Together, with McGill iGEM, Cornell iGEM, and iGEM Costa Rica, we created a unique educational bacteria handbook titled, Biome. QGEM contributed by establishing a survey where other teams could list attributes of the bacteria that they are using in their project. Our team then condensed these responses into one-page informational paragraphs. QGEM, with the help of McGill iGEM, received 31 responses from iGEM teams across the world.
The following teams participated in our initiative:
Cambridge iGEM
Chalmers-Gothenburg
Concordia iGEM
Cornell iGEM
Costa Rica iGEM
CU_Egypt
EPFL iGEM
Groningen iGEM
iGEM Aix-Marseille
iGEM Athens
iGEM Calgary
iGEM Patras
iGEM TecCEM
iGEM Thessaly
IISER_Mohali
IISER Pune iGEM
KCL_UK
KoreaHS team
McGill iGEM
McMaster iGEM
MIT_MAHE
Patras Medicine iGEM
QGEM
Rochester iGEM
Tec Monterrey GDL
UBC-Okanagan iGEM
UCopenhagen
UNSW iGEM
UT Austin iGEM
William & Mary iGEM
Yale iGEM
This initiative would not have been possible without the help of these 31 teams! Our book would also not have been a success without the beautiful illustrations from McGill iGEM and Cornell iGEM, as well as the layout produced by iGEM Costa Rica. Together our four teams produced a wonderfully unique resource that we are all proud of creating!
We attended the McGillxConcordia Mini-Jamboree at the end of August, amongst many other Canadian iGEM teams. During this Mini-Jamboree, QGEM participated in workshops and learnt a lot from expert speakers. Most importantly, this gave our team an opportunity to present a draft of our presentation to a panel of judges and receive feedback. This event helped us reflect upon the story we told through our presentation and how we can continue to improve our project. We were proud to tie for first place among over 10 other teams.
Stony Brook iGEM produced a dynamic multidisciplinary Synthetic Biology Review with over 50 articles from a variety of global iGEM teams. QGEM was grateful to write, The Connection Between Freshwater Inequities and Healthcare Disparities for Canadian Indigenous Peoples, and have it published in the journal. Our article is yet another actionable resource to raise awareness to the entanglement of issues Canadian Indigenous people face. You can read the article below on pages 23-24.
Maastricht iGEM
Maastricht iGEM invited us to publish a research article in their 3rd volume of MSP-Vector, The Unofficial iGEM Proceedings Journal 2022. QGEM was involved in MSP-Vector by entering our article, Bst DNA polymerase mutagenesis and fusion with DNA-binding proteins for improved thermostability, processivity, and strand displacement activity, and participating in the peer review process by editing three other articles. Our team is grateful to have received one of the top three scores among eleven papers. The top three highest scoring papers move along in the review process to be examined by Dr. George Church, Dr. Michael Funk, and Dr. Yevgeniya Nusinovich. Dr. George Church is currently leading Synthetic Biology at Harvard’s Wyss Institute, the Director of the U.S. Department of Energy Technology Center, the Director of the National Institutes of Health Center of Excellence in Genomic Science, a professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School, a professor of Health Sciences and Technology at Harvard, and lastly a professor of Health Sciences the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He is widely recognized for his contributions to genomic science, chemistry and biomedicine. Dr. Michael Funk is a Senior Editor handling papers for Science in the fields of biochemistry, structural biology, chemical biology, and environmental microbiology. His background is in enzymology and crystallography, and he obtained his Ph.D. in Biological Chemistry from MIT. Dr. Yevgeniya Nusinovich is a Senior Editor at Science handling research papers on cardiology, metabolism, reproduction, medical genomics, and a selection of other biomedical topics. Before coming to Science, Yevgeniya was an editor at Science’s sister journal Science Translational Medicine, where she also handled a variety of subject areas. QGEM is proud to have been able to show our work to experts in the synthetic biology field and receive feedback to improve our project. You can read the article below on page 40-44.
Early in the iGEM season our team uncovered an old collaboration between the QGEM and Calgary team from 2017, involving a Canada-wide newsletter. Thus, our team reached out to the Calgary team to revitalize this collaboration and form of communication between Canada teams. We collectively produced three monthly editions (June, July, and August) of the Canada-wide newsletter.
The June edition allowed teams to share their project descriptions to each other, in hopes that more collaborations could arise from reading about fellow Canadian projects. The July edition involved sharing information about each team’s lab and their plans for the Grand Jamboree. This edition allowed teams to feel as though they knew one another before travelling to Paris, France in the fall. Lastly, the August edition gave teams a chance to reflect upon their project process and iGEM experiences from the last few months.
Overall, the QGEM and Calgary team were able to get thirteen Canadian teams to participate in our communication initiative. We are grateful to have revitalized this relationship with the Calgary iGEM team and hope that our teams can continue this collaboration for years to come!
