Partnership with UTokyo
During the year we collaborated with UTokyo on multiple aspects of our project to help each other elevate our project designs and methods. The UTokyo team also worked with DNA detection but used another system called synTALEN while we used Zinc-fingers that bind to the DNA. UTokyo performed comparative tests of the two systems which gave valuable feedback on the sensitivity and applicability of our design. Furthermore they tested and provided feedback to our modeling project and were able to use it on their design. Read more about our partnership in the Partnership section!
The Transcriptome blog
Together with iGEM UNILausanne we operated the collective blog, The Transcriptome, that our teams have managed together since 2020. The blog already offers a variety of posts about different science subjects that the teams from previous years have written, and we were all very excited to expand the archive with new interesting subjects!
Through the blog, we wish to share scientific information and technological news, explain controversial topics and inspire people regardless of whether they have a scientific background or not. The fundamental idea of the blog is to create a space for the general public where science is accessible and complicated or complex concepts are written in an inclusive and understandable manner. Our strategy is to use simple language in all articles and either explain all technical terms or avoid them by using a synonym that is more commonplace. We also wish to provide context and background to each topic so that every post can be read independently and without previous knowledge.
This year, one of our main goals was to increase the accessibility and availability of the blog. We wanted to be able to offer people from all over the world articles in their native languages. We strived to provide a large selection of language options on each post. For one thing, we translated all articles to our own native languages Swedish and French. But we also reached out to many other teams from all over the world and asked them to translate posts to their native languages. It was fantastic working with all teams and we were astonished by all the help and positive feedback we received from other iGEM teams! Thank you so much to all teams that helped us make our vision come alive by providing us with translations into your native languages!
Collection of some translated articles
With the iGEM teams Freiburg and Patras we agreed on more serious collaborations, which are explained in more detail further down.
We worked closely with iGEM UNIL to manage the blog and it was a true delight to get to know their team members and bring our common vision to life! We communicated on a daily basis to discuss and decide on decisions and update each other on things that happened or conversations we had with the helping teams. We had so much fun expressing ourselves on the blog and sharing our articles on social media. We really had the same vision for the blog and supported each other when striving to reach these common goals. We were both overjoyed when we found out we breached the previous reader record one month. Every week we published a new article. One member from each team cooperated on writing about something they both found interesting. Since almost all members from both teams participated as authors, we had a broad range of interests and expertise working on the posts which resulted in a wide range of new topics on the blog.
Additional help from the Freiburg and Patras teams
We are so happy to be able to present German and Greek as completely new language options to the blog!
We received a lot of help with the transcriptome blog from the German team Freiburg. They were a true asset when setting up the Transcriptome blog in German including all of the infrastructure, menu options and informational pages. Out of nothing, the Freiburg team transformed the German version of the blog to be on equal footing with the standard English version and offer all of the things the English version does. They also translated articles continuously as we published. They were so reliable and we loved working with them so much that we and team UNILausanne agreed to invite them to write some articles with us which are now available on the blog.
This year we also collaborated with team Patras to increase the reach and inclusivity of the transcriptome blog by making Greek available as a language option on the blog. We were amazed over Evaggelia Katri from the Patras team’s fantastic work with the translations! She translated a big portion of our posts to Greek that are now available on the blog.
Exchange of competence for languages with Waseda_Tokyo team
We realised that both we and the Waseda Tokyo team could benefit from a collaboration where we could utilise each other’s knowledge of languages to reach people in other countries. Team Waseda Tokyo works with sexual education and fertility treatments and needed help translating a questionnaire to reach more people and get more data for their study. We, along with team UNILausanne, helped them translate their questionnaire to Swedish, French, Spanish, Italian and German and also share it on our social media in exchange for translations of five of our blog posts to Japanese.
Collaboration Stockholm - Riedia
Together with the iGEM team from Stockholm we partnered with the startup company Rieda from Sweden. Their business idea is a web page and mobile application where Swedish news and articles are published in English so international students in Sweden can read news and articles about their interests. Their goal is to increase non-Swedish speakers’ inclusion in society by being able to stay updated on local happenings.
Riedia is a start up from KTH in Stockholm and is growing rapidly since they launched their app this summer. Riedia are present in both Stockholm and Gothenburg and we were therefore invited to this collaboration by team iGEM Stockholm who had met them on the KTH Campus. The Stockholm team thought both of our teams could benefit from a collaboration with this start up as well as saw it as something they liked to support as they are an iGEM team with many international students and thought the company’s aim aligned with the iGEM spirit of inclusivity. We were very happy to participate in this collaboration thet Stockholm proposed! Riedia agreed to provide us both with a platform to share a few articles about synthetic biology and recruitment to our iGEM teams. In exchange our teams would advertise their app on our social media. We and Stockholm agreed to write a few posts together as that would be more fun. Unfortunately, the articles was not posted before the wiki freeze but will be available on the Riedia web page.
Minor collaborations and participation in social media challenges
iGEM Patras MED: World DNA day and Applications of synthetic biology in diagnostics
For the international DNA day the 25th of April we participated in iGEM Patras Medicine’s Instagram post featuring a fact sheet about DNA.
We also participated as an example of how synthetic biology can be applied in the diagnostics field to their poster about Synthetic biology in Diagnostics that was posted to their Instagram page.
iGEM Patras: Translate comic
Another collaborative education initiative that we contributed to was the Synthetic Biology Mischief comic book. The comic was written by Despoina Chrysanthou-Tsakiridou and Ioanna Nika, and was illustrated by Christina Tsianava of the 2022 iGEM Patras team. The aim of the comic was to educate and inspire children with synthetic biology and science. Our team’s contribution to the comic was mainly through translating it to Swedish, but also through proof-reading the English version.
Visit from Plushy the microbe!
We hosted Plushy the microbe during its visit to Sweden! Plushy the microbe is a plushy in the shape of a microbe from team Aachen in Germany. Their idea was to increase the knowledge and awareness of GMO and synthetic biology in society by sending Plushy to different teams. The team would add a flagellum to its body, take a picture and share it along with a text about microbes in the team’s native language as well as English.
We took Plushy to see the fountain of Poseidon on Avenyn, one of the most famous places in Gothenburg and a must see if you visit the city. We added a pink and blue flagellum to its body so it would always remember us. We then sent him away on new adventures in Austria where he would be staying with iGEM team BOKU-Vienna.
Lund dictionary
Team Lund from Sweden, together with team Paris-Saclay came up with the great initiative to create a synthetic biology dictionary for future iGEM teams and the public. iGEM is a competition where the teams benefit from diversity, both ethnic diversity and expertise in different fields. But members from another field than biology may struggle with keeping up and grasping technical terms and concepts. The dictionary aims to close this gap by providing team members with definitions of common terms from the synthetic biology field. Our contribution to this project was mainly to suggest terms to include in the dictionary. The dictionary is available through this link!
Geo book
Team MIT_MAHE’s iGEM team reached out to us regarding a collaborative Geo Book they are writing for the community in the spirit of sharing and understanding seafood within the context of different cuisines and localities. They describe the initiative as a way to celebrate diversity and bring more recognition to what affects our favourite palates of seafood. We contributed to this fun project by writing about one of Sweden’s most traditional seafood dishes, the herring. In Sweden we eat herring on every special holiday; Easter, Midsummer, Christmas... Mostly it is served pickled, but on certain occasions we also bring out the (in)famous fermented herring that split the Swedish society in two regarding whether it is the most awful dish ever created by mankind or if it is a delicious delicacy. We hope that every reader has a fruitful experience! The booklet is available by clicking on this link!