Partnership
HISTORY OF THE COMMUNITY
The iGEM Phototroph Community was founded by the grand-prize winning team, iGEM Marburg and top-ten-ranking iGEM Bielefeld in 2021, with the aim of bringing together teams working with phototrophic organisms in the iGEM competition, including cyanobacteria, microalgae and higher plants. Their vision was to open further dialogue and have teams support each other in troubleshooting, project ideation and more!
iGEM teams working with phototrophic organisms have been underrepresented overall within the competition. This is likely due to the slower growth rates and lack of standardization in protocols for engineering phototrophs. With this in mind, the community has worked on standardization in protocols for the most common phototrophic chassis in synthetic biology!
In doing so, the goal was to make engineering and cultivation of these promising organisms less daunting and more accessible to everyone! The Phototroph Handbook was created with the help of 2021 teams with a shared collection of knowledge, intended to be expanded upon overtime.
EXPANDING THE COMMUNITY
For the 2022 competition, iGEM Marburg and iGEM Bielefeld decided not to form teams, and thus the opportunity to expand upon the previous iGEM Phototroph Community was opened up to others. In our talks with iGEM Marburg advisor, René Inckemann, he proposed the idea that UBCO iGEM revive the community once more! Our team was introduced to ASU iGEM through Finn Wieland from Biocord, the largest Discord server for bioenthusiasts. They were also interested in reviving the community, and after meeting to discuss re-establishing the community and new goals, a strong partnership was established! Our teams met weekly from then onward, to detail the revival and organize the iGEM Phototroph Community for 2022. We started by connecting with other iGEM teams working with phototrophic organisms to share projects and asked them to join our community. A Slack workspace formed last year was our central mode of communication, a platform free of charge to send community updates and announcements.
THE SLACK WORKSPACE
The iGEM Phototroph Community Slack as mentioned above was our central mode of communication throughout the duration of the competition. Given the lack of support for these teams otherwise, converging on one platform provided both the opportunity to promote communication between teams for troubleshooting, as well as ask questions and receive announcements from UBCO iGEM and ASU iGEM for upcoming events and collaboration guidelines. Current teams also benefited from conversation threads from last year, and the experience from past teams and their work with phototrophic organisms. With 134 total members, we expanded the Slack by 50 people this iGEM competition season!
COMMUNITY MEETUPS
Together, with ASU iGEM, we organized three online Community Meetups over the summer months. These Meetups featured talks from former iGEM teams, experts in industry and academia, open-floor discussions, and troubleshooting sessions to tackle some of the problems teams faced in the lab.
1st Meetup
|
The 1st Meetup was hosted in late-July and served as our kickoff event. We began with an introduction of the community featuring alumni from iGEM Marburg 2021, the grand-prize winning team and founders of this space! We also had special guest speaker René Inckemann from the iGEM Plant Subcommittee to talk about his work and how the Subcommittee can support teams working with phototrophic chassis! The iGEM teams in attendance were asked to briefly introduce their project topic in 5min, followed by a Q&A session. Lastly, we had a discussion on the goals of the Phototroph Community this year, and determined which teams were interested in contributing to this large-scale collaboration! |
|
|
DOWNLOAD OUR FIRST MEETUP SLIDES HERE |
2nd Meetup
|
The 2nd Meetup occurred several weeks later in mid-August, where we focused on troubleshooting iGEM team's projects. We began with an introduction of our general speakers, Dr. De Stefano and Dr. Tabatabaee, who gave amazing talks on overcoming roadblocks in research with personal anecdotes to their PhD work, followed by a Q&A session. We also had special guests Dr. Eustance and Santiago Ochoa provide expert feedback to teams in troubleshooting breakout sessions for microalgae and cloning-related questions. Lastly, we had an open discussion on the guidelines and deadlines associated with the Phototroph Handbook Volume II additions, a large-scale collaboration of the community this year! |
Virtual Conference
|
The 3rd Meetup took place at the end of August, and was the final culmination of past events, dubbed the Phototroph Community Virtual Conference! This major event featured talks from experts in academia and industry specializing in synthetic biology with plants, microalgae, cyanobacteria and more! To begin, Dr. Simonsen spoke about MossTech and engineering photosynthetic eukaryotic cells such as mosses to produce fragrances and drugs! Dr. Wintermute gave a fascinating talk on Ginkgo Bioworks' effort to streamline phototroph synthetic biology and the foundry. Hannah Press showcased her work as an intern engineering cyanobacteria at Spira, a biotech company producing food dyes and dietary supplements. After a quick break. Dr. Koch told us all about plastic accumulation in our oceans and engineering cyanobacteria to degrade these polymers. Our final speaker, René Inckemann, spoke about designing, building and testing synthetic chloroplast genomes. In addition, iGEM Phototroph teams showcased their 2022 projects to experts and guests, in order to receive feedback on their work and presentation skills to prepare for the Grand Jamboree in Paris! The event was streamed on Zoom as well as Biocord, accruing around 60 guest attendees overall. |
|
Youtube Channel
Each iGEM Phototroph Community Meetup, including the Virtual Conference, was recorded for posterity and future reference for iGEM teams and bioenthusiasts alike. Click on the image to visit our Youtube channel with over 10 hours of content from our community in 2022!
HANDBOOK VOLUME II
The Phototroph Handbook was originally created with the help of 2021 teams with a shared collection of knowledge, intended to be expanded upon overtime. It featured sections on working with phototrophs, cloning, standardization, biosafety, metabolic engineering, modelling as well as associated protocols. This year, Phototroph teams expanded upon the previous work with Volume II, bringing more depth to growth and cultivation of cyanobacteria and plants, transformation of microalgae, refining assembly standards, detailing the evolution of phototrophs and other novel gene delivery methods.
In total, eight teams contributed to writing Volume II additions, as well as video protocols to supplement the text! See Handbook for a more detailed breakdown of our team's contribution to various sections, the other teams involved, as well as the Handbook itself, available for download.
PHOTOTROPH BADGES
In order to honour the teams involved in the Phototroph Community, iGEM Marburg and iGEM Bielefeld created the Phototroph Badges as a means of displaying their efforts on team’s wiki. This season, we re-designed four different badges inspired by last year’s editions, to be more inclusive for teams working with cyanobacteria and microalgae!
The four badges are Community, Presentation, Handbook and Organization. The Community badge symbolizes the connection each team had to the community after signing up to the Slack workspace. The Presentation badge represents those teams who presented their project at the Virtual Conference, receiving feedback from experts and iGEMers alike. The Handbook badge honours teams that helped write the Phototroph Handbook, passing on their knowledge to future iGEM teams in a comprehensive document. The final badge, Organization, is exclusive to UBCO iGEM and ASU iGEM for reviving the community and spending significant time planning the various events, managing the Slack workspace and drafting additions to Handbook Volume II.
FUTURE GOALS
In 2022, we expanded upon the historic inception of the Phototroph Community. UBCO iGEM and ASU iGEM took over organization this season, with plans to pass along the responsibility to two more teams next year! iGEM Alumni will remain in the Slack Workspace, fostering a community of knowledge and experience. This, combined with the Phototroph Handbook Volume II and future iterations, make for a truly valuable space to bring iGEM teams working with cyanobacteria, microalgae and higher plants together each year. In our talks with the iGEM Plant Subcommittee, we managed to distribute the Handbook for upload on their webage, allowing for even further reach and impact. In doing so, we hope to foster a living, growing community that aims to make working with phototropic chassis in the iGEM competition more accessible each year.