As a team, we know that collaborations are a fundamental core in the iGEM Competition; they help not just with networking but also with having different points of view from people with different geographical backgrounds and cultures. These interactions help enrich every iGEM project and unify science against geographic boundaries. We are happy to present to you all the collaborations in which we participated throughout the season.

iGEM LATAM meetup

Figure 1. Promotional cover for LATAM meet-up in social media

The first collaboration we did was in the organization of a Latin American online meet-up that involved teams from different countries such as:

This LATAM meet-up took place over two days. On the first day, we learned about other team perspectives, strategies, and possible project ideas they were going to implement in the competition. We had the opportunity to see different points of view and how other teams brainstormed to solve local problems with synthetic biology. On the second day, we had a conversatory with other LATAM teams. The main focus was to discuss general problems surrounding an iGEM project. We concluded that we had similar problems such as organization, fundraising, and even sometimes lack of team motivation. It was a great way to share advice and provide guidance between the LATAM teams. These helped us generate ideas for our projects and to plan possible collaborations with the synbio LATAM community.

TEC CCM Tiktok

This collaboration was with another Mexico team, Biotec-CCM. The main focus was to develop scientific dissemination content for social media such as Tiktok and Instagram reels. The themes we chose were controversial and related to important topics in science and were created jointly within a month. For more information about this collaboration go to education

iGEM world map organized by NTHU-Taiwan

In this collaboration, 31 teams joined in creating a graphic map that showed the location of the teams and a brief resume about the projects. It helped connect the iGEM community all around the world and to learn what other teams are doing and plan other possible collaborations. To observe the interactive map organized by NTHU_Taiwan go to their wiki at:

NTHU-Taiwan

Figure 5.iGEM World map teams

Figure 6. Representative icon of the iGEM UAM team project

Translations blog The transcriptome

The Transcriptome blog

We helped translate the blog, The Transcriptome, from the teams iGEM Chalmers Gothenburg and iGEM UNIL. It offers a variety of posts about scientific news and controversial topics. It aims to inspire people to learn science regardless of their background. It is important to make science understandable and inclusive in many languages. We were happy to participate in expanding the accessibility and availability for more people all over the world. About ten different teams participated in the translations to different languages, we were responsible for translating four articles enlisted below.

• UAM, Spanish: Reverse aging: the promise of tomorrow, Extinguishing malaria with genetic engineering, Antifreeze Protein, An Agricultural Plague - Ice-making bacteria

Figure 7. Picture of the main site of the blog The Transcriptome

Workshop with TEC-Chihuahua

Figure 8. First zoom meeting for organizing the workshop

A workshop was held in collaboration with IGEM-Chihuahua entitled “Challenges in agriculture”. The objective was to have mutual learning between the general public and both iGEM teams. In this workshop two experts on Mexican crops were invited to each give a brief talk, games were held to reinforce learnings, and a conservatory was held to discuss perspectives in agriculture. It was a very fun and enriching activity and we were very glad to see much interest in the people that participated.For more information about this collaboration go to the IHP section

The magic of synthetic biology

This comic book was made between 19 iGEM UAM teams from all over the world, the objective was to generate educational material for children and help them have an approach in the area of synthetic biology. The education tools we used were to provide a simple, not technical language in the stories to explain it, so that anyone could understand it, especially children. The graphic part was also very important to capture the attention of the kids ideas and projects that can come from this area of science.

Figure 9. Cover and index of the comic book “The magic of synthetic biology”