Introduction

We participated in many fruitful collaborations with iGEM teams from all around the world. We shared our project ideas and talked about our vision and execution of the collaborations. Each meeting contributed to our journey in an unique way. We continuously improved the communication of our project idea to other members of the synthetic biology community. Questions from other iGEM teams helped us to explore our project into numerous directions. One example is the communication of sensitive issues regarding cancer. We collaborated with many teams that also dealt with cancer (just like us!). They showed us how difficult it sometimes can be to communicate sensitive information correctly. Furthermore we consider the spread of information through social media is crucial because this turned into an important information source for many people during the pandemic.

Meetings for the iGEM spreads awareness campaign:

We, the iGEM Team TU_Braunschweig, and iGEM ASIJ Tokyo initiated a campaign to raise awareness about numerous types of cancer via social media. To cover a broad range of different tumor diseases, we invited other iGEM teams to contribute to our awareness campain. Each team dealing with cancer was given a possibility to inform our audience about their type of cancer. This provided also a plattform and contact point for interested persons to reach out to us for discussion and additional information. Please find detailed information about this activity on our awareness campain site. Therefore, we had several meetings with iGEM Teams who want to contribute to our awareness campaign.

iGEM Wageningen:

We had our first meeting regarding our campaign with the iGEM team from Wageningen. First, we presented our projects to each other. As iGEM Wageningen also deals with cancer, we informed each other about the two types of cancer which are parts of our projects. They deal with the diagnosis of colorectal cancer and were able to show us interesting, but also frightening aspects of these tumor diseases. We also reported about esophageal cancer and explained the connection to our project. For our two teams, the early cancer detection is at the center of the project ideas. Both types of cancer show non-specific symptoms and are diagnosed too late in many cases. Therefore, it is even more important to investigate new diagnostic opportunities in order to improve the early detection of these diseases.

The following posts are the result of our productive collaboration and contribute to cancer awareness:

iGEM Thessaloniki:

The iGEM team Thessaloniki is also dealing with cancer this year. They are focusing on a specific brain tumor, glioblastoma. In an online meeting, we talked together about our projects and agreed on the importance of cancer education. In this context, we were able to present our campaign and collect first ideas for a contribution. Also, iGEM Thessaloniki created together with us an instagram posts, where we inform and educate about glioblastoma.

The following posts are the result of our productive collaboration and contribute to cancer awareness:

iGEM Munich:

Education about the genetic background of tumor diseases is also an essential part of cancer awareness. In order to defeat tumor diseases, it is important to understand their genetic cause. To draw more attention to this important part of cancer research the iGEM team Barcelone and the iGEM team Munich have summarized the most important basics of cancer genes. We contacted both iGEM teams via Instagram to present the campaign and discuss how to proceed. We were thus able to spread this theme also in relation to our campaign.

The following posts are the result of our productive collaboration and contribute to cancer awareness:

iGEM CUHK-HongKong-SBS Atreus:

This year’s iGEM Team deals with liver cancer, more precisely with hepatocellular carcinoma.We also met with them online and talked about ways to contribute to the iGEM spreads awareness campaign. This has resulted in a number of informative articles around this topic.

The following posts are the result of our productive collaboration and contribute to cancer awareness:

iGEM Barcelona:

Education about the genetic background of tumor diseases is also an essential part of cancer awareness. In order to defeat tumor diseases, it is important to understand their genetic basis. To draw more attention to this important part of cancer research the iGEM team Barcelone and the iGEM Team Munich have summarized the most important basics of cancer genes. We contacted both iGEM teams via Instagram to present the campaign and discuss how to proceed. We were thus able to spread this theme also in relation to our campaign.

In addition, with the help of the team, we had the opportunity to learn about Burkitt Lymphoma and CAR-T Therapy. Both are contributions which we could publish in our social media campaign.

The following posts are the result of our productive collaboration and contribute to cancer awareness:

Further collaborations:

In addition to our iGEM spreads awareness campaign, we engaged in several other collaborations that included a variety of content.

iGEM CUHK-HongKong-SBS Atreus:

SynBiOOTD contribution:

iGEM Team CUHK-Hong Kong-SBS ATREUS and iGEM team CityUHK co-host posts on the hashtag SynBioOTD. There, posts are shared which involve synthetic biology techniques. Since we also shared information about many molecular biology techniques on our Instagram account, we contributed under this hashtag. We published a post about gel electrophoresis for SynBioOTD.

Project Promotion translation:

An important goal of science communication should be to make content accessible to all people. One important hurdle is the language barrier. To make the project of the iGEM team CUHK-HongKong in their project promotion video available to German speaking people, we provided subtitles to their promotion video.

iGEM Barcelona:

International lymphoma day:

For the International Lymphoma Day (September 15), the iGEM Barcelona team started a collaboration with some iGEM teams, including our team. The goal was to investigate different lymphoma subtypes to create a paper with this collected information. We have been working on LRCHL (Lymphocyte-rich classical Hodgkin lymphoma).

Team Chalmers (organized with Uni Lausanne):

The importance of science communication has come to the fore more and more in times of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. In order for progress in science to be accepted and objectively reflected upon, it is important that all people have access to scientific principles. These must be kept simple so that lay people can also understand them. In "The Transcriptome - a place to share science" the iGEM teams iGEM Chalmers-Gothenburg together with iGEM UNIL inform about different aspects of synthetic biology. Since many scientific articles are published in English nowadays, they are not accessible to all people. To counteract this problem, we have translated an article about antibiotics into German. Link to the article

Team patras.med (organized with MetaThess):

Many people do not know how multifaceted synthetic biology is. The poster from iGEM team Patras.med together with iGEM MetaThess shows that it can also be used very well in the diagnosis of diseases. This year's iGEM teams are shown there, which compete in the Diagnostics track. We are part of the poster, because we also apply synthetic biology for the detection of cancer.

Team Aestuarium MSP Maastricht:

Science communication does not always have to be about pure theory and its transfer. The Aestuarium team shows us that interactive learning in a playful environment can be an important method of science communication. The team has designed a puzzle book that gives insights into many different iGEM projects through different crossword puzzles. We are part of the crossword puzzle for which we have put together important words that best summarize our project. For each word a short description was also written to give a little insight into our project.

JuniorJam Münster:

The exchange with other teams to learn tips and tricks, but also to gather impressions and make con-tacts is very important to us. Therefore, it was out of the question for us to participate in the JuniorJam of the iGEM Team Münster. The aim was to prepare for the GrandJamboree in Paris. Poster sessions and workshops were offered. There was also the possibility to pitch in front of an audience. At the evening get-togethers there was the possibility to make contacts. We presented our poster and looked at the posters and presentations of the other teams. We were able to gather many new impressions and interesting thoughts for our project. We also learned a lot from the posters and presentations of the other teams.