We are delighted to contribute to future iGEM teams both scientifically and through methods that we have used to complete various aspects of our project. Below is a list of our contributions to science, education and human practices. Additionally, we helped kickstart an iGEM team from another city in Norway!
We have troubleshot and optimized parts in the lab. You can read more about contributions at engineering success.
We have troubleshot ways to clone these following parts to transform into E. coli.
We are contributing with our experiences and eventually our successes in amplification of a eukaryotic gene (UAP1 from S. cerevisiae), cloning it into an expression vector (pASK-IBA3) and placing its regulation under inducible promoter pTet. Eventually we demonstrate the successful expression of the eukaryotic gene in a prokaryotic organism (E. coli) with a help of SDS-PAGE. We have successfully troubleshooted the cloning by trying various promoters (Bla, J23110, and finally the pTet promoter from IBA3 vector) as well as cloning vectors (pUC19, pASK-IBA3). We believe that our reasoning, which is the paradigm of engineering success as iGEM describes it, went from multiple setbacks to final success in several iteration cycles. We can only speculate but perhaps the initial setbacks could have been due to the use of constitutive and/or strong promoters, as well as high copy number cloning vectors. However we aspire that this is going to be an invaluable contribution to future iGEM teams in order to avoid same or similar setbacks and have a “playbook” to navigate around experimental challenges. For more details, see experiments and results pages.
Through our experiences, we were inspired to make guides for how to start an iGEM team and how to customize educational demonstrations program for future iGEM teams based on their project. Part of our wonderful iGEM journey took place within human practices. We wanted to make things happen but did not know where to begin. We found loads of resources, but being a team with only seven members, our time was limited and so was our ability to find the right instructions. Inspired by this, and based on the iGEM acronym, we created a quick-guide that will help future teams with their educational outreach based on their projects.
Guide: How to start an iGEM team.
Guide: How to customize educational demonstrations.
We learned that collaboration with other teams is a crucial part of scientific knowledge advancement. Currently, there are only two universities in Norway that take part in iGEM, the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) and the University of Oslo (UiO). Taking this into consideration, we held a meeting with Rein Aasland to promote and recruit a future iGEM team from the University of Bergen (UiB).
Professor Aasland wanted to know about our experiences, and struggles and how they contributed to our professional education. The meeting was positive, and we managed to convince him to set meetings with the right people at UiB who are now interested in recruiting students for the 2023 iGEM competition!
After the 2022 Jamboree, we have agreed to help with presentations and recruitment via Zoom or in person, to ensure that prospective students can have good overview of what iGEM can bring to their experience as students and to their education.
