Partnership with TUDelft

We teamed up with team SPYKE from TU Delft for a mutually beneficial partnership based on a common subject in both our projects: transcription factors. We provided team SPYKE with help in predicting TF-ligand interactions and finding alternative operator sequences with a stronger binding to their TF. SPYKE provided us with information on how to purify our TF and send it to them, so that they could use their ITC machine to test the binding affinities of our sTF and furfural. Read more about our partnership here.

Mentoring a new iGEM team ELTE - Hungary

We had the honor of mentoring the newly created ELTE iGEM team from Hungary. At the beginning of working on an iGEM project, students can be confused about how they should organize the work of the group, and divide the tasks they have to focus on. Thus we made sure to answer all the questions they had, and we arranged an online meeting where we gave an introduction to the iGEM world. After our presentation, we also had a great discussion about our ideas and challenges we faced. Our team made sure to arrange monthly meetings with ELTE to check-in on their progress and help with any upcoming obstacles as much as possible.

BioBrick tutorial 2022

After a 2 year long hiatus, we hosted the 8th annual DTU BioBrick tutorial between April 22nd-24th, where the lovely iGEM teams from Chalmers-Gothenburg, UCopenhagen and Stockholm participated. The schedule was filled with a mixture of laboratory, workshops, teambuilding to introduce the teams to iGEM as well as to one another, and to set up avenues for further collaboration amongst the teams.

The first day, Friday, the teams met up and were given presentations about iGEM and some different standards in cloning strategies. This was followed by a pizza dinner, beer tasting and social activities to introduce the teams to one another. The beer was provided by Tim Hobley from our very own DTU brewery.

Saturday the teams were introduced to USER cloning and tasked with performing USER cloning in our laboratories. Before we went to do the USER cloning in the laboratory, a safety presentation was given to make sure proper procedures were followed. While the cultures grew, all participated in workshops such as “Pitching” and “What is human practices?” by Kyle Rothschild-Mancinelli. We finished the day with a promo video workshop, which was a way for the teams to practice developing a framework and narrative for a promo video that they could use in their own projects.

On Sunday we had a Q&A panel discussion session with iGEM alumni from DTU Biobuilders (Marcus meldom, Jacob Mejlsted and Katarzyna Wisniewska) and our supervisor Christopher Workman. In this session they discussed with the participants, on what approaches they’ve taken, and shared tips and tricks on how to make projects successful. This was followed by a lunch, a photo session and the dispersal of the teams back to their homes. The complete schedule for the Biobrick tutorial can be seen here

iGEM European Meetup Hamburg

iGEM Hamburg organized the iGEM European Meetup between the 1st and 3rd July 2022 at Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY. 16 different iGEM teams around Europe, iGEM Ambassadors, GASB association as well as many Scientist in the field of Synthetic Biology (SynBio) participated in the event.

During the weekend Scientific talks were given from experts in the field of SynBio. These experts included Thomas Gorochowski (University of Bristol, UK), Nico Claassens (Wageningen University, Netherlands), Vitor Pinheiro (KU Leuven, Belgium), Nicolas Krink (Technical University of Denmark) and Anthony C. Forster (Uppsala University, Sweden)

Every iGEM team was tasked with creating and giving an elevator pitch of their project. Afterwards a poster session was held, where the posters from iGEM Toulouse and Wageningen were selected as the best ones.

Our hosts, iGEM Hamburg, worked very hard during the weekend. They made sure to keep the schedule on plan and that everything ran smoothly. They also prepared a SynBio Decathlon consisting of laboratory-inspired games, in which all the iGEM teams got to know each other and improve their scientific skills. The full schedule can be found in this pdf.

We created excellent connections with other iGEM colleagues thanks to this event and had a great time.

Nordic iGEM conference, Linköping

The Nordic iGEM Conference is an annual conference with a changing location each year. This year it was held by the Linköping iGEM team, between the 5th and 7th of August. The event included a wide variety of activities, from presentations about various interesting topics by different PhDs, to a safety workshop, a race through the city of Linköping and most importantly: a conference to present your team's project. It is tradition for the winning team of the best presentation prize to host the next year’s NIC conference, and this time it was the University of Copenhagen iGEM that won the honor.

The Linköping were excellent hosts and worked very hard on creating a joyous and awesome conference for all the other nordic teams to participate in.

Meet-up with UCopenhagen and Lund at Ampliqon

On the 30th of September, we met up with UCopenhagen and Lund at Ampliqon which is a Danish biotech company and manufacturer of PCR enzymes and laboratory reagents, as well as a company that has sponsored many nordic iGEM teams. During our visit, we and the other two teams were allowed to present and discuss our projects to the employees. We also got a great introduction of the different products and work going on at Ampliqon, and a tour around their company’s facilities, thereby getting insight into the manufacturing processes of Ampliqon’s products. Socializing and networking gave us a great opportunity to share knowledge and enthusiasm for synthetic and molecular biology, as well as to “break down” the barriers between students and employees of a biotech company.

Participation in iGEM InterLab study

We took part in the 2022 iGEM InterLab study for which we carried out and submitted the results of “Experiment 3” and “Calibration”