SynBio Stories:
Our first collaboration, the SynBio Stories! The concept: find an interesting or funny story from previous teams, make it an Instagram story, and ask our followers what could have happened. After a day of Q&A, the other team uploads an Instagram story with the answer! It was an interesting and fun way to share and learn from the experiences of previous iGEMers.

We also participated in a collaboration-game during the Aegean Meeting, organised by iGEM Athens, in which greek iGEM teams participated. The goal of this collaboration was to evaluate biological noise in the field of synthetic biology.

Pre Aegean Meeting
On the 28th of May, iGEM Patras hosted an online meeting ("Pre-Aegean Meeting"). At this meeting, all the Greek iGEM teams had the chance to get to know each other and present their projects.

From the 10th to the 12th of July, the main event, the Aegean Meeting took place in Patra. We had endless conversations, brainstorming, interactive games, seminars, talks, workshops, and fun! Not to mention the troubleshooting after the presentation. Thank you, iGEM Patras, for this wonderful event and for giving us the stage to present Theriac.

During the Interlab experiments, iGEM Thessaly lacked black plates with transparent bottoms, so we met in person to give them some plates, and we gave them a tour of our laboratory! In return, as we lacked competent E.coli cells, iGEM Thessaly brought us DH5α competent cells so we could finally complete our experiments. Thank you Thessaly team for saving our Interlab experience.

Level Up
A collaboration on science communication in synthetic biology among the iGEM teams: Patras Stockholm Thessaloniki, and ULaval The goal of the Level Up collaboration was to explain synthetic biology to audiences with different levels of education and knowledge in STEM. We prepared four separate brochures: one for children, one for teenagers, one for the general public, and one for STEM students. Each brochure explains the complex concept of synthetic biology with different levels of difficulty. We strongly believe that synthetic biology is for everyone, and this collaboration gave us the means to explain what synthetic biology is to 3 age groups. We shared the brochures in the events we participated in and the presentations we organized, such as in Noesis and Researcher’s Night in Greece in Noesis and Researcher’s Night in Greece, and we were very happy with the enthusiasm that people displayed when reading them.

On July 15th, iGEM Bulgaria paid a visit to our laboratory. They had a tour of the facility, and then we discussed our projects. Fun fact: during the visit, a bird struck the window and collapsed, but we managed to save it. Of course, we named it Igem. What a fruitful troubleshooting! Thank you guys for the unique experience.

During the summer our team had a couple of meetings with iGEM Anatolia_College_HS helping them with their fundraising strategies. We shared with them the way we approach companies and the procedures our team follows to complete each sponsorship deal. We also collaborated on the communication level. We presented to each other our projects and we received valuable feedback on how to approach synthetic biology from an educational perspective. iGEM Skepsis helped us considerably with their advice to explain synthetic biology in a way that high school students can easily understand!

On July 24th, iGEM Barcelona UB hosted an online summer meeting, in which a lot of iGEM teams participated. We had a great time discussing and receiving important feedback for our project! Thank you, fellow iGEMers, for the troubleshooting and the tips!

On July 24th, iGEM CUHK-HongKong-SBS approached us with a collaboration proposal. We had a very proactive meeting discussing our projects, in which we found many commonalities. Both our teams are developing a new cancer therapy approach, so their insights and comments were valuable to us. We hope they find our tips useful, too. In the context of our collaboration, iGEM CUHK-HongKong-SBS also arranged a Zoom meeting with Professor Fok Kin Lam Ellis from their university. We are more than thankful for the chance that our fellow iGEMers offered us to present our project and receive feedback from such a renowned scientist.

Team UCopenhagen requested we be a part of their promotion video this year, proposing an idea we simply loved. One of us would be standing in front of a body of water (sea, in our case) and saying a word or emotion that we felt describes the ocean or how we feel around it. The best part is that we were able to say it in Greek, our native language. The member who would be part of the video then sent the word in English and Greek. Our word was "απέραντη" (pronounce: aperanti), a word that means vast.

Both, TUDelft and us, had created a synthetic biology board game each, which we exchanged and tested. The goal of the game is to synthesize enzymes from amino acids and collect points! We had a really good time creating and playing our board games!

Our teams collaborated on the dry lab level. Our team suggested a different aspect to the modelling of their device the IISER Mohaliteam using the sequences of our project to provide us with results from their molecular dynamic simulator. Also, as our hardware devices are based on the same methodology, we contributed to their hardware model and had had a few troubleshooting meetings.

iGEM NTHU_Taiwan asked us to participate in the collaboration “IGEM MAP”. We designed a character named “Brainnie” that is used on the map to mark our location and promote our project. Teams from all over the world participated; through the map, we got to know various projects! It was a great collaboration that helped us share our ideas by being creative and communicating with other teams!

In August, we had an online meeting with iGEM TU Braunschweig, and after discussing our projects, a collaboration on social media occurred! As we are both working on a cancer-related project, the suggestion was to create some posts about brain cancers for them to upload on their campaigning Instagram account (@igem_spreads_awareness_) in September. It was meaningful cooperation, and we sincerely hope we helped with their campaign.

Unmet medical needs still remain a huge problem in Greece, especially when it comes to cancer where patients have to wait even for months before they received treatment. Tec-Monterrey team is facing the exact same difficulties in their country. Thus, we decided to discuss the unmet medical needs and access to healthcare in both our countries. Through a fruitful meeting, we highlighted specific aspects of the problem and proposed possible solutions on how to implement our projects for better and equal access for everyone.