Our team understands that more than a competition, iGEM offers us the opportunity to exchange knowledge and expand our horizons in science and life, and for this to be possible the best tool is to be able to connect with other teams, learn and help in different demands. We know that iGEM competition is challenging for all teams, and collaborating is essential for a successful journey. Our team actively attended to the other team's needs using our social media as a tool of communication, helping the teams with different activities. This interest of ours can be seen in our collaborations, as we work with several Brazilian and foreign teams in different ways.
The delay in the arrival of toolkits from most Brazilian teams made a stressful situation though to the short delivery date of the experiments, as soon as we got our kits, we sent them to our colleagues who still didn't have them in hand. With that, our team performed transformations in bacteria with our toolkit and we sent some parts to our colleagues from the UFV-UFMG team.
We also built a great relationship with the USP-EEL team collaborating with the dissemination of a data collection form to apply in their project, also, we were invited to participate in an educational event organized by the team in the city of Lorena. In addition to the larger collaborations with this team, we kept a group of conversations, where we exchange experiences, information, doubts, and what is necessary to help each other even though we have different project lines.
Our team also developed a good relationship based on a common interest in the BioPolMat (UNIARA-Araraquara - São Paulo/Brazil) and HB Biotec (Araraquara - São Paulo/Brazil) where we held a visit to learn about their Bacterial Cellulose production. The team also visited the Brazilian startup BioSmart Nanotechnologies, on the way to learn more about the development of possible nanotechnological solutions for Intelligent materials and how that could be used to improve our material.
One of our first meetings with international teams was at the LATAM event where we knew other teams and exchanged experiences with teams that had already participated in passed iGEM competitions.
We also participated in the Interlabs event, where we were able to collaborate with data results for three experiments with other participating teams.
We know that one barrier to collaborating between countries could be the language, but most of the teams eliminate this barrier transforming it into an advantage. Since we speak Portuguese, some of our collaborations were in the form of text translations for scientific publications and blogs made by teams from other countries. This collaboration is very important, as it expands the dissemination of scientific knowledge overcoming language barriers and reaching as many people as possible worldwide.
Along these lines, we helped the MSP Maastricht team to create their newspaper through a summary and a logo that was used to assemble a personalized puzzle book.
We also helped the NTHU_Taiwan team as part of their iGEMers map, describing each country project with the intention of know each other's project, in addition, we translated into Portuguese the book they created for the project called “SOS: Save Kobe from Staph”, to expand the dissemination of this knowledge about Staphylococcus aureus infections.
We worked together with the teams UNILausanne and Chalmers_Gothenburg helping with the translation of their blog: Thetranscriptome, this blog contains really interesting scientific information that it is been translated into different languages by the iGEM teams.
One other collaboration we participated in, was with IISc - Bengaluru IGEM team, translating into Portuguese a scientific document that informed about synthetic biology of their blog posts and educational material for social media.
As part of our collaboration between iGEM projects, we offered to give feedback to iGEM ITESO who expressed their need for validating their construct. Also, iGEM ITESO collaborated with us on the information needed for presenting a document to the iGEM organization.
With the Canada_Calgary and UI_Oslo iGEM teams, we work with a very similar line of projects, from cellulose production by Komagataeibacter. Together with these two teams, we form the “Celluminati” group, where we discussed different topics, and helped each other in our respective developing projects, all involved in the production of bacterial cellulose. This collaboration was also present in educational projects, using a protocol created by the UI_Oslo team. Together we also translate scientific information we produced into our native languages.
The last collaboration and contribution we did with iGEM LATAM TEAMS was a formal document to the iGEM organization expressing our needs for making iGEM competitions more inclusive. We want to thank the teams that collaborate on this document: Costa Rica, ITESO_GUADALAJARA, UFV-UFMG, USP-EEL, TecCEM, and Tec Monterrey GDL.