Partnership
Team Manchester considers partnering with a team that shares similar concerns, goals and visions an important factor for our project development and for creating a meaningful environmental impact. During the competition, we collaborated with iGEM Thessaly and formed a partnership with them. As partners, we have been able to shape our project at different stages as a result of our constant cooperation, communication, and common organisation that led to finding mutual fundamental aspects of our projects. Biweekly calls took place, in which we discussed our projects in order to set future mutual goals in wet lab, dry lab and human practices. During our partnership, we have decided on clear objectives that would further benefit both teams, establishing a strong relationship during the entire course of the iGEM season. Besides the biweekly calls on Zoom, our communication was supported on Instagram and through a joint Discord, where we updated each other with the progress in the three main areas of our partnership. As a result, we strongly believe that our cooperation was efficient and straight-forward, and that our partnership was of great benefit to both teams.
Our Partnership timeline
Partnership
Throughout our partnership, we have established common goals in three areas: human practices, dry lab and wet lab, achieving a comprehensive and integrated view on both projects’ environmental impact. We understood the importance of prolonged cooperation with each other to improve each project's developmental stages.
Dry Lab meetings
Within our dry lab meetings, Team Thessaly and Team Manchester discussed the key similarities and distinctive aspects of our projects: implementations, objectives and propositions towards solving common problems such as eutrophication and wastewater mismanagement through modelling. We have provided them with a mathematical model for them to identify the most polluted parts of a targeted waterbody and they provided us with a database containing eutrophication-related parameters.
Wet Lab meetings
Within our meetings, our teams have brainstormed into finding a common method of quantifying phosphate levels in various media. Our teams optimized the colorimetric assay protocol Team Manchester has found, to provide each team with transferable results in the lab.
Synthetic Biology Podcast meetings
Throughout our meetings, both teams decided that we would like to pursue the creation of a podcast together on the topic of synthetic biology.
Episode 1: 'Synthetic Biology and its future': Check out this episode by searching "Manchester iGEM team" on Spotify.
Team Thessaly
This year, the University of Thessaly (Greece) team is tackling anthropogenic eutrophication: the phosphate over-accumulation in waters, causing the development of detrimental cyanotoxin-producing algal blooms that induce major problems, such as the reduction of water quality and aquatic biodiversity. Generally, eutrophication arises from wastewater runoff containing high concentrations of phosphate and nitrogen, leading to excessive proliferation of cyanobacteria and algae. Team Thessaly aims to address this problem by producing a universal monitoring and phytoremediation system that will evaluate the ecological status of the water body. Upon the detection of critical levels of eutrophication, the phytoremediation system will be activated. The system comprises a genetically modified plant whose roots can detect cyanotoxins through a novel riboswitch. This will subsequently induce an enhancement of the phosphate uptake.
Team Thessaly and Team Manchester have developed a long-term partnership, sharing common grounds in an all-around manner as both teams approach common themes such as eutrophication and wastewater mismanagement, promoting in this way solutions towards achieving the goals of sustainability, circular economy, and green energy. Starting from finding and optimizing protocols for phosphate quantification procedures in our wet lab and having a shared database including key parameters of wastewater in our dry lab, to promoting and raising awareness about eutrophication and how synthetic biology provides the solution in our human practices section, we have joined efforts to help towards the implementation of our projects in the world.
See more about our implementation here:
See more pictures from meetings we had with Team Thessaly below:
What we did for them
Team Manchester provided Team Thessaly with a mathematical model to analyze the distribution of eutrophication-induced parameters and with a phosphate quantification protocol.Team Manchester has worked towards a mathematical model based on differential equations to dynamically predict the concentration profile of phosphate spills resulting from an accidental leakage from the enclosed medium of the bioreactor into the river Thames, and its impact on the environment. We have divided our targeted river in a series of continuous stirred flow compartments to understand the concentration of the phosphate in a respective compartment, as well as the time for the maximum concentration to reach any point downstream to the anterior compartment. We have provided team Thessaly with the mathematical model on predicting the concentration profile of various parameters that induce eutrophication such as dissolved oxygen or total nitrogen in local Greek rivers.
With regards to the wet lab, Team Manchester has provided Team Thessaly with a colorimetric assay method based on vanadate-molybdate for the quantification of phosphate in different media to validate the phosphate removal capacity of their genetically modified plant in different conditions. Our proposed method will ensure the generation of a calibration curve that would enable finding the limit of detection of this method, as well as the limit of quantification of the removed phosphate.
What they did for us
Team Thessaly has provided us with an up-to-date database of various parameters (such as dissolved oxygen, total phosphate, total nitrates, temperature, depth etc.) directly related to lakes and reservoirs in Canada. This increased our available data for the leakage model that we have developed. Team Thessaly has worked towards developing a database of parameters using Excel and Python. The database contains eutrophication-related parameters such as total phosphate concentration, dissolved oxygen etc. that would enable them to accurately predict, through a machine learning algorithm, based on boolean data type, the existence or the absence of the microcystins L-R toxins within the water bodies they are targeting. Their main focus was using sensors such as pH and dissolved oxygen to determine the aforementioned objective in order to analyse the eutrophication pollution level with regards to multiple distinct water bodies. Click below to see the database Team Thessaly has provided for us:
The parameters provided by team Thessaly are essential for Team Manchester to extensively characterise and measure the microalgal growth rate, as well as a potential accidental nutrient (auxin, phosphate, nitrate) leakage in different lakes and reservoirs. Previously, Team Manchester has applied its mathematical model only with regards to the optimised non-invasive accidental outflow of nutrients in rivers, having a limitation towards the operated water bodies.
Our shared activities
Dry Lab Collaboration
The two projects approach integration, implementations and objectives differently.Team Manchester focuses on managing wastewater treatment through the use of a microalgae-bacterial consortium. The aim of our project is to mathematically model the impact of a contaminant spillage from the bioreactor environment that we are planning to use, in a water body. Alternatively, Team Thessaly is utilising a machine-learning algorithm to predict the optimal placement of Constructed Floating Wetlands, based upon the presence of pollution-associated toxins. Our partnership provides team Thessaly with a leakage model that they can use to predict the concentrations of various eutrophication parameters (such as phosphorus, oxygen, and nitrates) that may leak into their targeted water bodies.
Since data collection is key to successful modelling, Team Thessaly shared with us a collaborative database of various parameters surrounding water bodies in Canada. This includes nutrient composition and concentration, and microalgal species in lakes and reservoirs. The database will be used to run team Manchester’s auxin, phosphate and nitrate leakage models, and team Thessaly will use the data to allow their machine learning system to accurately predict the existence of the toxins in the targeted water bodies which may arise from eutrophication. The shared database will be a valuable resource for both teams and will enable us to expand and run our auxin leakage model on different water bodies outside of the UK as well.
Wet Lab Collaboration
We discussed finding a common approach that would benefit Team Thessaly’s aim to phyto-remediate eutrophicated lakes in situ through an engineered plant, and Team Manchester’s aim to deplete phosphate from the wastewater media through a microalgae-bacterial co-cultivation system. We have decided to develop a method of quantifying the phosphate levels in various media that would validate the phosphorus removal capacity of Team’s Thessaly engineered plant, as well as the phosphate-depletion efficacy of Team’s Manchester engineered bacteria. This procedure could be used by both teams, and would allow us to provide each other with useful data about our phosphate levels in the water bodies of our respective countries.
Our main focus for wet lab collaboration was to produce a phosphate quantification protocol. Since both teams are working closely with phosphate, validation of our systems through phosphate quantification was necessary. We considered various protocols available and together determined the most suitable one for both of our purposes. Further optimization was executed through continuous meetings and we successfully developed a phosphate quantification procedure to be incorporated into both teams’ wet lab. For team Manchester, the phosphate quantification procedure will be used to validate the action of PhoU gene and characterize the subsequent phosphate uptake activity of our engineered bacteria. For team Thessaly, this procedure will be used to measure the phosphate level in the local lakes, such as Lake Karla and Pineios. This will be part of their monitoring system for the ecological status of the water body of eutrophication concern.
Optimized phosphate quantification protocol,under the “Phosphate sequestration quantification" section:
Human Practices Podcast
In the first meeting we had with regards to human practices, we decided that we want to raise awareness about synthetic biology, and the ways that it can be used to tackle problems such as wastewater treatment and eutrophication. We considered the online promotion of our projects and common visions throughout social media channels as only a small step into our mission of informing people about how synthetic biology might provide a solution for the environmental and social problems that humanity faces. Both teams agreed on a joint podcast that would enable us to reach a broad audience and introduce our projects, as well as to highlight the importance of synthetic biology in the world.
Synthetic biology is a relatively new field of science, so bioethics and biosafety can definitely be of concern. Therefore, it’s important to practise strict biosafety measures as well as regulations and carefully consider the impacts our work would have in the real world. Within our episode, we have covered the concept of the iGEM competition and how it enables us to carry out a safe and biosecure approach towards reaching the goal of our projects, having in mind the relevant on-going legislations not only in Greece and the UK, but also in the world.
There is a reluctance towards using synthetic biology to solve real-world problems within society. But it is also in our hands to help solve various problems such as overpopulation, climate change, and diseases, etc. using synthetic biology with appropriate biosafety considerations. Throughout our episode, we have discussed both the advantages and constraints of synthetic biology towards solving the aforementioned problems, outlining the sceptical or negative opinions of the public towards the usage of GMOs.