The iGEM Phototroph Community was conceptualized and founded by iGEM teams Marburg (overgrad grand prize winners ‘21) and Bielefeld (top 10 rank ‘21) in 2021. Both teams were some of the few that chose to work with plants. Their vision was to provide iGEM teams working with phototrophic chassis – microalgae, cyanobacteria, and higher plants – a space to connect to one another, speak with experts in the field to get advice and troubleshoot their projects, and to create resources that would be valuable for iGEM teams wanting to work with phototrophs in the years ahead.

Phototrophic organisms are an unpopular chassis to work with in the iGEM competition because they grow slowly compared to bacterial species and require specialized protocols for cloning and transformation, many of which have yet to be standardized in the literature. In order to make it easier for teams to work with phototrophs, the iGEM Phototroph Community has been dedicated to creating a standardized set of protocols that is annually reviewed and expanded upon in the form of the Phototroph Community handbook. The first edition of the handbook, written in 2021, was 160 pages long and included contributions from 11 iGEM teams (including ASU iGEM 2021) from around the world.

View the Phototroph Community handbook here.

Our first online meetup was hosted on July 30, 2022. Cedric Brinkmann (iGEM Marburg 2021) started off the event by detailing a brief history of the Phototroph community and an overview of OpenPlast, iGEM Marburg’s project from 2021. We also had René Inckemann (iGEM Marburg Instructor 2021) from the iGEM Plant SynBio Subcommittee talk about how the group can support teams working with phototrophic chassis. René also led a group discussion to get feedback from teams on what other services the Plant Subcommittee can provide. Afterwards, the teams in attendance gave 5-7 minute project pitches, followed by Q&A sessions to answer questions from other attendees. Lastly, we had another group discussion to determine which teams were interested in contributing to this large-scale handbook and video protocol collaboration, and what those contributions would look like

The second online meetup happened on August 20, 2022, and was designed to be a troubleshooting event where teams could get specific advice related to their needs. This event was scheduled to be in late August, as this is often the point in the competition where teams begin to face issues in getting expected lab results. The event began with introductory talks from guest speakers Dr. Luis De Stefano (UPCH, Plant specialist) and Dr. Mitra Tabatabaee (UBCO), who gave inspiring talks on how to deal with various roadblocks in research and strategies to overcome them. We also had guest experts to assist with more specific issues: Dr. Everett Eustance (ASU, Algae specialist) and Santiago Ochoa (ASU, Cloning specialist). These experts provided feedback to teams in troubleshooting breakout sessions. After the troubleshooting session, we regrouped to discuss the guidelines and deadlines associated with the handbook and video protocol additions.

Our final event, the Phototroph Community Virtual Conference, was held on August 27, 2022. While the actual conference was held over Zoom, we collaborated with Biocord to stream this event on their platform as well for non-iGEMers to watch. The special event featured talks from experts in academia and industry specializing in synthetic biology with plants, microalgae, cyanobacteria and more! Guest speakers included Dr. Jake Wintermute (Ginkgo Bioworks), Dr. Moritz Koch (BASF), and Dr. Henrik Toft Simonsen (DTU). After the series of guest talks, attending iGEM teams had the chance to showcase their 2022 projects to our speakers in order to receive feedback on their work and prepare for their presentations at the Grand Jamboree. Over the course of the five-hour event, we hosted a total of almost 60 attendees from Biocord and Zoom.

Alongside the personal benefits that teams saw from being part of the Phototroph Community, they also had the chance to give back by preparing protocols and other informational chapters for future teams to learn from. These contributions came in the form of written chapters, that were integrated directly into the existing written handbook, as well as in videos, which are available for viewing on the community’s YouTube page, and are linked within online copies of the handbook as well.

The Phototroph Community Handbook is an incredibly valuable resource for teams because it is a living document of background information, protocols, and experimental procedures compiled from iGEM teams all over the world. In 2022, 8 teams helped contribute to volume II of the handbook, adding a total of almost 40 pages worth of information to the initial document created in 2021. These contributions expanded on the cultivation of cyanobacteria and plants, the transformation of microalgae and higher plants, the evolution of phototrophic organisms and other novel cloning methods, including Golden Braid 2.0.

In 2021, iGEM Marburg and iGEM Bielefeld created the Phototroph Badges as a means of recognizing the efforts made by Phototroph teams and having their contributions easily visible on their Wiki pages. For the 2022 season, UBCO and ASU re-designed these four badges to reflect the contributions made by the teams, as well as to be more inclusive for teams working with non-plant phototrophs.

The four badges we distributed this year are the Community, Presentation, Handbook and Organization badges. The Community badge was earned by joining the Phototroph Community workspace on Slack. The Presentation badge was earned by teams who presented their project at the Virtual Conference. The Handbook badge was earned by the teams who helped write the Phototroph Handbook, passing on their knowledge and experience to future iGEM teams. The Organization badge is exclusive to ASU iGEM and UBCO iGEM for leading the community, planning the meetups and conference, managing the Slack workspace, and compiling additions to the community handbook.

In 2022, ASU and UBCO were able to successfully expand on the initial efforts of the Phototroph Community put forth by Marburg and Bielefeld. For the 2023 competition, we plan to pass on leadership of the community to two more phototroph teams to ensure that this space is maintained for future iGEMers to benefit from.

We hope that our work this year – hosting events, maintaining an active discourse via Slack, and writing the second volume of the Phototroph Community Handbook – give future iGEM teams the ability to choose to work with phototrophic chassis without fear of feeling unsupported or lost during the competition cycle. We plan to remain active on the Phototroph Community Slack workspace as needed to provide insight and advice! We also plan to have volume II of the community handbook posted on the iGEM Plant Subcommittee’s website to increase its visibility among new iGEM teams.

Most importantly, we look forward to supporting future iterations of the Phototroph Community as it continues to grow and flourish!

Our partnership with QGEM (team Queens_Canada) began early in the competition cycle when we connected with them over Slack after noticing that both of our teams were dedicated to solving water quality issues in rural and indigenous communities. Because our projects attempted to tackle that issue in vastly different ways, there unfortunately wasn’t much room for a productive wet lab collaboration between our teams. However, we both shared interest in science communication and educating the public about the water contamination issues that often go unnoticed in these communities.

In Arizona, much of the heavy metal contamination in water is seen in areas with historic mining activity, which also happens to be where many indigenous communities like the Navajo Nation reside. Our team was unfortunately unable to communicate directly with this portion of our target population due to existing institutional restrictions on who can interface with indigenous groups. Because we could not speak to those who live in the communities impacted by water contamination, we decided to create a podcast where we could discuss the science behind bioremediation for a larger public audience to educate them on water quality issues.

We decided to reach out to academic professionals in synthetic biology, metabolic engineering, water quality processing, and bioethics in order to present a comprehensive set of information to our listeners. Our first interview was with Dr. Stephen Brown of Queen’s University, whose research concerns organic particle detection in water sources through specifically-designed instruments and biochemical assays. We wanted to speak with Dr. Brown because his experience in water sample analysis and decontamination strategies was particularly relevant to our topic, and his answers to our questions were incredibly insightful!

We also had the chance to speak to Dr. Arul Varman, a professor at ASU’s chemical engineering department who works on engineering microorganisms to sustainably produce chemicals and biofuels. Though Dr. Varman’s research is not directly related to bioremediation, his work heavily involves metabolic engineering and synbio. His ability to explain how and why organisms are engineered to gain new functions alongside potential solutions these organisms can provide was very valuable to us.

Another one of the guests we were able to speak with was Dr. Rosa Krajmalnik-Brown (who also goes by Dr. Rosy), a professor in civil and environmental engineering at ASU. Dr. Rosy’s research encompasses many topics, but we spoke to her to gain a better understanding of her research in the biodegradation of water contaminants and her approach towards using synbio vs. traditional environmental engineering techniques to solve problems.

Our final guest on the podcast was Dr. Lalitha Sundaram, a research associate at Cambridge University whose work focuses on the concept of biological risk – that is, assessing the potential risks that accompany new and emerging biotechnologies. While her perspectives on bioethics were especially important in our discussions of synbio and bioremediation, Dr. Sundaram had also worked on a project with the University of Cambridge and Edinburgh to develop a novel arsenic biosensor for people living in regions with contaminated water sources to test their water quality before consumption. This was extremely relevant to our own iGEM project this year, and we were happy to hear more details of her endeavors during the interview.

The interviews conducted with Dr. Brown, Dr. Varman, Dr. Rosy, and Dr. Sundaram were compiled and organized into a series of episodes that discuss a myriad of topics, ranging from how organisms are engineered to the bioethical considerations of bioremediation and everything in between.

The episodes each provide a unique perspective into a different aspect of water bioremediation, allowing listeners to fully understand how synbio can be used as a powerful means of solving water quality issues.

We hope that this introduction serves as a resource that sparks interest in listeners with little science background, and inspires future iGEMers to take on the challenge of working on projects related to bioremediation.

Listen to the episodes on our education and communication page here.