Achievements

Silver Medal

Engineering Success

Several engineering cycles, both of parts and protocols have been done during the project. We have documented under the engineering the work done on our bioreporter part and our ribosome display DARPin.
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Collaboration

Successful collaboration with both the Patras iGEM team on translating a science comic and with Aboa iGEM team on science education both in science talks for the public and in science workshops for kids.
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Human Practices

During the project we have had multiple discussions with different experts within the area of our project. In the early stages, we talked a lot with experts within the ribosome display, and we got advice and guidance which shaped the project flow and how we would build up our project. We have also talked with people from the field to get a better idea of how our project could be best implemented in the real world and what type of treatment patients find most appealing to use to further develop the product.
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Proposed Implementation

Our DARPins will be implemented as topical treatment against further biofilm formation. Our implementation of the product of the project will save time and resources in the health care system. To read more about the implementation and future plans, check out the implementation page.
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Gold Medal

Integrated Human Practices

We have done extensive human practice work for our project. We have discussed the current situation of chronic wound treatment with both researchers in the field, doctors who have wound patients, wound nurses who are familiar with daily wound treatment and the experience of how treatment works and could be improved from a patient point of view. Discussions and improvements have been carried out throughout the whole year.
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Project Modelling

For modelling, independent protein-peptide docking to predict the binding for our DARPin has been done. We have also had a more extensive collaboration with the Dresden iGEM team who has done modelling of the distribution of our DARPin combined with their hydrogel project for wound treatment.
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Partnership

Our partnership with the Dresden iGEM team, includes the modelling work that Dresden has done for us. In return, we have worked more with wet lab to express our test DARPin, which we then sended to Dresden for them to test on their hydrogel treatment. We have met multiple times online for project discussions and also met twice during the summer meet-ups for in-person discussions.
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Education & Communication

We have planned and executed several different education and communication events. We have had different target groups and applied the program accordingly. We have had more fun and easy to understand synthetic biology workshops for kids and teeangers. We have had a project presentation for the Finnish biology olympiad student team, as well as presentation of synthetic biology and the project for the public at the ScienceBasement talks. And we plan to still have synbio workshops for science journalists.
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Proof of Concept

We have proven with a known GFP binding DARPin that we can, through ribosome display, find the best suitable DARPin for specific targets and that the expression of the DARPins can be done in genetically engineered bacteria. We have also documented in detail how we would continue with the project and what further tests would be needed to take the project to the next level. We have documented the background work on how we decided on the DARPin structure, and show on the proof of concept page how the same protocols can be used for other target peptides and proteins as well.
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Special Prizes

Best Education

Our team aimed to perform many different ways of educating different aged people about chronic wounds and synthetic biology in general. We planned and executed workshops for young children as well as teens, that we held in Heureka, and workshops for science journalists to get a better understanding of basic synthetic biology. We have had presentations for the Finnish biology Olympics team, and for students in synthetic biology at Aalto university as well as in two microbiology courses at the University of Helsinki. We also held a joint talk for the general public at the Science Basement talks in Helsinki, as well as presented our project at the entrepreneur event Slush in Helsinki.
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Best Modelling

Connecting dry lab and wet lab work to achieve the best in our DARPin design has been one of the key goals of our project. By designing an optimised DARPin library we have set the base for the ribosome display in the lab. Modelling of the protein structure of different DARPins and further in silico protein-peptide docking provided insights into molecular characteristics and helped us investigate which DARPin might be the best candidate for binding AIP. We further collaborated with the TU Dresden iGEM team to model reaction-diffusion dynamics of the applied DARPin in the wound. This gave us valuable feedback on how to implement treatment, i.e. how to administer the DARPins to the wound and in which concentration.
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Best Integrated Human Practice

Our team has throughout the project done integrated human practice work. As the project has gone further, we have contacted and discussed with relevant stakeholders about our project and gotten a lot of valuable feedback about how to go further to get the best product in the end. It was also most important for us to get the point of view from all the involved people. Therefore, we have consulted the researchers, doctors, nurses, and of course patients and relatives who handle chronic wounds in their daily life. We wanted based on the feedback and discussions to improve our idea and product, so it could be as practical but as effective as possible and user-friendly. We believe therefore that we have the best-integrated human practice work.
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Best new Basic Part

We aimed to contribute with new basic parts mostly related to ribosome display, for future teams to use in their projects. We found from literature, tested, and proved that our contributed spacer sequence is sufficient for performing ribosome display. The part is on the shorter side when it comes to spacers used in ribosome display, however, we showed that it was long enough to be used, and it can be easily ordered without any needed modifications on the codons.
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Best new Composite Part

Our team built out of existing and our new contributed basic parts a GFP-binding DARPin “ready for ribosome display” composite part. The part includes all needed basic parts for performing a ribosome display of the DARPin against its GFP target. The composite part can be used easily for both testing and practising ribosome display as well as serve as a control, as it is known from the literature to bind.
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Best Part Collection

We contributed with loads of new basic parts and composite parts, including two novel proteins with affinity for the signalling molecule AIP. We believe this collection that we have built suitable for ribosome display for DARPin, as well as parts for testing the function of the DARPins, can be considered the best part collection.
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Supporting Entrepreneurship

As a group we aimed to form our project to meet the needs in the real world. We have had discussions with start-up expert Jouni Lounasmaa to get a better idea of how to form our project also from an entrepreneur's point of view. For supporting entrepreneurship, we have done background research on the market that we plan to target. To support this we have done both industry analysis and general market analysis which includes competitor analysis and evaluation of trends and how the market fluctuations usually go. We have done a business plan and marketing model and concluded the future developments needed before entering the market.
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