Team:Thessaloniki/Collaborations
Overview
One of the greatest parts of our journey was the opportunity to collaborate with other iGEM teams in ways that helped us improve our project and skills, validate methods and protocols that were used and contribute to other iGEM teams’ projects. Due to the interaction with the following iGEM teams, we had the chance to meet new people, exchange experiences and familiarize ourselves with their ideas.
iGEM Thessaloningen
In May 2019 we started collaborating with the iGEM Groningen team. Participating both in the competition with a computational project we had many things in common from the beginning of our conversations. After many Skype calls and What’s app messages we decided to collaborate with our fellow iGEM team by validating the protocol they were using for their 3D printed bacterial QR code. We conducted the experiments required for the QR code to be printed in order to be scannable and lead to our Wiki Page. After testing and validating the protocol, we gave iGEM Groningen our feedback on how it worked for us and were happy to contribute to their effort.
Participating in the 25th SCHMS
On May 10th we welcomed iGEM Athens and iGEM Thessaly in our city in order to participate together in the 25 th SCHMS, the annual congress of Hellenic Medical Students that was hosted in Thessaloniki this year. As the three representatives of the iGEM competition in Greece, we collaborated in order to familiarize our audience with the competition and the basic principles of Synthetic Biology. A part of the conference included a summary of each team’s project as well as a presentation of the iGEM competition in general.
First Greek Meetup
On July 12th-14th all Greek iGEM teams were gathered in the city of Larissa, Greece in order to participate in the First Greek iGEM Meetup, hosted by iGEM Thessaly. Presenting our projects, exchanging ideas and visions on every aspect of the competition as well as participating in the fun-team bonding activities was the best way to get to know each other. Moreover, in this meetup we had the chance to be consulted by experienced iGEM Alumni. Thea Chrysostomou is a coordinator of After iGEM Academia and Research Committee, Dimitris Michailidis is a supervisor in the iGEM Sheffield 2019 team and had previously been a judge in the competition, while Giannis Ntekas was the team leader of the iGEM Athens 2018 team. Their advice and comments on our project were really constructive and helped us recognize aspects of it that hadn’t been noticed previously, such as possible ways of familiarizing the society with our project, despite its foundational advance nature.
Collaboration with iGEM Athens
Apart from notifying the responsible iGEM committee on our lab methods we wanted to reach to the society and institutes to evaluate our safety mechanisms and teach us responsibility through their experience in this field of science. To fulfill this goal we collaborated with iGEM Athens, a fellow iGEM team from Greece. We brainstormed in the idea of developing a whole assessment mechanism for an iGEM team to fulfill full evaluation of their work, regarding the safety and security. We established a self-assessment approach (iGEM Athens initiative) and an institute/organization-apart from iGEM- assessment (iGEM Thessaloniki initiative). Combining the two we provide any future iGEM team with a functional mechanism to reach the optimal point of safety and security. In our safety section, you can find our reaching to the scientific community protocol and iGEM Athens personal evaluation protocol.
Collaboration with iGEM Thessaly
During our iGEM journey, we realized that collaborating with fellow iGEMers can not only help us exchange perspectives and ideas but it can also contribute to the accomplishment of our project. As a good example of iGEM generosity and support, iGEM Thessaly provided us with some DNA oligos from that we were need of, in order for our experiments to be conducted properly and in time. We are really thankful for this collaboration and for iGEM Thessaly’s contribution to our goal.
iGEM Greece Slack
At the beginning of our journey, we realized that in order to present a complete and integrated project at the competition, we were in need of guidance from people that have experienced the competition before. Therefore, an iGEM Greece Slack platform was created, including all current Greek iGEM members as well as some iGEM Alumni members from previous iGEM teams. Through this platform, we had the opportunity to interact with our fellow iGEMers, express our concerns, troubleshoot our experiments and acquire valuable knowledge.
iGEM Ocean University of China (OUC-iGEM)
In August 2019 the iGEM Ocean University team contacted us in order to continue our previous year’s collaboration. They created a comic that needed to be translated in different languages and asked us to translate it in Greek and use it in our Human Practices activities. We thought that their innovative idea was a great chance of collaboration. Therefore, we translated some chapters of the comic book in our native language and exhibited it in the 84th Thessaloniki’s International Fair Helexpo Exhibition. The audience was really interested in our collective work and surprised by the competition’s initiative to encourage collaboration among contestants.
iGEM Rice University
In August 2019 we had a Skype meeting with iGEM Rice Team, we presented our projects and familiarized with each other’s ideas. We realized that we could help our fellow iGEMers get familiar with the situation occurring in Greek agriculture. Their goal is to design a synthetic circuit in Pseudomonas putida that will confer greater stress resistance to Arabidopsis thaliana. Their circuit is temperature induced by an RNA thermometer, which is optimal for 30°C. We had a fruitful conversation with the iGEM Rice team regarding the cultural differences and how they affect our farmer's techniques and applications. and applications.
iGEM Duesseldorf Postcards
Regarding the artistic part of the iGEM competition, this year we participated in the iGEM Duesseldorf ’s Postcard collaboration. The postcard initiative of the German team started about 3 years ago and aims at presenting each team’s work via a more artistic and playful way. Among approximately 60 other iGEM teams, we send to the German team copies of a postcard related to our project and designed by our team members. A few weeks later we received a postcard copy of every iGEM team that participated in this collaboration.
iGEM SDG Challenge ( iGEM TAS_Tapei, iGEM Costa Rica, iGEM Tuebingen collaboration)
As for the social media campaigns, we participated in the SDG instagram challenge organized by teams TAS_Tapei, Costa Rica and Tuebingen. We accepted the invitation to present the four, more related to our project, SDGs and participated in the challenge by posting the following photo on our instagram account.
iGEM Moscow Chess Tournament
Trying to find an alternative to chill and get some time off the lab just right before the Wiki Freeze, we participated the online Blitz Chess Tournament held by the iGEM Moscow team.
iGEM Moscow Survey
Based on their project that is related to creating a portable biosensor that can detect the presence of Borrelia spp., that causes Lyme disease in ticks, the iGEM Moscow team conducted a survey regarding tick-borne diseases among the public. We were more than happy to participate in their survey and contribute to their goal by filling out their survey.
iGEM Strasbourg Survey
The iGEM Strasbourg team conducted a survey regarding the impact and incidence of allergies in different countries and we were glad to be a part of it. While working on creating a test that allows the detection of food allergens, they organized this survey in order to collect international data on food allergies frequency and product labeling precision in countries worldwide.