Team:Sao Carlos-Brazil/Collaborations
Collaborations
During iGEM 2019 season we had the pleasure to interact with lovely teams and meet amazing people, our main collaborations were:
USP_SaoCarlos-Brazil
As mentioned in our Public Engagement section, on August we organized a Synthetic Biology Workshop at Zenith's Aerospace Saturday with team USP_SaoCarlos-Brazil, in which we talked about the basics of synbio to high school students and also had the opportunity to present our projects and tell everyone about iGEM. Since we are from the same city and our labs are in the same building (!), we have had a lot of contact with each other, from lab meetings to discuss protocols to them letting us borrow some Gibson Assembly reagents when our NEB Kit was delayed.
Botchan_Lab_Tokyo
When we first found out about how similar Team Botchan_Lab_Tokyo's project was to ours (they are engineering a radiation-resistant E. coli!), we decided to reach out to them to ask whether they had any information about Japan's legislation on space and stratospheric experimentation. We were told that the release of microorganisms outside of a laboratory is completely forbidden there, so they wouldn't be able to help us in this area. However, they then shared with us the difficulties they had been having with the purpose and execution of their project, so we arranged a skype meeting to help them with technical input. One of our team members advised them to focus on E. coli's DNA repair mechanism in order to promote the radiation resistance, while they shared a paper with us about how oxidative stress can damage yeast cells during fermentative processes, so both of us have benefitted from this collaboration!
BrownStanfordPrincetn
After we tried to get in touch with NASA to ask about their thoughts on stratospheric probes' biosafety and were not able to get a satisfying reply, we decided to directly email Dr. Lynn Rothschild, a researcher based on NASA Ames Research Center and Team BrownStanfordPrinctn's primary PI. Fortunately, Dr. Lynn directed us to one of her team members, with whom we have exchanged many emails regarding NASA and the United States' views and regulations on stratospheric experimentation. They were able to contact some people who had performed similar experiments of the ones we wanted, as stated in our Human Practices' page. We have also sent them all the information we had gathered from other countries' legislation, which was also extremely helpful to them because although they have decided against launching a high-altitude balloon this year, it is a common practice at Ames, so now they can make sure they are complying with their country's laws when doing this kind of experiment.
Stony_Brook
To help iGEM teams introduce themselves, open space for possible collaborations and let iGEMmers show their creative sides, team Stony_Brook has launched two Instagram challenges: a week-long challenge with a specific theme for each day of the week, and the Lab Coat Challenge, in which we had to create a stylish outfit using only a Lab Coat and, obviously, model it. Our team has participated in both challenges, and we have had a lot of fun doing so! All posts are available on our Instagram profile @synbioufscar.
