Being a large, international synthetic biology competition, iGEM is the ideal opportunity to get in touch with those outside of our university bubble and learn from the world around us. We reached out to other iGEM teams, as well as other organisations, who wanted to collaborate with us and shared our vision. We did this with the aim of improving projects on both sides of the collaboration, as well as to connect with organisations rooted in society.
Team TU Eindhoven - The Dutch iGEM meetup
On the 8th of July we co-organised the Dutch iGEM meetup in Utrecht. Together with the TU Eindhoven team and the Dutch Centre for Living Technologies, we set up a day full of activities to help all Dutch teams improve their projects and find partnership. The day kicked off with inspiring lectures from EWUU, Rathenau Instituut, SynBioNL and the iGEM Community. After this, the teams pitched their projects, gaining insightful feedback in the process. Finally, a small brainstorming carousel planted the seeds for further collaborations and partnerships. In this way we brought the Dutch iGEM community closer together and inspired all teams to bring out their best in the competition.
Team ELTE University, Budapest - European perceptions of GMOs
Whilst working on our project we learned we were not the only ones aiming to use a living bacterium in the colon. The Nanoblade team from ELTE University, Budapest sought to battle colorectal cancer using a bacterium as a therapeutic in the colon. We got together and discussed our projects and decided we would like to learn more about people’s perceptions of GMOs for both diagnostic and therapeutic applications. Both of our teams had already set up a survey, and thus after the data of our surveys came in, we compared what perceptions people in western and central Europe might have towards GMOs and their regulations. From our combined surveys we learned that education about GMOs and proper scientific investigation into their safety are two key factors in working towards acceptance of GMOs in the future.
BalanceBuddy - The cookbook
We strongly believe that prevention of colorectal cancer is as important as its detection. As poor diet is one of the risk factors for colorectal cancer, we decided to collaborate on developing a cookbook with BalanceBuddy, a Dutch organisation who helps children develop healthy diets and lifestyles. The aim of the cookbook is to draw attention to the importance of diet in preventing colorectal cancer as well as making healthy eating economically accessible for everyone. Together with BalanceBuddy and Nutrition experts form Wageningen University we collected accessible, simple, and healthy recipes in our cookbook. The resulting cookbook can be found here, both in Dutch and English.
CLick here to read our
cookbook!
English
Dutch
Other contributions to the community
The NTHU Taiwan iGEM team added us to an iGEM world map!
Usafa (US Air Force Academy) iGEM made a synthetic biology colouring book and we contributed by sending a colouring page on our project!
iGEM TU Braunschweig, Germany and iGEM ASIJ Tokyo, Japan created an Instagram account together to spread cancer awareness. We made two social media posts about colorectal cancer for this purpose. One was about colorectal cancer diagnosis and one about several ways to reduce your risk of getting colorectal cancer.
iGEM Patras Medicine did a collaboration with iGEM MetaThess. Here, they created a poster with pictures of all iGEM teams in the diagnostics track.
iGEM Hamburg organised the European iGEM meetup in Hamburg. We joined them for a weekend full of pitches, posters, and lots of fun!
