Team:Ruperto Carola/Collaborations

iGEM UNAMBG

We wanted not only to reach out to different scientists or the adult population, but also to students and children in particular. While it is common to target teenagers and young adults as an audience, we have found there is a lack in scientific media targeting children and girls. Especially the emerging field of synthetic biology is not well established in children’s or girl’s media. Following our motto “Make science visible!” we collaborated with the iGEM UNAMBG team to help with a German translation of their children’s book. Their book tells the story of a young girl who wants to help her sick grandpa suffering from diabetes. In order to assist him in coping with his illness, she is supported by two specialists from both the dry and wet lab to utilize biotechnological approaches. Thus, we were able to not only reach out to the young generations, but also to encourage girls to get enthusiastic about science. [link for book]

iGEM US AFRL CarrollHS

Creating a Wiki Wealth of Knowledge

In collaboration with US AFRL CarrollHS we supported them in putting together a wiki guide. Their collaboration idea caught our eye as it further connects the iGEM community by providing information regarding basic hurdles like the wiki. By providing clearly articulated guides, future teams will not be overwhelmed by the numerous demands imposed on them, so they are able to use their energy on lab work and project planning. Our contribution was a guide detailing how to integrate mediawiki and html. We highly encourage both, experienced and new teams to check out the full guide. [link to their wiki page and guide]

iGEM Düsseldorf

Postcards

Nowadays, social media is all around us, making it easy to communicate with everyone in a very fast and direct way. Still, we often do not take the time to enjoy moments we take for granted, like when almost 50 teams from all around the world artfully exchange their fascinating project ideas to facilitate international scientific communication. As one always pauses for thought when receiving a postcard, such old-fashioned communication promised to have a great impact. So we decided to take part in a collaboration with iGEM Düsseldorf to design our own postcard and send it around the world to other teams. This way we learned not only about other teams and their projects, but they also learned about us. iGEM Düsseldorf thereby created an excellent way to connect and bring the iGEM community closer together. We were also able to use the cards we created to enhance our outreach to students and the public by handing them out as a nice giveaway. This helped us better bond to people and tell them about our project. [POSTCARDs PHOTO from ours and some others; link: LINKTO_HP_Intergrated HP_communication https://2019.igem.org/Team:Duesseldorf/Collaborations]

Perceptions around the World

Collaborative survey

ASF already became endemic in several countries and poses an ongoing threat to spread throughout the world (Štukelj and Plut, 2018).

Two countries find themselves in a similar situation, surrounded by the virus. In the end both try to keep ASF as far away from their border as possible. Comparing the policies can be difficult though, as both countries face very different geographical and contractual circumstances. Germany as part of the EU is obliged to allow free travel and transport between other countries of the EU while Taiwan, as an insular state, has the ocean surrounding it. But how do people perceive these circumstances? CCU Taiwan gathered voices locally while we did the same in Germany.

“I think the policies are all right, just the general information of the public is lacking”
“Government is very slow and doesn't inform enough […]”

Chicken or Egg: Do people in Germany care less about the disease because there is less coverage on the Topic than in Taiwan? Or does German media inform less because people do not care as much? When asked for ideas on how to prevent its spread we got an answer both igem teams can definitely agree with:
“Fast and cheap tests”can not only help locally but improve the situation worldwide.

iGEM Freiburg

Peptides and chimeric receptor

PSMa3 is a 22 aminoacid short peptide found in MRSA (Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus) affected patients and this year on the workbenches of iGEM Freiburg. To tackle the antibiotic resistant bacteria they set out to find suitable peptide inhibitors able to block toxic PSMa3 by binding it. We received a set of their purified inhibitory peptides around 13 aminoacids conveniently corresponding to the size of the alpha mating pheromone from our yeasts.
Knowing how difficult it can be to detect such short peptides we designed novel chimeric receptors based on the DIY receptor design idea from iGEM TU-Delft 2012 for them. BBa_K3173006 and BBa_K3173008 were cloned into BY4741 cells using a high copy p425 backbone with GPD promoter.