iGEM SORBONNE
NAWI
Collaboration
This year, our team had the chance to participate in three meet-ups and to organize one. Online or in person, the aim is the same: to get advice on how to improve our project, to practice presenting it in front of judges and of course to meet new iGEM teams.
Summary: The Toulouse meet-up took place on 7-8-9 July 2022 on the campus of INSA Toulouse. The goal of this meet-up was to gather the French teams and train together for the real Giant Jamboree with prizes. On the programme: conferences, pitches, presentations and a lot of fun. Bus tickets bought, four team members left for Toulouse for 2 and a half intensive but memorable days. For more information about the meet-up: https://2022.igem.wiki/toulouse-insa-ups/collaborations
Day 1
The meet-up started in the early afternoon with a brief presentation of the event by the Toulouse team. Four prizes were to be awarded at the end of the meet-up: the best pitch prize, the best presentation prize, the audience prize and the rally prize. We were lucky enough to get a call from Randy Rettberg, the president of iGEM, to find out more about the organisation of the Giant Jamboree, which is taking place for the first time in Porte de Versailles, France this year. Afterwards, Laure Hamelin, Bioeconomy researcher TBI/INSA and laureate of the "Make our planet great again" program, gave us a lecture on "The challenges and opportunities for industrial biotech in a transition to a low-carbon fossil economy". The topic of the conference was related to our project and was therefore very instructive. It gave us some ideas on how to improve our project but also reinforced the impact that our project could have on the world [For more information: https://2022.igem.wiki/sorbonne-u-paris/human-practices].The conference was followed by a "pitch your project" session where each team had a booth to present their project with the support of their choice. Our team had prepared a nice poster. Members of a jury, composed of professors, former iGEM Toulouse members and sponsors, were also present to learn about each project and award the prize for the best pitch at the end. This was the first opportunity to exchange with the other teams and discover the work they had been working on for months. It was the best moment to receive comments, advice and potential contacts to improve our project.
Day 2
A good part of the day was dedicated to the oral presentations of each team in the same conditions as the Grand Jamboree: 15 minutes of presentation and 10 minutes of questions with one exception, everyone could ask questions. This was our first training for the competition and it allowed us to see the flaws in our project and our shortcomings in order to improve them later on. A few days later, we were even able to have a video chat with one of the judges to get a detailed opinion of our project and our presentation. He gave us a lot of advice about the presentation and how to approach our project during the competition. After that, we were able to visit Toulouse or "la ville rose" in a unique way through a photo rally. New teams were formed mixing the old ones, which was a great way to strengthen the bonds and get to know each other. The day ended with a dinner at the Moaï, a restaurant located in the heart of the Museum of Natural History.
Day 3
The last day of the meet-up, the different prizes were awarded. The prizes were a brick and a bottle of wine of our choice. Our team won the BioEUR prize awarded by the sponsors of the Toulouse team. This prize rewards the concepts of bioeconomy and circular economy in the projects, i.e. all the actions which make it possible to reduce the environmental impacts either by the use of renewable resources, of waste including CO2, of substitution to the fossil resources... by addressing the great societal stakes of food and health. After saying goodbye to the other teams, we headed to Paris and this time by train.
A little anecdote: we arrived in Toulouse in the morning after spending 8 hours on the bus and only two hours of sleep. In total, the number of hours of sleep of the team during these 3 days amounted to 10 hours. But as Bastien, head of the modeling department, would say, sleep is overrated.
Summary: The Calgary team organized a two-day online meet-up in July: JulyGEM 2022. The programme included several conferences in the morning and team pitches in the afternoon. We had the chance to present the NAWI project for the second time and discover the project from teams from all over the world. For more information about the meet-up: https://2022.igem.wiki/calgary/collaborations.
The Calgary "JulyGEM 2022" meet-up took place over two full days: 28 July and 29 July 2022. The morning was dedicated to various 30-minute lectures: “How to use storytelling for an effective pitch”, “Creative Destruction lab: solving massive challenges using synthetic biology”, “The brain implant & entrepreneurship” and “Genome engineering: always pivoting”. In the afternoon each team had 5 minutes to present their project followed by questions from the jury and other iGEMers. They divided the teams into two sessions with a short break in between and during that time, we had the chance to see their mini "day in the life" video. It was funny to realize that, in the end, no matter where you are, you go through the same problems as iGEMers.
At the end of each team's presentation, everyone could fill in an online document to rate the presentation on several criteria (fluidity, clarity, attractiveness of the slides...) and could also leave comments.
Our jury was composed of :
-Andrew Symes, master's student in geomatics engineering and member of the runner-up iGEM Calgary 2029 team
-Michael Wahba, writer and game developer, member of the runner-up iGEM Calgary 2019 team
-Nikhil Sonpal, software architect, CEO and founder of Mobility Quotient
After our presentation, the jury gave us a lot of advice, especially on who to interview to get a clearer idea of the impact of our project. It was very helpful. The comments of the other teams were also very helpful, it is important to have the opinion of several people to know what to improve.
The beauty of this online meet-up was to bring together several teams from different countries in just one click. Finding out the context of each project and their creative response to the problem was very inspiring. Through this meet-up, you really get to know the international side of the competition and that we all share the same goal. Despite the fact that it was a "competition", the atmosphere was very warm and we were all there to encourage each other and push each other upwards because in the end we are all moving in the same direction.
A little anecdote: If you look closely, you will not find our name in the program. Why? Because having registered too late with the Calgary team to present our project, there was no more room for us. So our team was only supposed to attend the conferences and presentations of the other teams. Fortunately, for us, one team canceled at the last moment, which left a slot available for our team. After an express preparation of our presentation, we were able to participate and get feedback on our project. We don't know who canceled but thank you very much!
BioSynSys is a symposium on Synthetic and Systems Biology that took place from 12 September 2022 to 14 September 2022 at the Learning Planet Institute in Paris. Researchers from different countries met to discuss their respective projects, exchange information and advice for new research directions.
The symposium was organized around 6 plenary sessions and 2 satellite workshops:
Plenary sessions:
- Prokaryotic Synthetic Biology
- Philosophy
- Eukaryotic Synthetic biology
- Molecular programming and systems biology
- Natural product discovery and metabolic engineering
- Cell-free synthetic biology and Build-a-cell
Satellite Workshops:
- iGEM France presentations
- Synthetic Biology of Lactic Acid Bacteria
Day 1 and 2
The first two days followed the same format: the lectures started in the morning and ended at 4 or 5 pm. They had 20 minutes to present their work and answer questions from the audience. During lunch and coffee breaks, a poster session was proposed where we could discover and discuss the work of other researchers. It was also an ideal time to network and keep up to date with the latest developments in synthetic biology. Most of the time, people who could not ask questions during the lectures took advantage of this moment to have a real conversation with the speaker. It was very convivial. The first day was more oriented towards biological topics and the second day towards modelling and programming topics.
Day 3
On the last day, the morning lectures were followed by the iGEMers presentations. Four members of our team had ten minutes to present our project, followed by five minutes of questions. This was the third training for us and we could see an improvement. All the questions we received were relevant and it was interesting to discuss them and try to share our point of view. The afternoon was devoted to the workshop on the synthetic biology of lactic acid bacteria.
For the M2 students, it was impressive to attend this event. Being in a room full of experts in their field and being able to discuss with them was exciting. It reminds us of our previous meet-up where iGEMers give each other ideas and tips to get better, but at a more advanced stage.
A little anecdote: During the lunch break, one of our team members wanted to explain our project to a foreign student in English. Instead of using the word Chlamydomonas, she used the word Chlamydia, which if you didn't know, is a bacterium that causes STD. Moral of the story: don't let Lea, co-leader of the Human Practices department, present the project at the Grand Jamboree.
Summary: Our team has organized an event gathering several iGEM teams from France (GO_Paris-Saclay and Ionis_Paris) which focused on the theme of modeling from September 24 to 25, 2022 within our campus. The goal of this event was to introduce the teams to the notion of modeling biological concepts through lectures given by specialists in this field, two Ph.D. students who are Guillaume Garnier and Francesco Calvanese. It also allowed to establish a collaboration between teams through presentations and working sessions on the modeling aspect of the projects.
The goal of our modeling department was to help the iGEM teams to develop their model for the Grand Jamboree through conferences and work sessions in a hackathon format. In order to carry out this goal, we decided to organize an event that would bring together the different teams from France from September 24 to 25, 2022. Unfortunately, the dates were not convenient for many teams, but this did not prevent us from bonding with the members of the teams present. You may find the name of the meet-up funny, but it comes from the fusion of the words “Jamboree” and “modeling”. On the first day, there were two lectures given by specialists in this field. The first one was given by a Ph.D. student in mathematics at Inria, Guillaume Garnier, who explained to us why doing modelisation in iGEM projects and how to do so. The second lecture was given by a Ph.D. student at the Laboratory of Computational and Quantitative Biology, Francesco Calvanese, about bio-molecules generative models such as Direct-Coupling-Analysis, its applications and discussions about it. These lectures were open to all Sorbonne University students interested in the subject.
The 2nd day was dedicated to the presentation of internship projects of bioinformatics and modeling master students, to make the teams discover the different fields in biology requiring modeling, and the tools used in the project. We concluded these two days with a buffet.
After the lectures, each team presented its project and the modelisation part, followed by a question session. The participants were then able to freely exchange with each other about their project, to think about how to improve each other's models. The work sessions followed a hackathon format.
A little anecdote: During this event, tensions arose within our group. We discovered the true faces of some members and two teams were formed: the team for orange Pim’s (known as Jaffa cakes) and the team against orange Pim’s. And you, which team are you on?
The Cambridge team organized an iGEM quiz on the 27th of August which some of us were able to participate in. The quiz consisted of several rounds with questions from different categories, such as questions about iGEM competition, food of the world, riddles and a blind test! This event was very successful as it gathered teams from all over the world, like teams from Greece, USA, India, South Korea, etc. The atmosphere was very fun and it allowed us to meet new people.Little bonus, we were able to win second place!
We also helped some teams with their respective projects through mini collaborations.
The NTHU_Taiwan team created a map for iGEM’s in order to promote the importance of synthetic biology and a little bit more about teams and their projects all around the world. They used our mascot to mark our location and promote our project. Moreover they want to turn all the collected characters into a painting. It will create a « global village » as they called it.
«Hi, my name is NAWI. I am a green microalga of the Chlamydomonas reinhardtii family. All my life, I have heard that I have the potential to become a food supplement that could even outperform Chlorella and Spirulina. And this year, it can happen for good thanks to my iGEM team. They are going to turn me into a super nutritive food by increasing what I lack most: heme iron. I like to compare myself to Iron man, I am going to become Iron NAWI! The amazing thing is that I can be grown easily and efficiently in bioreactors and I can potentially use agro-food waste as a source of carbon. I want to be an innovative food source for the future, and feed billions and billions of people while reducing the impact on the environment. And what would be the icing on the cake is that because of my future high iron content, I could help people who suffer from iron deficiency. »
The iGEM Aix-Marseille team is creating a trivial pursuit type quiz on many different iGEM projects to share our knowledge with the general public. We have proposed 5 multiple choice questions related to our topic and a template that will be used on our cards.
Collaboration
