Collaborations
Introduction
Throughout the iGEM Competition, an important part of our project development, were the collaborations with other iGEM Teams, in Greece and abroad. These collaborations offered our team the opportunity to meet other iGEMers and create constructive collaborations and partnerships!
Social media Collaborations
World DNA Day
An educational post about DNA and its discovery was made for a collaboration organized by Patras Medicine. It was released on the 25th of April, which is World DNA day. The post was creatively designed by their team and our contribution was to depict a DNA molecule, with different iGEMers as A,T,G and C bases.
World Day for Safety and Health at Work - Collaboration with iGEM Crete
Along with other Greek iGEM teams we were invited by iGEM Crete to participate in a photo collage for lab safety, in the context of the World Day for Safety and Health at Work (April 28th). As every iGEM team, we know that laboratory safety is of utmost importance and therefore, we stated that "Laboratory safety is of paramount importance! Safety awareness in the lab starts with familiarizing yourself with the equipment and correcting procedures and protocol before commencing work. If you don't follow these rules, you endanger yourself and others, you could easily ruin your experiment, put the lab at risk of an accident and you waste samples, money and time. For these reasons, caution and adherence to prescribed safety guidelines are required at all times."
Lab Tour
We created a small lab tour video for this collaboration with iGEM IISER Thiruvananthapuram, showing some of the main tools and equipment that we use for our project. By posting this video, we were able to show what a lab looks like, as well as what we do in our fields of study, to the people who are not involved in it. Using Tiktok as a platform for posting this collaboration is important, because of its relatively young audience. This way, we can give young students a close view of our labs and even encourage them to pursue a career in science.
World Indigenous Day
As every human practices team, we were always willing to take part in educational collaborations because we believe they are always a great opportunity to raise awareness about important issues. In an attempt to inform and familiarize everyone with science and its power, we took part in a collaboration for the World's Indigenous Day (9th of August) which was an initiative of Queen's University iGEM (QGEM). QGEM provided us with a pre-designed canvas file, which our team filled in with a picture and information about the life and work of George Papanikolaou, the Greek biologist who is best known for the "Pap test", used worldwide for the detection and prevention of cervical cancer and other cytologic diseases of the female reproductive system. In this way, we honored an important native scientist and simultaneously highlighted the importance of science in general!
SynBiOTD
A social media campaign about Synthetic Biology techniques and concepts. In this collaboration with CUHK-HongKong-SBS and iGEM CityUHK, each team created social media posts, introducing any technique that we use in our project to the public. Our team's post was about PCR, or Polymerase Chain Reaction.
Aegean Meeting - Greek iGEM Teams Meetup
The Aegean Meeting was an initiative of iGEM Patras 2022 in order to organize a meet-up event of all Greek iGEM Teams, as a chance to meet each other in person, exchange ideas and cultivate team spirit throughout our common journey to Paris. The Aegean Meeting was held from 10th to 12th of July 2022 in Patras. During the event, iGEMers from all over Greece seized the opportunity to present their projects and exchange their opinions about Synthetic Biology matters. The event was enriched with the presence of important speakers in Biosafety and Bioethics. We also had the honor to welcome iGEM NOUS previous members, who gave us a meaningful insight about the team's functionality and performance, as well as Athina Milona, with a very motivational speech and advice on Human Practices. A particularly interesting experience was the competition simulation, where participants were asked questions on matters, in an attempt to prepare for the Grand Jamboree, and the project management training by members of the Human Practices Team. The iGEM Teams that joined us were: Patras Med, Up Hellas, iGEM Athens, iGEM Thessaly, iGEM Crete and iGEM Thessaloniki.
Exploring Biological Noise
The collaboration took place in Aegean Meeting, that was organised by our team. It was a creative initiative by iGEM Athens. The teams that participated were: Patras, Crete, Thessaloniki and Thessaly, Patras_Uni_Hellas, that were present. The collab was about Biological Noise and more specifically observing the noise in biological systems and in which cases it can be a problem. This was achieved through an interactive game. Twenty iGEMers were placed in specific positions to form a square and each of them was given three circular cards of different color. Each time a member told the participants a specific word, they had to pick up a card with the colour that they considered to be closest to this word. With this method they tried to make a model for measuring biological noise. They analyzed the results of the game and did a statistical analysis.
Pre Aegean Meeting
Since Aegean Meeting was still far away, our team hosted the Pre-Aegean Meeting, an online meetup where teams got to know each other better, discuss their ideas and present their projects in an open to the public online session! The Pre-Aegean meeting was an opportunity to get to know each other online before the actual meeting, involved a preliminary interaction of the teams through bonding games, exchanging ideas and presenting what inspires them while developing their project, from a personality in Science, to a work of art.
Creative Collabs
Favorite bacterium
In an attempt to collaborate, exchange knowledge and experience with teams whose project includes the use of bacteria, we decided it was a good idea to take part in the creation of a picture book, an initiative of McGill, Cornell and Queens iGEMs and present our favorite bacterium. In order to take part in this collaboration, we chose a bacterium, added pictures of it and described facts and details related to it, such as how it looks like, where someone can find it, what it's known for, if it's pathogenic and other fun facts about it. Our team chose Paenibacillus vortex bacterium and sent to McGill iGEM all the information needed.
Educational Collabs
Blog Translation
We participated in this collaboration by iGEM UNIL 2022, by helping them create an international Synthetic Biology blog. More specifically, we translated their texts to Greek, our native language, so that the blog can be available in many languages for readers.
MSP Vector
MSP vector is a project started by MSP iGEM Team 2020. The aim of this project is to familiarize young students with academic writing, peer reviewing and the general publishing process. As a team we recognised our need to improve our skills regarding scientific writing, therefore we decided to participate in this project. In order to declare our participation, we sent an article regarding our project, which would be peer reviewed by other iGEM teams. Our team wrote the research article "Project PAGGAIA: An innovative approach for Precision Agriculture, using Metagenomics and Machine Learning". Afterwards, we received three articles -along with evaluation forms- from other teams, to be peer reviewed by us and then we divided them among our team members. The final results were published in the MSP Vector, which you can find below. This process was an important opportunity to familiarize the team members with the mentality of scientific writing and evaluating an article. Finally, it was an ideal opportunity to communicate our work to other members of the scientific community and to learn the procedure of writing a scientific paper.
Science Communication Collabs
"Level Up"
Our Team created in collaboration with iGEM ULaval, iGEM Stokholm and iGEM Thessaloniki pamphlets about Synthetic Biology and its applications, addressing a wide age spectrum, as well as different academic backgrounds. The activity was called "Level Up: Synthetic Biology step-by-step". Through this constructive collaboration, we got to know the other iGEM Teams better, and through many online meetings shared our ideas and learned more about each other's countries. It was a very beautiful collaboration and therefore it was crowned with success!
2022 International Bioremediation Conference
iGEM Patras in collaboration with ASU iGEM and iGEM TecCEM organized the 2022 International Bioremediation Conference, iGEM's first online conference on bioremediation, to raise awareness about water pollution and the bio-sustainable solutions our projects can offer through Synthetic Biology. The educational program included many interesting speeches around this theme, while we had the chance throughout the organizing meetings, to meet the members of the other iGEM Teams and get to know each other!
