtual meeting with iGEM Team Aboa, we also presented our projects to each other, as both of our projects are related to agriculture. Through this exchange, we were able to learn a lot about agriculture from each other from a deeper and different perspective.
Collaboration Patras Medicine - iJET
The iGEM Team Patras Medicine invited us to participate in their iJET video to introduce iGEM, the diverse participating teams from around the world and their impactful projects to a broader audience. In a short clip, we explained what our motivation to participate in iGEM is and briefly described how we want to tackle the problem of phosphate recovery and provide a solution through our project using methods of synthetic biology. See the results in the video down below!
Collaboration Thessaly - Multilingual Synthetic Biology Dictionary
Most people who are unfamiliar with synthetic biology struggle with the technical terms, which often discourages them from looking further into the subject. However, it is important to educate oneself in this scientific field to understand the trends and opportunities synthetic biology creates for the world and for humanity. Our collaboration with iGEM Team Thessaly aims to make the knowledge in the form of a dictionary accessible to as many people as possible by translating relevant definitions of synthetic biology into each team’s native language, in our case it is German! Here you can visit the dictionary.
Collaboration Tec Chihuahua - Synthetic Biology Comic and Coloring Book
The projects and topics of synthetic biology are oftentimes complex, of high importance and serious in nature. But that does not mean that we should neglect our young audiences and potential future scientists when it comes to educating them about these topics. To engage younger audiences and spark their interest in science, iGEM Team Tec Chihuahua has initiated a comic and coloring book collaboration to which we contributed with our short comic about phosphate recovery and fertilizing crops with phosphate. The result is a collection of short comics that describe each team’s project in a simplified and entertaining way.
Here, you can find the finished comic book from many different teams worldwide!
Collaboration MSP Maastricht – MSP-Vector Paper
A great opportunity to get familiar with writing, publishing and peer-reviewing scientific articles was provided to us by iGEM Team Maastricht University with their annual journal MSP-Vector. We wrote an abstract and a paper about our project and peer-reviewed three articles from other iGEM Teams. Our article has also been peer-reviewed and eventually accepted and will be published in this year’s issue of MSP-Vector in October! Take a look at our article.
Collaboration MSP Maastricht – Puzzle Book
Another creative way to introduce our project to other iGEM Teams and promote more networking offers the Puzzle Book from iGEM Team MSP Maastricht. We have described our project and team with only 10 words which were turned into a puzzle and handed in a corresponding short description. The puzzles and descriptions of multiple teams were collected in a book and can be viewed here.
Collaboration NTHU Taiwan – World Map
iGEM is an international competition which means that the teams’ origins are as diverse as their projects. iGEM Team NTHU_Taiwan had the idea to create an interactive world map to visualize exactly that and at the same time promote the projects of individual teams. We naturally chose our beloved mascot Plushy, an E. coli bacterium, as the character to represent our project and mark our location on the map. A brief description introduces our project to anyone who clicks on Plushy and we can also get to know other teams’ projects in a fun and interactive way. You have to check it out!
Collaboration AF USAFA iGEM – comic book
Together with the US Air Force Academy iGEM team, we designed a comic book based on the significance of our project. To make it more accessible for kids, the comic is colorless and can be colored. Ten other teams participated as well and included their projects. The book is about the character Scientist Sammy, who explains how all iGEM teams try to save the world with bacteria. It aims to teach the basics of synthetic biology in a simple manner and to depict the problem the teams want to solve using bacteria. You can take a look at the complete coloring book here.
Figure 5: Our page of the comic book
Collaboration NYCU_Formosa iGEM – BioArt Exhibition
Art can be found everywhere, even in unexpected areas - such as science. The iGEM team from NYCU_Formosa invited us to take part in their joint online BioArt Exhibition, where the participating teams could each contribute an artwork referring to their project. The aim was to make science and more precisely synthetic biology accessible for everyone through the beauty of art. Every artwork comes with a description of the methods used to create it and their significance of application in the daily lab work. To visit the exhibition, follow this link.
Figure 6: BioArt Exhibtion
