Our Partnership with iGEM GO Paris-Saclay
Lund-Saclay, two years strong
After a successful partnership with iGEM GO Paris-Saclay in 2021, we thought it would be fitting to continue the partnership between our teams with an educational project.
A large problem with international competitions such as the iGEM competition is the successful communication of different concepts and ideas to the scientific community and a wider audience. We also had an experience with a team member who was not pursuing their studies in biology and was struggling to keep up with what the rest of the group was discussing during our meetings and brainstorming. We wanted iGEM to be more inclusive to people that are interested in joining the community but do not have this biological background. To address these problems and aid in this communication, our teams created a dictionary for common terms used in synthetic biology written in a simple manner, which would help team members not experienced in biology to understand scientific terms and concepts. Creating this book through our partnership also helped in improving our own abilities in presenting our project in a more simplified manner, an essential skill within iGEM and science.
Our teams worked together, communicating via zoom and messaging apps, discussing how to delegate the work and how to format the book. This helped our team create more concise presentations and focus on communicating the most crucial parts of our project, by improving the language we used, as well as the visual elements of our presentations.
Additional teams such as iGEM Chalmers-Gothenburg, iGEM Uppsala, iGEM Stockholm and iGEM Aalto-Helsinki also contributed. The InDesign file can be used for the creation of new editions by future teams. Check out the Communication page to learn more and to download the PDF and InDesign file.
Partnership timeline
In the early stages of our project, at the end of April, a member of our group not pursuing a degree in a biology-related field struggled to understand what we were discussing during our brainstorming sessions. The idea of creating a dictionary for synthetic biology terms came up in those team meetings.
In early June, we pitched the idea of the SynBio dictionary to them and asked if they were interested in collaborating. Shortly after, our teams created a WhatsApp group to make communication easier.
In late June, our teams started discussing the book's contents and decided to split it into two parts, introduction and dictionary. Our teams also decided on checkpoints and internal project deadlines.
In early July, our teams started delegating tasks and dividing the responsibilities among the team members. The Paris team was to be responsible for the parts "What is synthetic biology?" and "Safety and Security", whereas the Lund team was assigned to work on "DNA and Proteins".
The iGEM Chalmers-Gothenburg team joined the project in late July, to contribute more terms to the dictionary.
By August, our teams had finished most of the introductory section and started to devote more time to add words to the dictionary. We also started discussing the final size of the project for printing, as well as layout and formatting.
In late August, the iGEM Lund and iGEM GO Paris-Saclay teams held a zoom meeting in order to discuss the final stages of the project, formatting, and final responsibilities in order to deliver the book on time, such as printing.
In early September, Lund had a meeting with Souvik Mukherjee, a graphic designer, to design a template we could use to format our content. The Paris team also submitted the beautiful cover page they had illustrated.
In mid-September, more teams began contributing to the project, namely the teams from iGEM Uppsala, iGEM Aalto-Helsinki and iGEM Stockholm. More terms were added to the dictionary as well as their own project descriptions.
In late September, our team commissioned a first test print of the dictionary. We found some errors in the text and format and swiftly corrected them.
Partnership summary
Our teams could exchange valuable feedback, improve our science communication skills, and inspire each other in our work. The partnership yielded the First Edition of the ‘Synthetic Biology Handbook For Baby Labrats’, thus fulfilling the education and partnership criterion for the competition for our teams.