Team:Costa Rica/Judging
Here we enlist the requirements met to achieve each possible medal in the competition. We scheduled our activities in order to fulfill every requirement that iGEM established for getting these accolades. We registered for iGEM, worked hard and learned a lot this summer (it was rainy season here, actually). Also, we are looking forward to attend the Giant Jamboree soon! We documented all our work in our Wikiand recorded our achievements in this judging form. Also, we are going to present our poster and presentation in the Giant Jamboree. We completed the Attributionspage in our wiki. There we describe how we managed to complete all the work and thank all the people who helped us in this journey. We successfully completed the Inspiration and Descriptionpage in our Wiki, where we share what motivated us to propose an alternative treatment for C. difficile. We characterized an existing Part of the Registry. The experimental data generated is documented in BBa_K2253000 ’s Main page and our Supplementary Material page. We designed, expressed in E. coli and characterize a protein that lyses C. difficile. This part was submitted to the Registry with the following number: BBa_K2978000. Also, we designed the composite part BBa_K2978100 that carries the genes to produce the QS inductor of C. difficile in E. coli. We managed to collaborate with other nine iGEM teams (UPNA, Tuebingen, TAS Taipei, Stonybrook, Düsseldorf, US AFRL Carroll HS, Strasbourg and UVA), as you can see here. One of our main collaborations consisted in providing the UPNA team with a water sample from Costa Rica, so that they could validate their heavy metal biosensor project. Also, we collaborated with the Tuebingen and TAS Taipei teams for the SDG challenge, where we gathered and analyzed how iGEM teams addressed the Sustainable Development Goals declared by the UN. We had plenty of time getting to know other teams and we are excited to meet them at the Jamboree. As our project is related with antibiotic resistance and synthetic biology we wanted to communicate those topics to Costa Rican citizens. In order to do so, we set three different targets: decision takers, patients and general public. We held several interviews with experts to collect information and we documented that in a booklet that we shared with our targeted publics. All our achievements of the human practices are recorded in our Human Practicespage. Our Integrated Human Practiceaim was to create awareness of the antibiotic resistant bacterias in Costa Rica, by proving the prevalence of those bacterias in citizens. This activity inspired us to formulate our project on an alternative treatment for C.difficile. Also, we visited two Public Hospitals and interviewed experts on the topic. That helped us to become more sensitive with the problem we are addressing and think about how our probiotic should be tested and delivered. We modeled the quimeric proteins we designed, in order to analyze different linkers. Also, we developed a mathematical model of how our bioengineered probiotic is expected to behave. Both models are documented in the following link. In our Education and Public Engagement Human Practice, we manage to talk with all the political parties of the Legislative Congress of Costa Rica and inform them about Synthetic Biology and the emerging possibilities of engineered probiotics. Therefore we presented a motion in the National Science and Technology Committee which was exposed in front of strategic people of the regulatory field in the country. We also presented to the committee and department chiefs of the only academic and specialized geriatric hospital in Central America. We talked about the possible applications of Synthetic Biology in infectology and we inform to the patients about the risks of indiscriminate use of antibiotics. Finally, we presented a fused event of dancing and science to reach the people of Costa Rica. The show was performed by the best, all ages, dancers and scientists of the country. They demonstrated the wonders of science, iGEM and Synthetic Biology through the dance. Read deeply about it in the following link.
Our team is eligible for this Special Prize because we designed an original mathematical model, based on known predator-prey models. In order to predict the behavior of our study, a system of two nonlinear, ordinary differential equations was formulated. Differential equations have been proven to be much more efficient in modeling than linear systems and statistics alone, since they provide much more information about population numbers, and can be used to extrapolate and predict many other possible scenarios, without the need for additional, costly experimentation. We managed to produce a stable, smooth solution for these equations, which is very desirable for biological modelling (unstable solutions often take odd values such as negative or infinite physical quantities). Additionally, this solution was approximated in a computer, using numerical methods, and many possible scenarios were observed, most of them are realistic and expected according to the initial values introduced.The model is documented in the following link. We propose the part BBa_K2978000. to this Special Prize. Check it out.
Bronze Medal
1. Register for iGEM, have a great summer, and attend the Giant Jamboree.
2. Competition Deliverables
3. Attributions
4. Inspiration and description
5. Characterization / Contribution
Silver Medal
1.Validated Part / Validated Contribution:
2. Collaboration:
3. Human Practices:
Gold Medal
1. Integrated Human Practices:
3. Model your project:
Special Prizes
Education and Public Engagement:
Model:
Best new composite part: