In the spirit of a globally connected iGEM community, the team has hosted a meetup and attended others. In collaboration with a Dutch and a British iGEM team we assessed the potential of our ideas in our countries. Further, we have helped other iGEM teams to meet their collaboration goals for instance by answering their surveys. Finally, UCopenhagen actively works with other Danish teams on the establishment of a Danish iGEM network.

Nordic iGEM Conference (NiC)

On the weekend of May 17-19, Team UCopenhagen hosted the Nordic iGEM Conference (NiC). The conference was attended by 8 iGEM teams from Denmark, Sweden, and Finland, and was a great opportunity for starting collaborations between the teams and for learning more about iGEM, Science communication, modelling etc. At the conference, our team planned out further collaborations with teams from SDU and DTU. To read more about NiC click here.

Collaboration with Team Leiden & Team Oxford

GMOs can be a powerful tool in modern medicine. But even the best application is useless if the consumers are sceptical regarding their safety for health and the environment. It is therefore important to get an overview over the acceptance in potential markets, like the Netherlands, the UK and Denmark. The iGEM teams of University Leiden and University Oxford therefore collaborated with us to create a survey. The answers help us to understand how much the general public knows about GMOs, which information channels they use and if they would accept a GMO in a medical device. Click here to download the full collaboration.

Results from the survey:

Overall, 221 people filled out our survey. The overall aim of the survey was to understand the general knowledge and opinion about genetically modified organisms.
We asked people if they had heard about genetic engineering. Most of the people that answered our survey have heard about genetic engineering in school (62%). Many people have heard about genetic engineering in scientific publications and popular science media, suggesting that a lot of the people answering our survey are scientists. A lot of the people have also received information about genetic engineering through general media showing that genetic engineering is a subject getting a lot of attention in the media currently.

As one participant mentioned: “A lot of people (including myself) do not know that much about it [genetic engineering]. They have probably heard the word in school and some examples, but not really know the consequences or if it is really good or bad.”

Figure 1: Sources of information on genetic engineering.

Our survey showed that most people feel quite positively about genetic engineering. People over 65 years old are the most enthusiastic about genetic engineering (60% answered that they are positive about it). The people under 25-years old were the second most accepting of genetic engineering (56%), followed by the people between 25-40 years old (49%). The people between 41-65 were the least accepting of genetic engineering (38%) although only 12% had a negative opinion about it.

Figure 2: The general opinions on genetic engineering by age groups.

In figure 3 it can be seen that most people answering our survey would use genetically modified products if they were therapeutics or diagnostics (90% and 88% respectively), whereas intravenous injection was least opted (59%).We are very pleased to hear this opinion from people that Ovulaid could be used as a diagnostics tool. In general, this trend is seen throughout the data, where external (gel and ointment) scored higher than internal (targeted pill, mixture, bubble gum and lozenge) applications.

Figure 3: Examples of GM products that people would use.

We further tried to find out what a GMO drug would need to deliver in order to replace a traditional treatment. Of all participants, 89% indicated that they could be convinced by a GMO treatment with higher effectiveness at a comparable or lower price,whereas 60% would consider a GMO drug with a lower price, but similar effectiveness. This would be important to implement into the development of our product. It is also interesting that 43% said they would still consider a GMO medicine even without an obvious advantage in effectiveness or price. This, in combination with the overall high response, provides further indication to the positive attitude towards GMO treatment.

Figure 4: Motivation for choosing a GMO over a conventional product.

This might be due to the education people have received on genetic engineering, as one participant highlighted that “people can be very fearful about new technology and myths are spread. Educating people will benefit society by reducing people’s reservations about GMOs so they can get the most effective treatment possible”.

Conclusion:
We have to be careful drawing conclusions since our survey didn’t reach many people. Furthermore, because it was distributed through social media, it has reached a lot of our friends that are studying science at universities and are more prone to be positive towards GMOs. However, from our survey, it can be concluded that the people who filled out the survey have a positive opinion towards GMO and are not against using GMO products.88% answered that they would use a diagnostic tool containing GMO, which is promising for Ovulaid. The majority of the participants had previously heard about genetic engineering (mostly through school). People are more open towards GMO products that are applied externally compared to those that are applied internally. Effectiveness of a product is important when choosing between a medical GMO product and a non-GMO product.

Danish iGEM Network

During the Danish iGEM Weekend hosted by team SDU on July 26-28th, the three Danish iGEM teams decided to start the process of forming a Danish iGEM Network. The network is partly inspired by the Stockholm iGEM Network (sGEM), which was presented during the Nordic iGEM Conference. To take this further the Danish iGEM teams met on August 16th to do brainstorming on what the network could be used for, the purpose of the network and where the motivation should come from. After the meeting the teams agreed that the purpose of the Danish iGEM Network is to establish a platform where all the Danish iGEM teams can easily work together. A preliminary goal of the network is to provide assistance and knowledge to other Danish universities or high schools who wish to start an iGEM team to compete in future competitions. Another purpose of the network is to provide a common platform through which the Danish teams can apply for shared funding from larger foundations. The plan for the future is to register the network as an association later this year.

Copenhagen Pride Parade

On August 17th, the three Danish iGEM teams attended the annual Copenhagen Pride Parade together, with banners that called for better LGBTQ+ representation in STEM fields. This was a great way for the teams to connect over a topic we all feel strongly about.

Helping out other teams

Team Lund podcast

On the 6th of August, we have participated in a video podcast created by the iGEM team of Lund. The podcast was situated around our team, our project and synthetic biology in general. In the course of it, we have talked about which problems we have had and how we have dealt with them as well as the progress of our projects. Furthermore, we have also discussed the importance of synthetic biology and its potential for the world.

Surveys

During the project, we have helped some fellow iGEM teams by filling out surveys on their request, in order to help them reach their project goals. These teams are: Strasbourg, Virginia, UAlberta, Saint Joseph, the SquidBio team, UiOslo, Genopole Evry Paris-Saclay, Aachen, Rice. We gladly helped out and wish them all the best with their projects!
For our survey, which assessed the potential and acceptance of Ovulaid, we have approached other iGEM teams as well, in order to get feedback from their female team members. These teams are: Exeter, Eindhoven, Bilkent UNAMBG iGEM team, Montpellier, UiOslo, Wageningen, UCL, Bulgaria, Nottingham, uOttawa Sorbonne University Paris, Aachen, EPFL, UZH, Sheffield, REC Chennai and UBC.
We give thanks to these teams as they significantly supported us with Ovulaid!

Challenges

When you are an iGEM team on Instagram, you are sure to be tagged to complete challenges for your fellow iGEM’ers. We were challenged by Team Chalmers-Gothenburg to collect trash and clean our streets and oceans, to which we obviously obliged and went out on a cold, windy September.

To also completed the SDG challenge (hosted by the following teams: TAS Taipei, Tuebingen and Costa Rica), identifying how Ovulaid could comply with SDG and help make the world a better place.

And one day, when looking in our lab bench cupboard, we found the sneaky microbes Mike and Chia.

Synthetic Biology Art Exhibition - iGEM Stockholm

On the 13th of May to the 15th of May the iGEM Stockholm team hosted an art exhibition. This art exhibition was super cool as it was 25 meters below the surface, in the home of Sweden's first nuclear reactor R1. To support the Stockholm team and the art exhibition we sent them a series of drawings on paper, exploring the laboursome processes of creation that reflects the sometimes nurturing sometimes grotesque stoicism required of the synthetic biologist. The works were created by our team member Benedicte.