On this page our team gathered information and links to help the iGEM Judges review our results. Our team’s evaluation for medals:




Bronze #1 – Competiton Deliverables

Our team fulfilled by delivering the followings by the specified deadline


Bronze #2 – Project Attributions

https://2022.igem.wiki/elte/attributions

We think our team met this criterion because we described how each team member and our supporters contributed to the success of our project. On our wiki page, we introduced each team member and listed their field of activities. Moreover, we summarized these activities in a table to make them more transparent. We briefly introduced our Principal Instructor Dr. László Nyitray, our mentors, and our main sponsors the Eötvös Loránd University and The Gedeon Richter Plc. In addition, we listed all those who helped us during the competition, with advice, resources, sponsorship, and kind help.


Bronze #3 – Project Descriptions

https://2022.igem.wiki/elte/description

We think our Team met the Project Description criterion because we gave a clear and concise description of our project, which is titled NanoBlade. We wrote about the problem we addressed through synthetic biology, and why it is important for our Team. We gave an overview indicating why we decided to work on targeted tumor therapy and listed the specific aspects and where our key ideas were coming from. Our project is composed of two elements: a detecting device, called Nanobody Display System, and a drug delivery device, called Blade Expression System, and we have shown their main features and highlighted their origins.


Bronze #4 – Contribution

https://2022.igem.wiki/elte/contribution

Our Team has contributed in many ways to the synthetic biology community, therefore we think we met the Contribution criteria:

To know more about them, please visit our Parts page.




Silver #1 – Engineering success

https://2022.igem.wiki/elte/engineering

We think our Team met the Engineering Success criteria because we made the effort to follow the engineering design cycle. We described how we overcame specific problems in DNA work by going through not one but five iterations of the cycle, where we improved or changed for example our plasmid isolation protocol and the cloning bacterial strain we used. This shows that we tried to solve the problems that arise during our lab work. In our team’s project, we also used the same methodology in the development of our irradiation setup which included two iterations.


Silver #2 – Collaboration

https://2022.igem.wiki/elte/collaborations

Throughout the competition, we had several engagements with other iGEM teams. We had a mentor team, the DTU-Denmark, they helped us with our first steps, we could ask any questions, and they guided our team through the iGEM season. We hosted virtual meetups where we shared our projects with other teams, changed ideas, and learned about interesting projects. On top of that, we organized a meetup for the Eastern-European Teams which provided an opportunity to get to know each other and build relationships before the Grand Jamboree.


Silver #3 – Human Practices

https://2022.igem.wiki/elte/human-practices

We investigated our project at great lengths from a literature viewpoint and reached out to experts for scientific values and design ideas. Many inspired us during the design phase and the implementation gave us useful tips and ideas. We also wrote about the social and moral values we had in mind when designing our project and we surveyed the opinion of our community to ensure our values are appropriate. With the answers to our questionnaire, we had evidence that our project could be good for our community, and they saw the potential in our project.


Silver #4 – Proposed Implementation

https://2022.igem.wiki/elte/implementation

We think our team met the Proposed Implementation criterion, as we outlined a possible implementation for our project. As our project is a cancer diagnostics and therapeutics system we designed it thinking of our proposed end users. We described our opinion on how we would implement our project in the real world, and what safety aspects we considered. We made a survey where we asked questions about our community’s opinion about how they relate to our project, and the answer helped us to improve our ideas for the implementation.




Gold #1 – Integrated Human Practices

https://2022.igem.wiki/elte/human-practices

We think our team met the Integrated Human Practices criterion because we raised many questions about the thoughts of others during our investigation through the competition. We observed multiple opinions and many outtakes led our project to different paths, so our project was constantly formed. Our team mainly responded to the reflections of interviews with professionals and of the results of our survey, where we asked the personal opinion of our community members about several aspects of our project. These helped with the designing part, and we could keep in mind some of the community’s desires, so we could create a really useful project.


Gold #2 - Project Modeling

https://2022.igem.wiki/elte/model

Our team met the Project Modeling criterion because our project was supported by two types of models. On the one hand, our team created a molecular visualization model of our Nanobody Display System, and Cytolysin A which is the key protein of our project’s therapy part, and the real-life model could help them better understand our project. On the other hand, our team built a simulation model about light-inducible protein expression. We would like to build a model that includes the most essential elements of our system with the help of a literature example. We used multiple softwares for the mathematical modeling, and in the next step, we synchronized our model with real measured data. In the last step, we made some improvements to our system.



Gold #3 – Education and Communication

https://2022.igem.wiki/elte/communication

Before our team planned our project’s education and communication part, we processed the response to our Human Practices questionnaire. That is how we found out that the basic concepts of synthetic biology are not clear to our community and they are unfamiliar with many genetically modified organisms. Therefore, we decided to enroll as presenters at this year’s European Researcher’s Night. Our focus was to familiarize the visitors with synthetic biology in general, its applications, and the tools we often use in our work. For this event, we have designed our materials to be interesting for young children and adults alike. In addition, we organized a lecture for a high school class, where we talked about our project and synthetic biology in a broader sense.


Gold #4 – Partnership

https://2022.igem.wiki/elte/partnership

Throughout the competition, our collaboration with Team UPenn grew into a partnership with mutually beneficial experiments. Team UPenn sent us their Photocrete-luciferase plasmid and its protocols. Working with their plasmid, we performed measurements on our illumination system. During the partnership, the two teams were in continuous contact, we transfected the DNA sent by the Upenn Team and prepared the HEKT cells to perform the measurements. Unfortunately, due to postal delays, the measurements could only be scheduled for mid-October.




Best Education

https://2022.igem.wiki/elte/education

As we processed the response to our Human Practices questionnaire we found out that the basic concepts of synthetic biology are not clear to our community and they are unfamiliar with many genetically modified organisms. Therefore we enrolled as presenters at this year’s European Researcher’s Night, where through playful tasks, we introduced the participants to the basics of synthetic biology. In addition, we held an interactive presentation for a high school class to learn more about GMOs. For both of these programs, we created informational posters which we shared on our wiki page. Based on these, we think that our team is eligible for this prize.


Best Hardware

https://2022.igem.wiki/elte/hardware

We think our team is eligible for this prize because we have developed two different easy-to-use, easy-to-build irradiation systems. These are useful in optogenetic research even for future iGEM teams, and these are far more accessible than the ones in the literature on optogenetic instruments. Our hardwares are cost-efficient and quick and easy to assemble. Another advantage of the first hardware it’s modularity and the second hardware is easily expandable and programmable.


Inclusivity

https://2022.igem.wiki/elte/inclusivity

We think we are eligible for this prize as we made great efforts to make our project inclusive towards others. First, we translated our video into 11 languages: English, Hungarian, French, Spanish, Italian, German, Slovak, Serbian, Croatian, Russian, and Arabic. These are not just widely spoken ones but also ones that are either frequently spoken in the Eastern-European region or many people speak in Hungary as a second language or they culturally relate to it. We also considered it important to be open to the hearing-impaired community as our video has a sign-language cover.


Best Integrated Human Practices

https://2022.igem.wiki/elte/human-practices

Human practices were decisive for us throughout our iGEM work and influenced almost all details of our project. We integrated Human practices into our Hardware, Design, Safety, Implementation, and Education activities. Already in the planning phase of our project, we contacted experts who helped us to make critical design decisions. We also used a questionnaire to collect the opinions of our potential users, the public, so that we could provide a more appropriate therapeutic option. In order to adequately meet the needs expressed in the questionnaire, we consulted additional experts. For example, we also asked a doctor for his opinion on the subject, who was able to integrate the needs of patients better into our project. Thus, by the end of our project, we have a complex therapeutic solution that aligns with stakeholder needs.


Model

https://2022.igem.wiki/elte/model

BLADE Expression System is the therapeutic device of our project called NanoBlade, with it we aimed to deliver a cytotoxic protein into the tumor environment in a precise, light-controlled manner. During the competition, we tried to gain the most possible information about our construct, and how could it be operated. We wanted to model (1) how much protein can be produced with our system, and (2) how much light is needed for effective protein production, which both are very important aspects since they affect NanoBlade usability and the safety measures which must be addressed. We think our model might be eligible for this special prize, since we are not aware of any previous project which simulated light-induced protein production, and only a few literary examples are available on the topic, so our approach was highly exploratory.
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