Throughout this iGEM season, our team had many opportunities to exchange and collaborate with
other iGEM teams.
The UBCO team reached out to us, as both our projects handled bioluminescence. Like us, they aim to produce light from life. Their project is called Life Bulb: they aim at using microorganisms that are responsible for producing oxygen while taking up CO2, in order to produce light. Their project seemed very interesting, and in line with ours. That is why both our teams decided to organize a virtual meeting, on the 23rd of June. During this video call, we both presented our projects and gave feedback concerning the presentation and the project. We asked questions and answered them, and addressed issues that both teams had. We felt that this meeting helped us, in the sense that both our teams understood the potential of bioluminescence, and its concrete applications. We learned a lot from this meeting, and it made us think about aspects of our project, such as containment and the application of bioluminescence our team is working on. They also gave us the idea that we could change luminescence color, and this could be a potential extension to our project. This was also our first project presentation in English, so this was very beneficial for us.
We also posted an Instagram post with UBCO. In this post, we explained the history of bioluminescence research, where it can be found in nature, and what are the emerging biotechnologies using bioluminescence. Together, we are hoping to be able to educate people around the potential of bioluminescence and its potential applications.
We also joined the phototroph community that UBCO had
co-founded, and had access to shared protocols and tips. As we didn’t work on plants that early in
the iGEM season, we couldn’t contribute to the community that much.
This team publishes an annual journal called
MSP-Vector. The aim of this journal is to put out a collection of high quality articles, that
are written and then reviewed by iGEM teams. Our team wrote an article and submitted it to the
competition. You can find our article below. We also reviewed articles from other iGEM teams.
We worked on this collaboration over 3 months (June-September), and it was very
enriching for us and for other teams. We were given the opportunity to work on a scientific article,
and practice putting our work and research into words. The criticism we received from the peer-reviewing
was very constructive for us, and we thank all the iGEM teams that reviewed our article for their
help in making sure our article was of high level. We also enjoyed reviewing 4 articles from other
iGEM teams, and it taught us to keep a critical mind and give advice. We hope the reviews we sent
helped other teams improve their articles and the general presentation of their project.
We learned a lot from this collaboration, and we would like to thank MSP-Maastricht for
organizing this annual journal.
On the 14th of June, we were contacted by another
french team, Aix-Marseille, who was in urgent need of DNA synthesis, as they had to advance
their wet lab as much as possible, and their IDT account was not yet active. Thankfully, as our IDT
account was already active, we were able to quickly order the DNA sequences they needed, to
make sure they could move forward with their experiences as fast as possible.
We were happy to be able to help them out, when they needed urgent help.
After the promotional videos of the different iGEM
teams were released on Video Universe, we took the time to go through them to find thematics close
to our project. We were very interested in the project that iGEM Patras were working on and
contacted them. We organized a virtual meetup on the 23rd of September.
Their project, PAGGAIA, is based on precision agriculture, notably soil sampling and
sequencing. During this virtual meetup, both teams presented their project, and talked through the
human practices part of the projects. This meeting was interesting, as we understood how different
approaches and techniques could contribute towards developing more responsible and sustainable
agricultural practices. Their project relies on e-technologies and we saw that both projects were
compatible and could even be implemented together. For example, their tool could be used to
precisely collect samples from potentially infected crops, and get images. Then, thanks to our tool,
with these samples and images, we could get as much knowledge as we can about the propagation of
this particular pathogen. Finally, throughout all the studies and with time, their machine learning
could collect data provided by FIAT LUX and learn from it so that in the end, it could propose a
plan of action for a new unknown pathogen based on decisions taken, comparing and making a fusion of
its knowledge. It could enable us to get information on how to handle new unknown cultivable
phytopathogens.
We were lucky to be able to participate in
the French iGEM meet-up, organized by Toulouse_INSA-UPS, from the 7th to the
9th of July.
Aside from the fact that we loved meeting so many french teams, we also found this
meet-up to be particularly enriching. We had the opportunity to practice presenting our team
poster, and also practice pitching our project in front of the other iGEM teams, as well as
professors, people from the biology industry and students who had already taken part in the
iGEM competition. This enabled us to have varied points of view from many different people,
which was very enriching for our project. We particularly enjoyed talking with iGEM
Alumnis who gave us insight into the values of the iGEM competition and what was
expected of us. They gave us immensely positive feedback and also very constructive advice,
which was particularly useful when preparing our presentation for the Giant Jamboree, in
front of the judges. We also saw what needed adjusting in our presentation, and what was not
clear enough. It was also good practice for the questions-and-answers part of the
presentation. On the other hand, we enjoyed giving feedback to the other teams, and making
sure that all of our presentations were as good as they could be!
Finally, it was the first time meeting other iGEM teams, and we loved exchanging
with them about the iGEM competition, and about their projects. We were able to ask
questions about things we were not sure about (as we felt that the Toulouse team had a lot
of experience with the iGEM competition), and saw that we had the same problems, and also
the same motivation. We were able to connect with them, in the context of an international
competition.
We learned so much from this meet-up, and we are very grateful that the
Toulouse_INSA-UPS team organized this meet-up.
With a few other French iGEM teams, we
were invited to present and pitch our project at the SynBio symposium in Paris, on
the 14th of September.
Again, being able to present our project in front of other iGEM teams was very
enriching for us, and we learned a lot. We were able to practice the changes we had made
after our previous experience, learn what was still not clear enough, and practiced
answering detailed and more scientific questions about the project.
We also met a few other Parisian iGEM teams, and we loved connecting and
exchanging with them over the iGEM competition.
The Thailand_RIS team organized a
Synbio for Agriculture Team Meet-up, on the 24th of July.
This was an opportunity for our team to practice pitching our project and
answering questions, and help out the other teams by giving constructive feedback. Aside
from this, this meetup was very insightful for us, as it gathered other projects
tackling problems in agriculture. It gave us an overview of the impact of different iGEM
projects in the agricultural field, and gave us the opportunity to see how each team,
through their iGEM project, were aware of current agricultural problems. It was
interesting seeing how each team was attempting to bring solutions to the problems,
through their experimental project.
We were also able to ask questions and give answers about our projects. We
profoundly thank the Thailand_RIS team for organizing this meetup and for gathering so
many projects tackling problems in the agricultural field. It gave us very interesting
ideas for our project.
On the 7th of September, we participated in the iGEM’s Den organized by KU_Leuven. This meetup was very useful for us, and enabled us to once again pitch our project to a panel of judges (professors and engineers) who gave us valuable feedback about our presentation. We also loved listening to the other iGEM teams present their project.
On the 25th of September, we participated in
a virtual meetup organized by the Korea_HS team. The theme was "Business and
Technology conference”.
The objective was to share a business perspective of our project and target a
potential use for commercial purposes. We were given a space to talk about our project in a
different way, and to evaluate other projects. The purpose of the exchange was sharing its
technical and commercial aspects: robust manufacturing process, how the project is useful
and can contribute to the society, and the relevance of the target market. We spoke about
FIAT LUX in a different way, comparing our tool to the other current tools, their limits and
proving how our tool could overcome these limits, to prove how it is useful to global
Research.
Then, this exchange helped us think and reflect on the potential market of FIAT LUX.
From a business point of view: where our tool can be present in the industrial environment, and
the potential marketing targets.
This meeting has been enriching to learn about the different processes of
production, their marketing techniques and the types of teams collaborations with each other. It
was interesting to listen to project presentations focused on industrial objectives and not just
a research perspective, and we gained inspiration about this from the other teams. We learned
about strategies to develop our marketplace, and to accentuate how we can use FIAT LUX in the
short term to be useful to society. The robustness of the manufacturing process needs to be
clear and validated to empower and improve the potential of FIAT LUX and give credibility for
the industrials and future users. Other teams could learn how we developed our business strategy
to find sponsors and partners, for advice and guidance, and how we collected money through
sponsoring and laboratory materials too. We explained how we highlighted the good arguments and
worked on our weaknesses first. The feedback from other teams on FIAT LUX's development and
strategies were: “beneficial to farmers”, “innovative”, “practical” and “impactful".
Our team has created a card game, to promote biology, iGEM, and show
how synthetic biology can be used to tackle global problems. This game is inspired from Rafts!.
This card game was given to people who donated to our crowdfunding, and we also gave it away to
people through giveaways. Finally, this card game was given to clubs and people to play with.
You can find the game on our Contribution
page.
We asked many iGEM teams to participate in this project, and included their
project in our card game! This was a great way to collaborate to promote biology and its
applications!
How to play the game?
The card design is shown aside. The aim of the game is to be the first researcher to
create bacteria capable of solving a problem (detect toxic elements, clean oil spill, etc). To
do so, the player needs to combine a type of bacteria, a gene, a certain quantity of time, money
and resources for the bacteria. However, you are not alone, as the other players also have their
specific projects and missions to reach!
NTHU_Taiwan created an iGEM map, with the mascots of different teams around the world. We loved this idea, and submitted our mascot for the final image, which you can see below. This map was a great way of connecting with different teams worldwide and realizing how international this competition is.
We also helped out many iGEM teams, by filling out their surveys, which were very interesting!
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