Team:UPNAvarra Spain/Human Practices
Human Practices
PreiGEM talks
Before the creation of our team UPNAvarra_Spain, the Pamplona’s Planetarium with its science programme Planet STEM, a new initiative to promote scientific careers and investigation, organized a public meeting in order to explain iGEM to all interested people. Three current members of our team, Aaron Adrian, Alex Pascual and Laura Gimenez went to this meeting. There were several talks presenting what is iGEM or explaining the biobrick technique.
Thanks to this event, these three members were able to talk with some members from the Navarra_BG team and from the BiolQS-Barcelona,the MADRID_UCM team leader and other representatives. It was the first contact of the UPNAvarra_Spain team with iGEM, and it really motivated us to start the project and become part of the iGEM’s family.
Juanjo Rubio's talks
Juanjo Rubio is an expert in synthetic biology and one of the advisors of our team, UPNAvarra_Spain. He was also the first person that introduced iGEM to us: he gave us a talk where he explained what iGEM aims and why he believed in the creation of an undergraduate team in Navarre, due to the success of the high school team (Navarre_BG) the previous year. And that’s how UPNAvarra_Spain Team began!
After the confirmation and creation of our team, he has given us several talks about synthetic biology. Juanjo was our first contact with this new world and we are very grateful to him for his compromise and inspiration to form this new team.
Maria Sola's talk
The 17th of April, the biotechnologist María Sola came to our university to give a talk to our team about her scientific career, the use of biosimilars and the needed team values for overcoming group projects.
She has a long career on the scientific field: not only she studied a Biotechnology Degree and an Investigation, Development and Innovation on Medication Master, but she has been working since 2013 as a Project Manager for the first biosimilar medicine of Cinfa Biotech, the most important pharmaceutical company in Spain.
Among the multiple team principles she taught us, we can highlight:
- Problem analysis.
- Efficiency to detect problems of our project and its possible causes..
- Planning and organization/Leadership.
- Capacity to make a plan so as to reach an objective.
- Commercial spirit and creativity.
Some of the most important values of iGEM; imaginative and original solutions for problems.
Newspapers
Here in Spain, newspapers are still a very popular divulgative media where people like reading about news and innovations. Specially older generations tend to read this kind of media, so we thought that it was a really good opportunity to bring science and synthetic biology closer to the elder.
UPNAvarra_Spain team has appeared in two of the most relevant newspapers in Navarre:
Diario de Navarra and
Diario de Noticias.
Some other digital newspapers have also contacted with us, and thanks to it more people, connected to modern social medias, had the chance to learn about us and iGEM. These are the webs were we have appeared: Europapress Pamplonaactual Economia Social Navarra
Technoscience
On June 8th our team participated in the Technocience Conference in Pamplona. "Jornadas de Tecnociencia" is a yearly science-divulgation meeting organised by the planetarium of Pamplona, in which different teams are offered to give a talk about what are they researching on and present their projects.
We heard several talks from different fields: programming, robotics, miniaturized satellite competitions, medicine... One of our team advisors, Juanjo Rubio, expert in biomedical engineering, gave a talk about synthetic biology. Then our instructor Sara Iglesias and Hugo Salas, a team member, presented the iGEM initiative and our project.
We spent the whole morning in technoscience learning and divulgating. Here you can learn more about the meeting: Technoscience
Genesis 2.0.
Film library
The Film Library of Pamplona, inside the Public Library of Navarre, is a place where people goes to watch different types of films, mostly documentaries. And it’s also were we organized our first official iGEM meetup.We contacted with the people in charge of the Film Library and ask them to play Genesis 2.0, a documentary directed by Christian Frei which shows us some of the new techniques in synthetic biology (clonation) and the journey that several men do to North Siberia looking for mammoth ivory tusks that will be sold.
We thought it was a good idea because iGEM plays an important role in this movie, since iGEM’s Giant Jamboree is explained and recorded. Since most of the audience of the film library is people who like to learn new things, lot of the assistants told us they really liked the movie because it shows some things that they never had the opportunity to learn about or even know the existence of it. From the commentaries of the audience we can say that it was a complete success, and we practically sold out all the tickets!
Right before the projection two of our team members, Irati and Diego, and Maria Ancin, Secondary PI, presented our biosensor project to all the assistants in the room in Spanish and Basque. Then the documentary was projected in original version with subtitles in Spanish.
Navarra TV
Thanks to our advisor Juanjo Rubio, we had the chance to go to Navarra TV, the public channel of our region Navarre, the 11th of June. Imma Farran (Primary PI), Sara Rey (Instructor) and Aaron Adrian (team member) were received in a popular local programme called “La Muga”, where they were interviewed answering questions about iGEM, synthetic biology and our team UPNAvarra_Spain.
Television is the main media in the world due to its extreme audience, and thanks to it we had the chance to present iGEM to the majority of our community, as Navarra TV is the most important public channel in our region. In addition, some other team members came to visit all the installations, and the people who work there gave us a whole tour through their facilities. We had the opportunity to see all the sets, audio and production rooms, it was really interesting as most of us had never been before in a TV facility. Here you have the whole interview: Navarra TV
University of Mondragon
The 17th of June, a team formed by students and instructors from the Innovation Degree from the University of Mondragon (Spain), visited our team to give us some advice in order to improve our project, focusing mostly on new ideas to obtain financing. Fundamentally its degree consists in providing companies of new ideas and inspire them to look forward and try to obtain more financial support and audience. Hence we thought that it was a good idea to meet them for our project.
First of all, we presented them iGEM and explained them our project which they found really interesting. Since they are specialized in representing business and all sort of projects, they have experience obtaining financing. Some of the ideas they gave us to find financial support were: holding raffles, selling tickets or making reports for business in exchange of funding. Regarding social media, they recommended us to focus on Twitter and Facebook to reach a bigger audience.
We received great support from them and they have encouraged us to keep looking for new ideas! We are so grateful for their visit!
CEIN visit
The 17th of June we decided to visit CEIN (European Center of Enterprises and Innovation in Navarre), one of the most important investigation business in our region Navarre. It is a center that helps local small projects or inspirations, giving different types of advisory and economical support. We decided to go there in order to obtain feedback for our project and so we presented different ideas to CEIN’s professionals like Marisol Gómez Fernández (professor at the Mathematics department in UPNA and worker at Movalsys) and Xabier Aláez Sarasibar (worker at InBIOT).
Some of the ideas we presented them were:
- The development of biosensors which will be able to detect heavy metals and nitrates.
- Using engineered bacterias to detect pathogenic agents.
- Using plants as biosensor to turn on/off streetlights.
We also had the chance to present iGEM to all the participants and talk with them about this great opportunity.
Galaxy Garden
Here in Navarre there is another iGEM team besides us. It is called Navarra_BG, and it is a High School team composed by students from different high schools in the county. They are working on a project called Biogalaxy, which consists in creating a new kind of transgenic plants able to survive in Mars.
The 25th of July we met them in their Pamplona’s laboratory in order to present our project to them and meet their team. They also presented us their project and we had a large talk with all of them, specially with their team advisors, since it’s their second year in iGEM and they solved some of our doubts.
In the Planetary they have a new initiative called the Galaxy Garden, where the director adopt a bush one of its bushes.The garden it is a botanic creation that represents the Milky Way using different types of plants. Practically all system, nebulose or any other important celestial bodies are represented in the galaxy. Actually, a lot of important people have adopted one of the plants in the garden, including Pamplona's major or Pedro Duque, the first Spanish astronaut, so we were very grateful to have the opportunity to adopt our own bush.
We decided to adopt a kind of bush called Salix integra Hakuro Nishiki, because these kind of bushes change their colour giving beautiful white leaves, so we thought it will be nice to come back to the garden years later and see a grown up bush representing this project.
Here you can find more information about the garden: Planetarium
Radios
During the whole project, different team members have gone to several radio programs in order to present the iGEM initiative and our project. The Radio is one of the most important and relevant media, so we thought it was a good opportunity to tell its audience about iGEM in educational programs. To sum up, Pablo went with some of our degree professors to COPE, a national channel well known in all Spain. Sara, one of our instructors had an interview in the National Radio of Pamplona and Maria, Secondary PI went to Euskal Irratia, a famous channel in the communities of Navarre and Basque Country, and to SER. Thanks to the radio, we could make promotion for iGEM and our team. Listen in Cope
Mus tournament
We decided to organize a mus tournament in order to have some fun and presented iGEM to more people from our region. Mus is a popular card game in northern Spain. It is a game where two couples play against each other using the Spanish deck of cards, a kind of deck only used here in Spain compose by numbers from 1 to 7 and figures (jacks, horses and kings).
Thanks to Nerea Villar, one of our team members, we contacted with a bar where they were interesting in embracing this tournament. Finally, we gathered 16 couples competing with each other in different preliminary round, and it was celebrated the 2nd of August.
Right before the tournament, Daniel Palacios, another team member, gave a short talk about the project and iGEM, giving a new perspective of synthetic biology to all the competitors and clients. The winner couple got our first prize, a full Spanish Jam, and the second couple earned a goat cheese typical from the North of Spain.
We would like to express our gratitude to all the Navarra_BG iGEM team, since most of their members came to support us at the tournament and even some of them participated on it. We even had one of our advisors, Carlos López Molina, data scientist, playing with us!
Pollution survey
One of the global aims of our project was to have a significant impact on our society, finding a simple and feasible way to solve a real environmental concern in our society. In order to know if we fulfilled our objective, we decided to write a survey and send it across our country. We got more than 300 answers distributed from every region in Spain, specially from Navarre (our Region) and Pais Vasco.
Before filling the survey, we explained to all the participants the aim of our project, since the general public may not know neither what synthetic biology is nor biosensors. The first question was focused on knowing the knowledge of the participants about this topic: only the 44% knew what biosensors are, against the 56%.
The next three questions were about pollution. We wanted to know the general public opinion about heavy metals and nitrate pollution, and, as we expected, we confirmed that the majority of the participants think that in our society there aren’t enough controls and that it’s a real problem nowadays.
Finally we have the two opinion questions, the most important ones. We wanted to know the different opinions about our project: we got a lot of positive feedback for our project! We also asked about the application of our biosensors to the real world: the 89% believe that it could be useful to fight against pollution and the 11% believe that it will be useful in a future.
From the survey, we conclude that our project fulfills our main goal: to find a way to solve a real environmental concern. The fight against pollution is a day a day topic that concerns everyone in our society, so it’s really gratifying for us knowing that we can help in such an important issue, working on what we like and learning more every day. You can read our survey here.
Figure 1. Do you think that this project could be useful to fight against pollution? Figure 2. Do you think that there are enough measures against pollution?
Karrikaluze Summer Camp
The 12th of August four of our team members, Leire Murillo, Onintza Aguirrezabala, Irati Oiza and Xabi González went to a summer camp to give some entertainment to Middle School students.
In order to do it, we had prepared a series of activities to do with them. To begin with, we gave them an adapted explanation about synthetic biology and afterwards, we explained them the morphology of cells, bacteria and white blood cells. We asked them to draw the image they had from the explanation and we carried out a small contest, choosing the bests drawings!
Later on, using the previous drawings they made, we divided them in three different groups: the Mini Cells, the Mini Bacterias and the Mini White Blood Cells. Each group had a different function: the bacteria had to catch the cells and the white blood cells had to protect them. Another game consisted in playing handkerchief with special science questions like “What’s the main component in the human body?” or “What are the main parts of a cell body?”. Finally, we carried out two science experiments: first we created a non-Newtonian fluid, using cornmeal and then we recreated a volcano eruption, using 20g of KI diluted in water.
We had a great experience together and we really enjoyed our time at the summer camp! We hope that the children had an amazing experience like us and maybe someday will also aim for scientific careers and join a future iGEM team!
University of Menendez Pelayo
The 16th of August, one of our students; Álex Pascual, gave a talk about our project at the International University of Menendez Pelayo (Madrid).
The main points of the presentation were: what synthetic biology is, what iGEM is, what the objective of our project is, how we are searching for financial support and a personal conclusion of our teammate. Moreover, we showed them our wiki design, where they can find all the information of our project.
Among the public we had a lawyer, a primary school teacher, an anthropologist, a biologist, an engineer and an english teacher. They loved the idea of our project and the iGEM competition due to the friendly championship, the collaboration between countries and the skills improvement of the competitors.
Trip to South Navarre
Last 27th of August our team decided to make a small trip to Southern Navarre, given that nitrate accumulation in water is an environmental problem that directly concerns this region of Navarre. The first places we visited there, was thanks to AN Group, one of the most important agroalimentary cooperatives in Spain and one of our sponsors.
First of all, they invited us to their headquarters in Tajonar, near our University, where they presented us their team and explained us how their industry works. Their company is one of the most important agro-food cooperatives in Spain. This cooperative produces different kinds of aliments, from cereals, fruits and vegetables to poultry. In addition, they even have their own fuel stations. Afterwards, we explained them about what iGEM is and what our project consisted in. They decided to sponsor us since they believed that our project idea and their goals were similar as both of us want to take care for the environment and fight against pollution.
Then we went to our first stop in Melida to a meat packing industry . They explained us all the processes of the factory and we asked them about the different water necessities they have in all the procedures. They showed as all their water system, from how they obtain the water to the depuration process after they use it.
After Melida, we went all way down to Tudela, the second biggest city in Navarre. There we visited a vegetables company, where they showed us the different uses of water and their concentration of nitrate. It took us about an hour and a half to visit all they facilities and we took 4 different water samples to analyze them. These samples were taken in different parts during the beginning and ending of the packing and cleaning process of the vegetables.
Then we went to a greenhouse located in the south of Navarre, in danger due to the high concentration of nitrates. They use fertilizers in order to control the nitrates levels of the land: they make their own fertilizer according to the legal levels of nitrates, and once a month they send a sample of their irrigation water to a specialized laboratory. One of their agronomic engineers gave us a tour around their facilities showing as their structures and the solar and irrigation systems. It was really interesting checking how modern agriculture works nowadays. We took more samples from their irrigation system.
We would like to thank AN Group to let us visit some part of their industry in Navarre. It was a very interesting tour then and we had a really good time!
Before going back to Pamplona, our home town, we took more samples from different rivers since this area is in danger due to the high concentration of nitrates. We took samples from Pitillas, Tafalla and Barasoain (from the Cidacos river) from Azagra (from the Ebro River), from Puente la Reina and Eneritz (from the Robo river) and from Pamplona (from the Arga river and the Sadar river).
Then we went back to the lab to analyze all the different samples to check whether the water was polluted by nitrates or heavy metals.
Water treatments survey
On August 28th the whole team went to the south of our region, Navarre, to get some water samples to test our biosensors in a real situation. During the trip we had the opportunity to talk with some workers from one of the biggest cooperative in Spain, AN Group.
First we went to a meat packing industry, there we talk with the responsible of the purification system of the water. The current method they have do detect heavy metals or nitrates pollution, is to use chemical analyses of the treated water once a month.
After that, we went to a greenhouse, from the same cooperative. This greenhouse is located in a region of Navarre, in danger due to the high concentration of nitrates. They use fertilizers in order to control the nitrates levels of the land: they make their own fertilizer according to the legal levels of nitrates, and once a month they send a sample of their irrigation water to a specialized laboratory.
With this results we confirmed that our project has a lot of potential in the agro-alimentary industry, since all the current water treatments for detecting heavy metals or nitrates are associated with chemical analyses. With our project we offer an alternative to these aggressive chemical analyses, by using this organic and faster solution.
Navarro Villoslada High School
The 4th of September some of our team members were received at Navarro Villoslada, a secondary high school in our city. There, we gave a talk to 8 classes of the A levels, whose aim was to introduce them the idea of IGEM and synthetic biology. We also spoke about some of the IGEM’s most important objectives such as multidisciplinary and team cooperation, since we wanted to highlight the benefits of having people with different skills and scientific backgrounds in our team. We told them that in the future they could experience that by themselves, participating in future iGEM competitions. Furthermore, we explained them how our team was formed and the different stages we went through the project evolution.
After that introduction, we focused in the theorical basis and experimental processes of our project, trying to explain us in the clearest and most visual way. Finally, we showed them the results we obtained with the induction tests and, in a brief way, what information they can find in our wiki.
Once the presentation finished, both students and teachers were given the opportunity to ask some questions. The students showed interest in the topic and asked many questions; also the teachers, after the talk, congratulated us for our good job and gave us some advices for improving our public speacking skills.
To conclude, we believe that talks like this are really useful to increase the interest among students in science and maybe some of them may turn into potential IGEM participants!
Public University of Navarre
In the Public University of Navarre (UPNA) practically every student uses MiAulario, an online platform where both students and professors can check their subjects, projects and, in this case, about UPNAvarra_Spain! On the main page, there is a noticeboard where everyone can read the University’s news. We contacted them and they accepted our proposal, hence every student, professor and UPNA worker was able to check about our team and our project.
UPNAvarra_Spain was presented as the first team from the Public University of Navarre that participates in iGEM and the bacteria biosensors were explained in a simple way. Since our University is not specialized in pure sciences, we tried to explain the project in a simple way, to make sure every student and worker was able to understand it. Lots of classmates told us that they loved our article, so we can say it was a complete success!
For more information visit the following link: Public University of Navarre.
EUSynBioS
While one of our team members was searching information about synthetic biology, he came across a blog with several articles about iGEM teams: EUSynBioS. That blog belonged to the European Synthetic Biology Society, an association of synthetic biology students and post-docs, whose goal is to create a community for European investigators where they can cooperate with each other.
So, we contacted them to see if they were interested in our project and could post an article about our team. We were very happy when one member of their Steering Committee, Stefano Donati, accepted our proposal and the 3rd of October the article was posted!
In the article we wanted to exhibit to their community the main points of our labor, as well as to raise awareness about the environment pollution and to expand iGEM’s principles: “Students are expected to be honest with their research, cooperate with one another, practice good sportsmanship, be respectful of their peers and celebrate everyone's efforts.”
For more information visit the following link: EUSynBioS.
AN Group
AN Group is one of the most important agro-food cooperatives in Spain. This cooperative produces different kinds of aliments, from cereals, fruits and vegetables to poultry. In addition, they even have their own fuel stations.
They invited us to their headquarters, where they presented us their team and explained us how their industry works. Afterwards, we explained them about what iGEM is and what our project consisted in. They decided to sponsor us since they believed that our project idea and their goals were similar as both of us want to take care for the environment and fight against pollution.
On September, an article of our visit was published on the AN’s magazine, a relevant specialized magazine on agriculture. This magazine is used by AN Group to keep their followers updated on news of the agronomic sector. In the article, there is not only a summary of our visit but also an explanation of the iGEM competition, where they highlight the great impact synthetic biology will have on the future. Furthermore, they spoke about the biosensors we have created to detect the presence of some heavy metals and nitrates and how it could be used by farmers to know detect them on their lands.