Team:Thessaly/Collaborations
COLLABORATIONS.
During our journey, we realized that iGEM is not just a competition, but it is also an opportunity to experience the value of collaboration. We were really glad to share our project with other teams and be part of theirs. Our team is very excited to have interacted with a lot of fellow iGEMers.
Greek iGEMers
First Greek Meetup
On July 12 and 13, our team hosted the First Greek Meetup for the iGEM 2019 competition, in the city of Larissa, Thessaly. All Greek teams came together and exchanged ideas, knowledge, and visions. There were exciting talks by great scientists in the field of Synthetic Biology, presentations of the team’s projects, as well as interactive activities that gave us the opportunity to get to know our fellow iGEM participants representing Greece this year.
Our program also included an iGEM Alumni Panel discussion with Thea Chrysostomou, coordinator of After iGEM Academia and Research Committee, Dimitris Michailidis, supervisor of the iGEM Sheffield and once a judge at the Giant Jamboree, and Giannis Ntekas, team leader of iGEM Athens 2018.
Image 1. A Moment from our fun activity “RoukZouk iGEM Edition”.
Image 2. Our photo with all our guests at the end of the Greek Meetup.
iGEM Athens
A challenging part of every team’s project is fundraising. As we found out early this year, bureaucracy can really become an obstacle in terms of managing an amount of money for expenses needed to be covered. That’s only part of it, though. By participating in the competition, you gain the skill to find successful ways of raising money for a specific cause. We did that through our crowdfunding platform, which we published to the general public.
For this reason, iGEM Athens approached us and asked for advice regarding those two issues. We talked them through the necessary procedures and gave them tips regarding the creation of their crowdfunding platform.
iGEM Athens from their side helped us with our experiments by sending a reagent we needed at the time, betaine. Betaine is the most common PCR additive used to enhance amplification of GC rich sequences, because of its ability to dissolve secondary structure that blocks polymerase action.
Image 3. Members of our team travelled to Athens to meet our fellow iGEMers.
Image 4. The moment we received betaine.
Spreading SynBio with iGEM Athens and Thessaloniki
On May 10, the 25th Scientific Congress of Hellenic Medical Students was held, at the Thessaloniki Concert Hall. Our team joined forces with iGEM Athens and iGEM Thessaloniki and presented Synthetic Biology and iGEM to medical students. We organized a round table consisting of four talks. Our goal was to introduce to our peers innovative Synthetic Biology tools as well as the competition and the opportunities it provides.
Image 5. The members of the Greek teams that talked at the conference.
Image 6. After the conference we all met with iGEM Greece 2017.
colLAB
iGEM Aix - Marseille
This year, iGEM Aix- Marseille worked on a project similar to ours. They also designed a diagnostic test for Tuberculosis, though using a different technique. To test the efficiency of our designed primers in different conditions and in a completely different lab, we sent them 2 sets of them. The first set was the one we chose as the main for our proof-of-concept experiments (S1F1O-S1R1O). The second one was chosen among the pre-tested sets, which results in a bigger amplicon size (SXF2O-S1R2O). They used these sets of primers to try and amplify the biomarker they used, which happens to be the same biomarker we chose (IS6110). After performing a PCR reaction, they confirmed that our primers are indeed able to amplify their sequence. Afterwards, they sent us gel images proving the success of their experiment.
Image 7. Skype meeting with iGEM Aix- Marseille and the gel from their experiment with our primers.
iGEM EPFL
After a long brainstorming phase concerning our improve part, we decided to improve iGEM EPFL’s part BBa_K2203005. More specifically, we aimed to improve iGEM EPFL’s 2017 toehold switch by replacing the lacZa gene with the eGFP.
Our initial thought was to conduct this experiment in vitro by inserting our toehold to a vector, to be produced by the PURExpress in vitro Protein Synthesis Kit. However, we faced difficulties in cell lysate and asked for EPFL’s help. They immediately responded to our call and sent us the protocol.
After a discussion we had with our professor though, our plan changed and we decided to conduct the improvement of iGEM EPFL’s part in vivo. To achieve that, we needed M15 T7 cells. EPFL team gladly provided us with these cells which they had stocked from the 2017 EPFL team.
During our experiments, we faced some obstacles that led us to work with another improved part, so the M15 T7 cells were eventually added to our team’s stock.
Regarding the similarity of our projects, we kept in touch with iGEM EPFL via Skype. We discussed a lot about the workflow and toehold design. We also did troubleshooting on the RPA method which we are both using. We additionally, took an insight into Human Practices and talked about the progress of our work.
Image 9. Skype meeting with iGEM EPFL.
iGEM Thessaloniki
In early October, iGEM Thessaloniki asked us for our help concerning their lab supplies. So, with great pleasure, we sent them DNA oligos. We had the luxury to do so thanks to our IDT offer.
Accessible Science
In our effort to achieve the best integration of our project, we decided to provide a product guide together with our kit, explaining in a simple way the steps of our test and giving advice for its safe and fast use. This guide is essential for the people working in refugee camps, and also plays an important role in bridging the communication gap between them and the people arriving at recetption centers in our country. We thought that, giving them the opportunity to understand the procedures followed for their treatment and care, would make them feel safer and built the necessary trust for the actors in field.
Therefore, we took it one step further and asked from our fellow iGEM teams to provide us with the product guide in the most commonly spoken languages at these sites, which are Arabic, French and Urdu. The teams iGEM AFCM Egypt, iGEM Montpellier and, iGEM Lacas BioBots helped us with that and participated in our project by translating the guide into these languages respectively.
Attending InParis Meetup
On July 26 and 27, iGEM Pasteur Paris, in collaboration with iGEM Evry Paris Saclay, iGEM Go Paris Saclay and iGEM IONIS, organized the official European Meetup of the #iGEM2019 competition. Our team was there too, together with around 130 participants from all around Europe. We were given the opportunity to practice our presentation and receive feedback from experts to optimize our work. We also got to meet our fellow iGEMers and get to know their projects.
Image 10. All of the attendants on the first day of the Meetup.
BioArt
iGEM Dusseldorf - Postcards
Since 2016, iGEM Düsseldorf is doing a postcard campaign with the purpose to educate the public about topics in synthetic biology. We were excited to be part of their effort and design our own postcard reflecting “OdysSEE”. iGEM Dusseldorf’s idea was great as by receiving postcards from teams all over the world, we were able to learn about their project in an interesting artistic way.
Image 11. The postcard we created to send to the other teams.
Image 12. The postcards that our fellow iGEMers created.
iGEM Paris - Saclay
iGEM Paris- Saclay’s project "DNA FREE POETential", is about a DNA-less cell and mixes synthetic biology and poetry. We participated in their project by writing haikus about Synthetic Biology in three languages, Greek, English, and French. Haikus are Japanese poems composed of only 3 sentences of 5 / 7 / 5 syllables, respectively. They classically reflect the fleeting beauty of Life, expressing ephemeral but strong feelings.
iGEM Map of Abstracts
This year iGEM Hamburg had the vision to take a step towards achieving a truly open source iGEM, by providing access to iGEM projects to many members of the community. They decided to do that, by creating a world map consisting of easy to understand iGEM abstracts of teams' projects. We loved being part of this effort, as it would allow for the public to be introduced to many great ideas giving solutions to problems of the world.
iGEM Washington
In terms of Human Practices for their project, iGEM Washington created an audiobook including an outreach booklet. They asked us to translate activities included in the booklet in Greek. We were inspired and glad to participate in their project and help them with their goal, so we translated the script and activities.
Mentored
iGEM Sheffield
As a newly founded team and the first one from Thessaly to participate in the competition, there were some areas with which we needed support and advice from experienced teams.
iGEM Sheffield is an established team that has been participating in the competition technically since 2008, so we asked them to share their experience with us regarding Human Practices and Graphic Design. They gave us important feedback on our Human Practices plan and useful advice concerning our visual identity. They also helped us to solve some problems we faced with our wiki.
US_AFRL_CarrollHS
As any team that has taken part in the competition can confirm, building your wiki can be quite tricky. On some occasions, our wiki person, Eleftheria, faced difficulties and iGEM US_AFRL_CarrollHS was there to come to her rescue. They supported us from the very beginning by helping Eleftheria comprehend wiki’s server and doing troubleshooting on templates with her.
Surveys
Every year, a lot of iGEM teams conduct surveys to get feedback on their project, or certain aspects of it. It was our pleasure to become a part of their effort.
iGEM UAlberta
The UAlberta iGEM team was interested in investigating the age, sex, gender, and race demographics of iGEM teams, to examine if there are any inclusion disparities in iGEM teams. So, they conducted a Demographics and Inclusivity Survey, and we happily participated in it.
iGEM Aix- Marseille
This year iGEM Aix – Marseille's project concerns the same problem with ours, Tuberculosis. This led to us being in touch with them for mutual feedback. They conducted a survey to help them find an easy, cheap and reliable way to diagnose the disease. We were glad to be part of their effort and promote their survey to as many members of the community as we could.
iGEM King's College London
iGEM KCL UK is targeting gene therapy intending to widen its potential in the variety of diseases that could be treated. In an effort to explore current biosecurity policies in universities and whether they are sufficiently accessible, they created a survey. We filled and promoted their survey that touched this very important issue for biosciences.
Their project characterizes the activity of the Light Activated CRISPR-dCas9 Effector (LACE) system in the enhancement of endogenous genes within three mammalian cell lines (CHO-DG44, AML 12, and NIH-3T3). So, they generated a survey to better understand the barriers that keep iGEM teams from working with mammalian systems.
#challenges
iGEMxSDGs
Around June, the iGEM teams of TAS_Taipei (Taiwan), Costa Rica and Tuebingen (Germany) introduced iGEMxSDGs challenge. iGEMxSDGs was a challenge that invited all teams of iGEM to match their project to the respective SDGs targeted by their teams. The goal was to raise awareness of the SDGs within the iGEM community and to the public. We happily accepted the challenge and posted our match on our social media channels, spreading the importance of the SDGs and hoping to inspire future projects.
Image 13. The SDG’s we contribute to with our project.
One-minute challenge
The iGEM Technion team from Israel started this challenge which required from the other teams to present in simple words their project in a one-minute video. Each team participating would challenge five other teams. The goal was to reach to our communities and expose them to the wonders of science, as well as getting them more familiar with the teams’ projects. We were invited to join by iGEM Pasteur. We were excited to accept the challenge and make our own video presenting our camp and project.
