Part of the iGEM competition is collaboration and the exchange of ideas. It is essential to the nature of iGEM for the teams to interact with each other and possibly further each project. It could be helping with a problem or exchanging different approaches to the same problem. iGEM offers the possibility to connect people with similar interests and to form connections all over the world.
Our Collaborations this year include:

The iGEM REC-CHENNAI team has been working on developing a biological system to sequester heavy metals such as Cadmium from contaminated water samples from industry effluents.

The team aims to achieve this by engineering the K-12 E. coli strain with metal sensing constructs to transform the K-12 strain into a metal sensing super coli which induces the formation of biofilms. They also aim to build a moving bed biofilm reactor to precipitate cadmium ions from the industry effluents such as alkaline batteries and metal plates.

iGEM always emphasizes sharing knowledge and creating bonds with people across the globe. We took this opportunity to help the iGEM team REC-CHENNAI work on their experimental design by, for instance, troubleshooting, brainstorming in open discussions, and validating their ideas. Throughout these sessions, we advised the team on the possible pros and cons of the experimental framework and shared knowledge to amplify our bonding as much as we could.

We were happy to help them with the following:

• Solving potential issues during plasmid construction
• Implementation of the project and Cloning strategy
• Discussion on potential experiments for engineering success
• Regular team meets to support during technical and emotional crises ;)

Together with iGEM team Edinburgh-UHAS_Ghana 2022, we formed a valuable and successful partnership, which went beyond just collaboration. The main purpose of our collaborative work was the structural and kinetic modeling of transcription factors. However, our teamwork quickly exceeded the boundaries of modeling: As a contribution for future iGEM teams, we designed a tutorial on how to perform docking simulations. Additionally, we critically evaluated each other's human practices activities. In weekly meetings, we gave updates on our projects, exchanged experiences as well as challenges and expanded our horizon to the possibilities of bioinformatics. Get further information on our journey together with team Edinburgh-UHAS_Ghana on our Partnership page.

iGEM UBarcelona is working on developing a way of producing exosomes more effectively and thus improving treatment with specific siRNA for the treatment of Burkitt Lymphoma. Since both of our teams are working on improving cancer therapy, we decided to provide information on the background of oncogenes and oncoproteomics, on both our social media platforms. As this topic is rarely addressed, it was a great opportunity to provide information about it. Additionally, UBarcelona connected us with a professor who is an expert on CAR T-cell therapy.

We participated in the iGEM Map of iGEM NTHU Taiwan, which uses designed characters to promote various iGEM projects from all over the world.

Meet our character SpecifiCAR T-cell!
“Hi, I'm SpecifiCAR T-cell! You can call me SpecifiCAR. My brother, the CAR-T-cell, is a very effective form of cancer therapy. Off-tumor toxicity is a big problem, since the targeted antigens in cancerous cells can also be present on healthy cells, which therefore get attacked as well. I can recognize tumor cells more specifically by recognizing other SpecifiCARs close to me. Therefore, I need a second condition to be activated.”

For a more detailed description of the iGEM Map, visit the Wiki of team NTHU Taiwan!