Team:DTU-Denmark/Collaborations
Collaborations
Collaboration with Brown-Stanford-Princeton
One of the main goals with our project is allowing other teams to recreate our procedure in any organism and not just Aspergillus niger. Because of this we arranged with the team from Brown-Stanford-Princeton that they would test our software. They have provided invaluable help by testing our software for their organism of choice, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, thus illustrating the user-friendly nature and adaptability of our software.
Help from SDU-Denmark
During our project we had issues transforming bacteria with our kanamycin backbone. This was important for our project as we stove to follow the established MoClo standard in our work. The SDU-Denmark iGEM team kindly sent us a plasmid with a kanamycin backbone, which we were able to successfully transform into bacteria, thus providing us with a working template for kanamycin resistance.
Uppsala
The iGEM team from Uppsala works to degrade lignin by expressing enzymes in yeast.
At the Nordic iGEM conference, we talked with the Uppsala team because we found out that they were working with fungal genes.
We thought it would be a good story and a good proof of the usefulness of our promoters to see if we could use the promoters to express something meaningful.
We, therefore, thought it would be interesting to express Uppsala's gene in our organism, Aspergillus niger. Furthermore, their enzymes are required in a specific ratio, which could possibly be controlled in a single organism by our promoters.
We contacted the Uppsala team to talk with them about what we could do and they agreed to send us a plasmid with their gene, which they did, but due to time constraints, we were unable to complete the experiment. However, we have prepared an experimental strategy, including the design of primers, to clone the parts together and eventually test the fungi and their protein production using the Uppsala assay.
Furthermore, the Uppsala team had issues transforming their chassis Pichia pastoris and as one of our team members had previously worked in the organism, we were able to help them with a protocol for transformation but they never end up using it since they got there transformations to work by themselves.
Danish iGEM Network
Together with UCopenhagen and SDU-Denmark we have started the process of making a more comprehensive collaboration network between the Danish teams. This adventure is described in more detail on the human practices page.
iGEM Washington
iGEM Washington has developed a comprehensive compendium of educational material for teaching synthetic biology to children and young students, ranging from elementary school to high school. We used their material as the starting point for our own presentations to high school students where we talked about the Sustainable Development Goals and how iGEM projects can make the world a better place. .
BioBrick Tutorial
In April, we hosted the 7th annual BioBrick Tutorial for the Nordic iGEM teams where we introduced the iGEM competition and how to work in the lab. You can read more about it here!
Nordic iGEM Conference (NiC)
In the middle of May, we participated in the Nordic iGEM Conference, hosted by UCopenhagen. This offered the first chance to present our project and get feedback on our process as well as training on how we are going to present a technical project in digestible details. Additionally, at the NiC we could hear more about the other cool projects from other teams, exchanged feedback on each other's methods and established the beginnings of further collaborations.
Danish iGEM meetup
In the end of July, we participated in the Danish iGEM meetup, hosted by SDU-Denmark. We had a great weekend where we got to know each other, improved our public speaking abilities, and began talks of further collaborations.
