About

We participated in three collaboration projects with 8 other iGEM teams from the Paris area and around the world.

Fete de la Science

Every year at the Cité des Sciences, the largest science museum of Paris, the “Fete de la Science” (Science Day) is celebrated. This year, we collaborated with the iGEM teams Go-Paris Saclay, Evry Saclay,Sorbonne Université, and IONIS to organize together common activities and presentations surrounding synthetic biology. We communicated and educated to visitors on synthetic biology and performed pedagogical laboratory experiments in the new BioLab of the building. The educational activities included DNA extraction from onions, observation under microscopes, and micropipette liquid manipulation. Here are some photos of the event.
Here are some photos of the event:

On the floor dedicated to the cité des sciences, outside the BioLab, a stand is specifically targeted towards teaching kids how to use micropipettes and manipulations of small volumes of liquides have been demonstrated. The latter had the goal to give an insight into the tools and quantities used by microbiologists in a playful way - an example for this is the presentation of the 96 well plates through colouring and naval battle games.

The next stand, held by Go Paris Saclay, was dedicated to antibiotic resistance , the good practices around the use of antibiotics and a presentation on the use of streptomycin in synthetic biology targeted toward and the search for new antibiotics to fight the emergence of toto-resistant bacterias (super bacterias).The search for new antibiotic is the focus of the “Science a la pelle”project that does so by studying the genetic diversity of actinomycetes. The project “Science a la pelle” is a participative science project initiated by by the Learning Planet Institute (LPI) that engages citizens into a project recherche by receiving their soil samples from all over France. These soil samples taken into the laboratory and the actinomycetes are isolated and biosynthetic gene clusters are sequenced to find new active substances. (Science a la pelle).

These discussions with the public had the large goal of raising awareness not only around the world of biology, microbial biology and the genome but also to break the barrier between scientists and the rest of the world. Indeed, this is done by showing people that the world of molecular biology is present everywhere and at the reach of anyone interested, not only to a small group part of the intellectual elite.

Synthetic Biology Dictionary

We collaborated with Thessaly iGEM team to create a Synthetic biology dictionary in multiple languages. Our contribution was to translate common synthetic vocabulary words in the French language. We participated because we thought it was a wonderful inclusivity endeavor.

JOGL plateform

In the context of the partnership, in collaboration with the Imperial College London and Costa Rica 2022 iGEM teams we created a Remote Lab Network on the JOGL plateform for iGEM teams to be able to communicate their needs and collaborate on sharing liquid-handling robot plateforms.