Collaborations

Collaboration

Introduction

iGEM was an opportunity for us, team Seoul_Korea, to connect with a variety of iGEMers around the world. We were able to share our passion and ideas about saving a small part of our world. We believe that if all of the iGEMers collaborate, our world will definitely be a step closer to being a better place.

The Korean Alliance: Sogang_Korea, Uincheon, KUAS_Korea

The International High School Biology Competition (ISBC) is a biology debate competition we created. We wanted to find a way to gather students to participate in an activity to expand their knowledge of synthetic biology. The competition was a perfect solution as there are very few biology competitions in Korea. Not only that, but biology competitions in English are rare to find. We limited the consumers to only high schoolers at first and planned the competition. In order to run the competition in shape, we calculated that we needed an estimated amount of 5,000,000 KRW: for the expenditures like website, award, marketing, etc. However, as we were only high school students, there was no way for us to acquire such a big amount of money. Our team came up with an idea to write a proposal (asking for sponsors) for different companies that might be interested. The idea was successful as Amorepacific, the biggest beauty and cosmetic company in South Korea, accepted the offer and sponsored us for 5,000,000 KRW. The surprise didn’t stop there, another company called NEOVAULE, a real estate development company, also thought the competition was interesting and sponsored 3,000,000 KRW. As this kind of opportunity was given, we went one step further and planned the competition for college and university students as well. Having to control the high school competition and the college team competition was too much for us, and reached out to the Korean iGEM teams. We contacted Sogang_Korea, Uincheon, and KUAS_Korea to collaborate in the education, and human practices part and to take control of the college team side of the competition. Luckily, after a few meetings, all of the teams came back with a positive response. From August 5th, 2022, we met every week and as we got closer to the competition date, we met 3 times a week. The competition was successful as many enjoyed the lectures and debate session. Through the competition, our team benefited by having a larger audience and achieving the goal to spread synthetic biology within the South Korean community.

iGEM IISER Bhopal

By using slack, we were able to communicate with most of the iGEMers. IISER Bhopal responded to the post we made. We scheduled a zoom meeting and presented each other’s projects. There we were able to find common ground between the two projects as our project is to decompose hemicellulose and cellulose with Bacillus subtilus and Pichia pastoris while IISER Bhopahl’s project is the use the engineered Bacillus subtilus to decompose hemicellulose, cellulose, lignin, and pectin. We had several more meetings with the team, discussing how we will be able to collaborate within the human practices and wet lab area. The meeting and collaboration benefited us as we were able to learn different problems that can be solved with similar experiments.

iGEM Thessaly

iGEM Thessaly reached out after looking at our post on slack. Their team aimed to achieve a similar goal: solving water pollution. Their project was to design plants (through plant synbio) based on a platform for water bioremediation of Phosphorus that can detect the toxicity of the water. Instead of collaborating in the wet lab area, we discussed collaborating in the human practices, and SDG. Through the meeting, we were able to spot a common ground and found a team with a similar goal as us that we can work us in the future. We were taught about the environment and problems in the water and found solutions that can help both South Korea and Greece. As we shared the main goal to have cleaner water, we knew that we were able to share any kind of information when needed.