Team:Alma/Collaborations
Our Collaborations
As a first-time team, we were excited to form new partnerships and friendships in iGEM. We sought ways to collaborate, sharing what we had learned with fresh ideas while getting ideas from veterans of the competition. Our first taste of collaboration was an informal chat [link to first section] with neighbors just south of us in Lansing, the Michigan State (MSU) iGEM team. We continued this by attending meetups; first in Dayton, OH, hosted by the USAFRL/Carroll HS team and then the Mid-West meetup hosted by the MSU iGEM team.
In addition, we sought to organize our own collaboration – a sort of InterLab study or quality control study we call the ‘Mystery BioBrick’. We also discussed graphic design and logos with other teams, and offer advice in this realm elsewhere on our Wiki.
Chatting with Dr. Bjoern Hamberger and the MSU team
Since we were meeting with Mr. Jeremy Hendges of the Michigan Government office of Talent and Economic Development, it was convenient to pop over to MSU (both of which are located in the greater Lansing area).
This was a great conversation – an early way to gain insights into how a veteran team approaches the competition. We also discovered that their team is looking to tackle a method of converting methane into a biofuel. This could potentially be a great collaboration opportunity since our project would produce methane and their project idea could potentially take that methane and turn it into something useful.
In particular, Dr. Hamberger pointed out that doing something with the methane gas after it is created is an important avenue, we could explore that would allow for collaboration, decreased risk of bloating/discomfort in patients, decreased emissions of greenhouse gasses.
Attending the Carroll HS Meetup
Our first real meetup experience was also the first one that the Carroll HS team hosted – it took place in Dayton OH on 6/22. From our team, Brianna Ricker, Nathan Haut, John Vusich, and Madison Hibbs attended. We gained valuable experience, and really appreciated the chance to talk with Amy Chen, the US iGEM Ambassador.
This was our first chance to really present our project idea in full to other iGEMers (we met with a few MSU students earlier in the semester). It was good practice of our timing (we talked for 7 minutes, with 5 minutes for questions – key advice we got from this meetup was to practice with a clock!). The other teams there had a number of interesting questions – including the following:
- What are the byproducts of the TMA breakdown?
- What are you working on in the lab currently?
- This led to some conversations about troubleshooting SDS PAGE and protein expression.
- Are the codons in your DNA optimized for E. coli?
We also discussed the Wiki, and Annie from the Carroll HS team talked about the resources for Wiki design and formatting that the team was assembling. Some of their other communication and social media ideas were inspiring – the ‘Flat Stanley’ ideas gave us something to think about in how we can best use social media.
We discussed logo design with the teams at the meetup – this was very helpful to our graphic design process. The feedback we got on some draft logo designs was helpful – that it was nice and clean, “I'm seeing the colors and I'm understanding them as blood and I'm relating to the steak, absolutely,” and “I like the name, plaque attack, it’s cool.”
Other advice we got from this meetup:
- Branding & buzz is so important and consistency is a great way to do that. Having the same logo on the presentation and the shirts and the banner will help put you in people’s heads. Some teams even put their presentation time on the banner to make it easier for people to find.
- Some teams go for 2 logos, one for the team and one that is project specific. We learned that the Carroll HS team uses their team logo as the project logo and then add a project title.
- It's really great to connect the project back to you and your team, and your city. Teams at the meetup felt that we did a good job of this – providing statistics that clearly demonstrate the problem is not only a global one, but an important one for Gratiot County, MI.
A copy of our presentation from this meetup is available for download.
Attending the MSU Mid-West Meetup
We got to attend another meetup later in the year (thankfully, one that was closer to home, only about 1 hour drive from Alma College). This was the Mid-West meetup hosted by our fellow Michiganders, the MSU iGEM team. Once again, this meetup provided us with a lot of valuable advice – including a heavy emphasis on branding and marketing at the iGEM Jamboree. Despite being a first-year team, we were excited to offer help to other iGEMers – one of our team members, Nathan Haut, had productive conversations with the University of Michigan iGEM team regarding math modelling. Nathan was able to help explain some ways in which math modelling, and SimBio in particular, can be used in iGEM.
The Mystery BioBrick (& other collaborations)
Earlier this year, we accidentally recovered some DNA from distribution plate 6, cell 16N. According to the database, there should be nothing in this well! We were able to recover and sequence some clone from here - one that had a green appearance.
We invited teams to repeat our 'accident,' and see if they can also recover DNA from this cell. Was this a fluke for our plate, or a hidden BioBrick? (The true answer was provided to us by iGEM HQ after we invited others to collaborate - this clone was intentionally, and intentionally not documented). We asked teams to suspend this well with water and use some of it to transform a standard cloning strain such as DH5a (as you would any other BioBrick). Send us a picture or share it on Twitter with #MysteryBioBrick to spread the results! You can also download the results of our sequencing run.
Special thanks to the USAFA team, who joined us in this collaboration (Spoiler: they also recovered a clone from this well).
We also entered into the Fluorescent Masterpiece collaboration that was offered by the Lomonosov Moscow State University team - you can see our entry here. The Moscow team invited all others via the main collaboration page to offer some bacterial art by using bacteria expressing different fluorescent and chromogenic proteins. We found that using these strains were useful for spreading awareness of synthetic biology, as the colors help to pique the interest of a broader audience.
