Once we settled on an idea for iGEM 2022, we started thinking about the items and equipment we will need through the year. This resulted in us being sure that we will do wet-lab work. However, we do not have a strong background in that field. Consequently, we started thinking about people who would help us in it. We had many choices, but none of them had both the scientific background and knowledge of the iGEM competition. Later, we knew that team CU_Egypt will be participating in this year's competition. That was when the partnership started. When we contacted them, they told us that there project is about Alzheimer's disease, which reinforced the idea of our partnership as we are medical students with full background about Alzheimer's.
Through the year, we had multiple meetings with team CU_Egypt. We co-operated on many levels and in several aspects to improve both of our projects as much as possible, starting from the brainstorming process, all the way through dry-lab and reaching the wet-lab work. We did not only share information, we also shared resources, helpful papers and textbooks to benefit each other. We invited them to our Egyptian meet-up, where they presented their project idea to the attendants, and received feedbacks about it. The team members got to know each other and some of them even became friends through the meet-up, which opened more doors to our partnership.
Team CU_Egypt helped us with our lab work as we found that we were missing some crucial parts,Anti-Crispr Protein, for our project. Moreover, we had consumed all our free iGEM budget on IDT. We reached out to them and explained our situation. Fortunately, they had some extra budget and ordered the parts for us from their own budget. Still, we had problems with the timing of the shipment as it was supposed to arrive on 10th of October, but the customs procedures would take a couple of days. We reported the problem our PI, Dr. Khaled Shukry, and he had contacts who facilitated the procedures and managed to accelerate everything and we received the parts on the same day of their arrival.
In the Egyptian meet-up, team CU_Egypt attended our Synbio course. Also, they joined our Mathematical Modeling Workshop presented by Ahmed Gamal Mattar. Finally, they benefited from Dr. Mohamed Al-Hadidy's tutorial on Galaxy tool for next generation sequencing.
As mentioned before, they are working on Alzheimer's disease. Brilliantly, they decided to make a book about the disease. So, they got in touch with us and sent us a version of their book, "Throwback Memories". We read the book and offered them some adjustments to it. Not only that, we also wrote extra pages for the book as there were some medicine related topics that we could address more efficiently based on us being medical students.
