The special thing about iGEM is that it is not just a competition, but teams are actually working together and helping each other out. Some collaborations are not only centered around the individual iGEM projects but serve a higher purpose such as educating about certain diseases or increasing the inclusion to the scientific community. We received so many requests for collaborations and we would have loved to accept all of them, because all of the teams came up with amazing ideas. We chose the ones that sounded the most appealing to us and that were a good fit to us as a team and our project. If we agree to collaborate, it is very important to us to be able to contribute something meaningful to the project and fully fulfill the requests made by the other teams. But this year we did not only take part in many different collaborations, but we also started an amazing collaboration on our own! Check out all the collaborations below.
How-to-Meetup
We organized the European Meetup this year and faced a lot of challenges. To facilitate organizing meetups for future teams, we collaborated with Toulouse, who organized the french meetup, and Münster, who organized a junior jam as practice for the grand jamboree, to create a how-to-meetup guide. We started our collaboration before Münster held their meetup and with the combined expertise from Hamburg and Toulouse were able to help them with many questions. This way we were also able to integrate an engineering cycle into our collaboration: we, as well as Toulouse, had already designed and held a meetup and designed a guide for Münster, who tested it and gave feedback afterwards, so that we can now say that our how-to-meetup guide is a full engineering success on a social level.
Our other collaborations:
NTHU_Taiwan iGEM team - iGEM Map
The team NTHU Taiwan asked us to collaborate on their project, which aimed to promote synthetic biology by making a map of all the locations iGEM experiments were performed around the world. We were instantly intrigued by the idea, because we had only met some European teams so far (at the European meet up that we organized!) and were interested where exactly all other iGEM teams were located. They asked us to design a cartoon-ish character that represents us as a team and our unique project. Moreover, they also wanted to turn all the characters into a painting, combining each element into one big piece of art.
This is the little character we designed in collaboration with the team of the NTHU Taiwan. We designed the character to be a phage, because we aim to deliver our split ribozyme carrying vector construct into the bacteria via phages. Phages are also very special and interesting and have a certain aesthetic to them which would fit perfectly into an artistic project like this. If you look closely at the smiley face, you can see the eyes are actually split ribozymes and the mouth is made of single strand mRNA. The finished map can be found on their Wiki page. In total over 30 other teams contributed to the collaboration and we are proud to be part of it.
Aestuarium MSP Maastricht - puzzle book
The team from Aestuarium MSP Maastricht wanted to create a puzzle book containing word search puzzles from other iGEM teams to combine education and fun! We think puzzles and quizzes in general are a great way to inform about synthetic biology related topics, because they are easily accessible to people of all ages. The team asked us to select 10 words, that of course are somehow related to our project. In order to find a good balance between easy and difficult words, which are supposed to be found in a grid containing not only the word but mostly random letters, we chose short and long words.
The words we chose are:
ANTIBIOTICS
RIBOZYME
DOCTORS
SPLIT
BACTERIA
RNA
PHAGE
DIAGNOSIS
FAST
RESISTANCE
The book also features a short explanation about why we chose the words and an abstract and is very well designed.
Antibiotic resistant pathogens pose an emerging risk in modern medicine. Antibiograms are used to detect those pathogens and depend on bacterial growth, stalling the diagnosis. We developed SPEAR - Sensing Pathogens and Emerging Antibiotic Resistances, a point-of-care diagnostic method detecting antibiotic resistances, allowing more accurate treatment. Resistance genes are detected using a split ribozyme fused to guide RNAs (gRNA). gRNA binding to a target resistance gene mRNA activates the ribozyme. It fuses a ribosome binding site and coding sequence of a reporter gene by self-excision, inducing translation of the reporter for visible readout. SPEAR robustly detects several genes of interest. Modular architecture enables fast adaptation to novel resistance genes through exchange of gRNAs. SPEAR may be delivered by phages, simplifying storage and extending shelf-life.
Ribozyme: We are working with a ribozyme to detect RNA.
Antibiotics: We want to speed up diagnosis, so that antibiotics can be used more accurately for treating patients.
Doctors: Our goal is to help doctors get the right diagnosis more easily and quicker.
Diagnosis: We hope to speed up diagnosis of bacterial pathogens.
Phage: Phages are a good way to get our Ribozyme-System into the bacteria, especially because of the easier storage.
Bacteria: We detect bacterial RNA in our project, and our goal is to detect bacterial pathogens.
RNA: We detect bacterial RNA, and are faster than growth dependent assays.
Fast: Our system is going to be a fast and easy diagnosis tool. The current duration of diagnosis on probable bacterial pathogens is much too slow.
Resistance: Antibiotic resistance of bacterial pathogens is a big challenge in modern medicine and the reason why we want to speed up diagnosis for more accurate treatment.
Split: The way that our detection system works, the ribozyme is split into two parts which can only bind each other and get active if the target RNA is present.
iGEM teams Chalmers-Gotheburg and UNIL - Blog
Many of us like to read blogs in our free time. So when the iGEM teams Chalmers-Gotheburg and UNIL from Lausanne Switzerland asked us to help translate a blog post for their joined blog, we were all in! The blog is about synthetic biology on a basic level. You can find it on thetransriptome. In order to increase the accessibility, the blog posts are available in multiple languages. We translated an article about stem cells from English to German. Here is the article in German. The headline translates to stem cells are creators and the article is about the different types of stem cells and their specific function.
Team RUM-UPRM - ASL in the Lab
Science is for everyone. At least this is how it should be! Everyone should be able to learn about it and participate, if they want to. Unfortunately for some people it is harder and not as accessible as it is for others. One thing, that would prevent people to educate themselves and become a part of the scientific community is the language barrier. Team RUM-UPRM decided to help overcome this barrier by promoting inclusivity inside the iGEM teams. They created a project called “ASL in the Lab”. We were asked to record a short clip in which one of our members signs a word in ASL (American Sign Language). The team even provided a list of the vocabulary. The clip was supposed to be shared on social media to reach a broad audience, so we posted it on our instagram channel @igemhamburg. This is our team member Stine signing the word SPEAR.
