Description:
Hello iGEM teams,
As part of our public engagement and education, we decided to create an educational board game which teaches children basic information about viruses and the immune system. We play tested it and after some editing, found it challenging and exciting.

Now we want to see what other teams think about it. If you are planning on doing any workshops or activities with schools, you can use our game if you want to teach students about viruses. If you are not, feel free to play it yourselves, or even challenge other teams! Either way, we would like to know what you did with the game, whether you liked it, and if there should be any changes made, so we can feature each team’s story and view of the game on our wiki. The game is available on an online platform. If you are interested, please contact us, so we can send you the link to host a game. We hope you enjoy the game, and thank you for taking time to participate.

Team KCL

Description:
Greetings fellow iGEMers!

We are SZU-China team and this year we are going to develop an herbicide for Mikania micrantha Kunth, which is a perennial vine native to tropical central and South America and has been called "Mile-a-minute Vine". As one of the worst invasive weeds in the world, Mikania micrantha spread to southern China after 1910, where lacks of any natural enemies, so since the 1980s it has started to spread and invade widely. The weed has caused significant damage to many ecosystems in Guangdong province in recent years.

We decide to use the agricultural drone that can identify Mikania micrantha in nature and spray our herbicide on them. We need to collect thousands of photos of Mikania micrantha to train our recognition model. Therefore, we are in need collaborators from all over the world to find whether there is Mikania micrantha around, shoot the photos and send them to us.

We would appreciate it if you could help us. What's more, we will select the best from the pictures you sent us and display them in the exhibition space with the names of your team. Then, you can come to our exhibition space to get delicate gifts we prepared for you!

Please feel free to contact us by email: annie66l [AT] 163.com! We would love to hear from you!

Description:
Hello all! We are the East Chapel Hill HS iGEM team, located in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. At present, there are no other high school iGEM teams participating in our area, likely due to a lack of knowledge on how to get started with their own iGEM team! To encourage more youth to participate in iGEM and the realm of synthetic biology, we will be creating a Start-Up Guide for new high school iGEM teams. We're looking for other highschool teams to collaborate with so we can include as many perspectives, tips, and insights as possible. Please contact calorie [AT] students.chccs.k12.nc.us if you are interested. We hope to hear from you all very soon!

Description:
Hello 2019 iGEMers around the world!

We are the team GO PARIS SACLAY iGEM 2019 and our project, “DNA FREE POETential” mixes synthetic biology with poetry.

You can help us and participate to our project by simply writing haikus!

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.

We invite you to participate to our project by writing haikus (in all languages) about the fate of a DNA-less cell, or any idea related to synthetic biology. Your collaborative haikus will be selected by our team for the wiki and/or our final oral presentation (with the indication of the team/author(s) who composed it).

Here’s the link for more information and also for writing your awesome haikus: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScjVM2dxJhs_eQyp8XuxJ1qeozn9UJxiVFt8JbbaFT3kFwjJA/viewform?usp=sf_link

We hope you will join the other teams in this artistic collaboration!

Thank you for participating and helping us.

We look forward to seeing you in Boston

The GO Paris Saclay team

Description:
Hi iGEM teams:
As we all know, iGEM is not only about our projects, but also about involving the public with synthetic biology. To do this, we want to know what your experience in the competition. We invite you to send us a short video describing in a word that means iGEM for your team. This should be in your native language.

Thank you for participating and helping us!
iGEM Team UAAAN 2019

Description:
Hello iGEM teams!

One of the things that many iGEM teams do in their projects is take a gene from one organism and move it into another chassis. But, as many of you know, this doesn’t always work out so well! One of the reasons for this is that different organisms have different codon usage preferences, and if your gene still uses its source organism’s preferred codons it may not work as well in your chassis organism.

One way to deal with this is codon optimisation (e.g. as provided by IDT) - this substitutes the most common codon at each position, and often works well. Sometimes this still fails, and a more subtle approach (codon harmonisation) may be better - in this case, each codon is substituted by one with similar *relative* rarity, thus acknowledging that there are sometimes reasons for organisms using rare codons in a gene sequence.

Here’s where we come in: we have designed a program which allows you to automatically codon-harmonise your gene by comparing the codon usage data for the source and destination organism. You can then easily order one or more of these sequences to test expression in your desired chassis organism.

We’re looking for some iGEM teams that would like to test our codon harmonisation methods. Email us your sequence and details of the source and destination organisms and we will send you back the codon-harmonised variants. Then let us know if this process helped with your gene expression.

Description:
Hey 2019 iGEMers,
most of us are, at least to some extend, working with fluorescent proteins. However, as you might have learnt from previous teams, or even first-hand, it's hard to compare fluorescence data generated under varying conditions.
Therefore, standardization has to be done. For GFP this was established during the Interlab study over the last few years: by measuring GFP against a dilution series of Fluorescein, a unit for GFP fluorescence could be created and data generated at several labs could be compared. However, depending on the application other fluorescent proteins than GFP might be more suitable. Therefore, we are planning to establish Texas Red as a standard for mCherry meausrements - and we need you to join us and conduct some measurements at your plate readers!

Find the protocols here: https://2019.igem.org/Team:Bielefeld-CeBiTec/mCherry and get in touch at info [AT] igem-bielefeld.de or via Social Media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram).
We're looking forward to collaborating with you!
Team Bielefeld-CeBiTec 2019

Description:
Hello iGEM teams !
We are iGEM Strasbourg 2019 (France) and we would much appreciate if you could provide us some of your time to answer to our questionnaire.
We are trying to create a test allowing the detection of food allergens and we want to do a survey on the impact and incidence of allergies in different countries where there are iGEM teams.
Here is the link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdSw7QNbduEHF5fxElkU4Cmu6xkQzS_AkOrGZoH45TsnjJEzA/viewform
Thank you for your time and consideration!
Best regards,
Your iGEM Strasbourg Team

Description:
Greetings fellow iGEM Teams! We are the HBUT iGEM team from China, and we invite you to join the map filling game to investigate pollution For the project’s human practices, we have learned about nickel pollution in China. Now we want to collect information about nickel-ion contamination condition and related standard around the world. And we have listed the following three questions and hope to get your answers.

1. What is the national standard (sepcific nickel ion concentration) that your country allows factories to emit nickel-containing wastewater?
2. In addition to national standards, does your city have local standards for nickel metal emissions or other metal emissions? What is it? Is it more stringent than the national standard?
3. Is there any nickel or other heavy metal contamination in your region? If so, can you talk about it? Did it cause serious environmental degradation or any human body diseases?

We need your help to fill the map of our survey and the information up to September 20th, to be able to register the collaboration on our Wiki. If you have any more questions, please feel free to contact us. Thank you! Wish your team is going well.

Description:
Greetings fellow iGEMers!

The world is facing a serious threat of severe weather events, if these phenomena are inevitable, we should be prepared to safeguard our amazing iGEM projects by assessing, developing and implementing a Weather Contingency Plan (WCP).

Frequently, we learn about a storm/blizzard/tornado that affects places where fellow iGEM teams are working on their projects. In some cases, the phenomenon can even force the affected team to reconsider their participation in the iGEM Giant Jamboree Competition. With your help, we can create an iGEM WCP that helps current and future iGEM teams be prepared to stay on track for the competition even in the harshest weather conditions. The iGEM WCP is a collaboration effort that will have historic significance and provoke a real positive impact in the way iGEM teams are working their respective projects.

Our team envisions developing a booklet that can be distributed electronically to new iGEM teams at the start of the next competition cycles. We propose that this iGEM WCP booklet should be worked in unison by at least 3 active 2019 iGEM teams from each corresponding iGEM region, therefore we are in need collaborators from all over the world ASAP. Maybe it could be your team!

These are contents we propose to be developed by each respective iGEM region for the iGEM WPC:

• Communication strategies between team members and with iGEM HQ before, during and after a weather phenomenon.
• Establishing collaboration partnerships grid across the iGEM regions.
• Electricity independent laboratory protocols.
• Project planning with low resources.
• Time efficiency and strategic planning.

As you can see, our team is very ambitious with this collaboration request, we expect you to be the same. We are counting on your help, especially since we are the first team of Puerto Rico and the Caribbean to compete at iGEM!

Best regards,
UPRM iGEM
igemrum [AT] gmail.com

Description:
Hi fellow iGEM teams

As part of our collaboration effort, our team has launched a survey to address bio-security protocols in labs globally to address the current standards. Our survey will estimate its use in institutions labs to determine if location has an effect on the enforcement of biosecurity standards and how this can vary between institutions from the same country and different countries.

This survey is only 4 questions long so we would appreciate it if as many team members from each team could complete the form. To thank teams for their contribution, everyone who fills out the form will be featured on our collaborations and/or integrated human practices tab on our wiki!

Link to the form: https://forms.gle/W7iA8pXPq17Q8p3V6

Description:
Greetings fellow iGEM Teams!

Last year, under the help of Aix-Marseille, Tartu_TUIT, Duesseldorf, UPF_CRG_Barcelona, Thessaloniki, McMaster, Stockholm, Vilnius-Lithuania, Bilkent-UNAMBG iGEM teams all over the world, our comic book has been translated into 13 languages. （French，Greek，Portuguese，Lithuanian，Turkish，Estonian，Russian，German，Italian，Spanish，Catalan，English，Chinese）More than 15 teams take our comic book E.coli SPACESHIP to local areas for science education. This year, we added the content of the comic book. We welcome all teams to use our comic book to educate on synthetic biology. We will provide you with our comic book for free. In addition, for the new content added this year, we also welcome you to translate it into the language of your own country for educational activities.

Description:
Hello world! This year Tartu_TUIT team develops the autolytic yeast strain, that will ease extraction of the valuable compounds from the cells. This strain has a great potential to decrease the costs connected to cell lysis.

Do you produce some chemical compounds using yeast? If yes, we would like to know, what cell wall lysis methods do you use and what problems do you face. It will be definetely helpful for us: to estimate the efficiency of our mechanism we need to collect the actual information about other lysis methods, that are being used nowadays.

This is the link to our survey: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScwoDgXEb1qnyhOfUd9UZXQHObDXOgMwO5q8ZGfMqb29pKcgQ/viewform?usp=sf_link

Description:
We would like to establish a library of rare cell lines’ receptors and aptamers. This library will serve as an open source for related researchers and also iGEMers. If your team’s work is (or was) related to the receptors and aptamers of non-widely-used cells, please help us to set up the library. You can send us an e-mail with the information below: the name of the cell lines, receptors and its characteristics, aptamers and its characteristics. If possible, you can also send us the structure and the bonding mechanism of the receptors and aptamers, which will definitely help a lot. We would really appreciate it if you send us an e-mail to help establishing the library. Contact us at DUT_China_A_2019 [AT] 163.com.

Description:
We are working with phages and so are a lot of you out there.

But phages can be difficult to handle and we might profit from the experiences of other teams and would be glad to share some of our knowledge with you. If you have any questions or ideas regarding our project or a possible collaboration, don’t hesitate to contact us.

E.g.: For our project we need to purify and concentrate the phages by gradient centrifugation with CsCl, but face some problems. If any of you have experience with that or would like to collaborate by trying to reproduce our data, we would love to hear from you soon.

Furthermore we are trying to develop a biosensor and could also collaborate with other sensor teams by testing each other’s measurements.

Description:
Hi! We are the Rice University iGEM team. As we have been collaborating with other teams this year, it has been interesting asking teams how they came up with their project ideas. The similarities in team’s responses interested us and led us to wonder if there are common factors that play into teams choosing their projects. So we are hoping to carry out a meta analysis to further investigate the effect of location on a team’s project selection. If you are interested in helping us carry out our meta analysis, we are hoping to talk to teams individually as case studies, feel free to contact our human practices subteam lead Tasneem at tm39@rice.edu. We appreciate all your feedback!

Description:
How fast can you run or climb stairs carrying 10 pounds of water? Find out through the #WellWalkChallenge! Millions of people lack clean water around the world. We @lambertigem are partnering with the Thirst Project to raise $12,000 for a well in Eswatini (formerly Swaziland). Women and children walk hours everyday carrying gallons of water, a daily struggle most of us will never face. This well would give 500 people in a community clean water for a lifetime. We challenge you to participate in the #WellWalkChallenge and donate to our cause at https://my.thirstproject.org/team/216038 to be featured in our Collaborations page! Nominate your friends and other teams! The person with the highest time and largest donation will receive a free Thirst Project t-shirt!

Description:
Warm greetings to you all,

We are Team iGEM IIT Madras from India and we are looking for prospective collaborators who can lend us a helping hand in our quest to spread the voice of science to the masses in a language in which they are most comfortable and in a form that entertains while educating young enthusiastic minds. We primarily focus on explaining the basic tenets of synthetic and molecular biology in vernacular languages and given that teams from various countries participate in iGEM, we would be immensely grateful towards any help we might get on our way to the fulfilment of this goal.

We are a cohort of passionate minds who are wholeheartedly devoted to this mission that seeks to communicate scientific ideas beyond the scope of a single language and therefore, we seek your cooperation.

As part of this collaboration, we expect you to translate a given script in your language and voice-record it. We will also send you the powerpoint presentation to which you are expected to attach the audio. Once you send us the edited presentation, we will convert it to a video and publicize it on our YouTube channels and other social media platforms. We will share the video with you and you ought to publicize on your social media platforms as well.

Description:
Greetings fellow iGEM Teams!
We are the iGEM Technion team from Israel, and we invite you to join the One minute video challenge.
Why?
Our goal is to reach to our communities and expose them to the wonders of science, as well as getting them more familiar with our project and understand it’s important. In addition, this will be a fantastic way for future teams to see what others did in the past, and hopefully get inspired to create their own amazing projects.
What do we want?

If your team was challenged, you will have one week to do the following:

• Make a one-minute video taking about your iGEM project in simple words.
• At the end of the video, you will say: “That’s one minute, we are____ “, and then present the name of your group.
• Send the video to: 1min.igem.challenge2019@gmail.com. In the mail, mention your team name and 5 more team names that you want to challenge
• Approach the challenged teams and send us a screenshot of your message to them.

If you have any question, feel free to contact us.
We will soon upload our own one-minute video and challenge 5 more teams, and the challenge will begin. So start getting creative and show us what you’ve got!
Good luck,
iGEM Technion team

Description:
Hello iGEMers! You are challenged to participate in the first ever iGEM Lab Olympics! This friendly competition provides a unique opportunity for teams to take a moment to focus on lab safety and lab techniques in a small competition! The goal is to perform the lab techniques in a safe matter in a short period of time, while yielding positive results. How it works: below is listed 10 different events. Participating teams are able to participate in however many events they would like, in order to qualify for a certain medal level. Bronze level is 0-4 events, silver is 5-8, gold is 9 or 10 events. Within each level, a winner will be selected and win a prize. The events are as follows:

• Pipetting- pipette microliters, 1.3, 12.8, 10, 70, 43, 100, 280.3, 402.74
• Opening doors with gloves on, without contaminating- 3 push doors, 2 handled doors
• Tube labeling and plate labeling- 5 plates, 2: 1.5-2 ml tubes, 3: 0.2ml tubes 0.2-0.5mL with date, name, and what it is
• Balancing centrifuge- balance 2 tubes, 8 tubes, 9 tubes, 11 tubes, and 17 tubes in a centrifuge
• Correctly weighing out substances- weigh in grams: 2.31, 10, 15.2, 37.28, 56.241
• Applying full PPE on the fastest- gloves, lab coat, tying hair back, goggles
• Tidying up a messy lab bench
• Dirty gloves, Bunsen burner, pipettes, pipette tips, lab spill, plates, etc.
• Defining lab safety by iGEM standards- quick video submission
• Taking off gloves- remove ketchup covered gloves the fastest, in the correct way, without getting ketchup on you or anything/anyone else
• Closing Biohazard waste box and disposing of properly

The competition starts August 9th and will end August 23rd. Remember, the goal is LAB SAFETY!!! Event submissions should be posted on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter, tagging @igem.stonybrook and using the hashtag #iGEMLabOlympics. Sign up by DMing our team on Instagram or emailing at igem.sub [AT] gmail.com
Best of luck to our olympians!

Description:
We want to find some teams to help us collect the information on phosphorus content in domestic sewage worldwide and interim treatment methods.

The main purpose of our project is to use a newly developed engineering strain to enrich phosphorus in sewage with low COD and convert it into a slow-release fertilizer under another controllable condition, so as to achieve domestic sewage treatment as well as recycling and sustainable utilization of resources. Therefore, we hope to find cooperation teams from around the world to help us collect phosphorus content and information in domestic sewage and sewage treatment methods, so as to help us better the plan, apply it in practical treatment to a greater extent and in a larger scope thus apply changes to the world.

Description:
The UNSW iGEM team has spent countless hours tracking finding a direct method to contact teams. To combat this problem, we would like to create a directory with all the iGEM teams contact details. What we ask of other teams is to send an email to unsw.igem [AT] gmail.com with the subject directory. In contents, we would like the email address as well as Instagram and Facebook details. We will compile this information and distribute it to all teams.

Description:
European iGEM team? This message is for you!

European researcher’s night(ERN) is coming and we want to collaborate with a team and share our scientific activities.

Our major project for ERN is an escape box. An escape box is a miniature escape room with a bunch of scientific puzzles and riddles which lead to the box being opened.

The main idea of this collaboration is raising awareness for the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG).

Each group will pick a theme or a main SGD for the riddles path on their box. Then, we will exchange the boxs between the teams and use it during the event.

By playing the box quest we are raising awareness for UN SDGs and iGEM as well and also contributing to Integrated Human Practice!

Dates to be aware of:

Application Date Deadline: August 10th

On August 12th we will choose the most suitable team for the purpose.

Sending the box: September 1st to ensure the box arriving before the event.

We would love to hear from you!

Contact us by email: Igem2019 [AT] migal.org.il

Description:
Hello iGEM folks!

We are synthesizing fast-acting and long-lasting insulin in E. coli BL21 this summer. Since small-scale insulin production is a challenging yet rapidly-rising process, we would like to seek out to our other teams that are also working with insulin in hopes of exchanging data (such as regarding chassis used, insulin production and efficiency under different conditions...) and discussing improvements possibilities, future applications, and resources that we could perhaps share with each other.

Even if you are not working with insulin specifically but are still interested in forming collaborations, feel free contact us via email or social media (ULV iGEM). We look forward to hearing from you! :)

Warm regards,
ULV iGEM 2019

Description:
Hello Fellow iGEM Teams! We are interested in collaborating with other teams in regards with our project. Our team is working with Agrobacterium Tumefaciens GV3101, GV2260, EHA105 and Saccharomyces Cerevisiae BY4741. We are working on seeing if Xrn1 from yeast can degrade Tobacco Mosaic Virus (TMV) natively. We are also working on doing a Transient Expression Assay on Nicotiana Benthamiana. The plasmids we are working with are both plant expression and bacterial expression plasmids. They are both ~12-13kb. We are using Hifi assembly to ligate the plasmids.

If any teams are working with Agrobacterium, Nicotiana Benthamiana, or HiFi assembly, we would love to collaborate!

We also have potential for Dry Lab collaborations. We could be discussing what modeling each team is doing, doing code exchanges, and testing out each other's models. If you are interested in either this or any of the things mentioned above please contact us!

Thank you for your time!
Stony Brook iGEM 2019 Team

Description:
Hello iGEM teams! How convenient would it be for all teams' social media information to be in one place? The iGEM "Social Media" Hub will serve to do just that. This forum will enable easier communication and collaboration between teams. We will arrange the data collected in a spreadsheet for all teams to use as it grows. By collecting one point of contact via email and team's social media accounts, communication can be opened far more readily at the outset of each competition year.

Add your team's social media information to the Hub by filling out this quick form: https://forms.gle/KuJfdDdsPjsan8Gv5
Link to the growing iGEM "Social Media" Hub: Click here

Description:
Hi iGEMers,

We are organising a meme competition. You need to make memes about iGEM. Lets see who can meme iGem the best!!! You can post your meme on Instagram with #igememesj19. The winner will be announced on Instagram and they will win a special prize!!! Lets not forget, laughing is the best medicine!!!

Our deadline is on October 21.

Thanks,
Igem Saint Joseph

Description:
We are a Software track team and want to generate thermostable proteins using machine learning algorithms. If you would like to have (possibly) thermostable variants of your protein of interest, we can run our model on it and give you a list of putative mutations which could increase the melting temperature of it. If we send you the variants, we would like you to test whether they are actually more thermostable so that we can verify our model in vitro and see if it actually works as intended.

If you want to collaborate with us, please send us an e-mail with your peptide (primary structure, FASTA format) and, ideally, give us additional information about your protein (for example active centers so that we can avoid mutating these and reduce the false positive rate). We expect to be able to send out the lists of possible variants starting from the end of July.

We hope to hear from you!

iGEM Potsdam 2019

Description:
Hello fellow iGEM-Teams,

We, the iGEM-Team of Kaiserslautern, Germany, are hosting an art competition where participants can win amazing prizes!

How does it work?
Every iGEM-Team is called to collect artworks about genetic engineering in its area. Any art technique will be accepted and a short text from each artist about their work will be requested. Thereby we want to gain an impression on the general attitude towards genetic engineering.

To find out more about the competition visit our art competition site for iGEM-Teams: https://www.uni-kl.de/hochschulgruppen/iGEM/en/collaboration/

As a motivation, the iGEM-Team collecting the most pieces will be rewarded with an artwork about their project which will be specially created for them.

If you are interested please contact us via email or social media!

Kind regards,
iGEM TU Kaiserslautern 2019

Description:
Hello all!

Our team this year has been inspired by the action around the world on climate change, and although our project is not directly related, we wanted to incorporate sustainability into our summer as we believe in order to address this crisis we must act in all aspects of our lives!

Building from Dresden’s iGEM goes Green, and Boston 2018 GreenGEM, we’ve created a 3-step Emerald Challenge.

Step 1 is a miniguide and photo checklist challenge, we’re asking teams to follow our miniguide and picture their team completing 10 simple lab sustainability tasks (listed on our Step 1: Emerald Checklist)
Step 2 will be a handover document, that teams can create to pass down to their ‘descendents’ (institutions’ future teams) to sustain the sustainable lab practices.
Step 3 will be a ‘document your failures’ getting teams to document negative findings (often overlooked). Since any resources spent on findings that are never shared (even negative ones), are wasted resources!

We have finished and released Step 1 on our wiki and social media platforms, and are working on Steps 2 and 3. We are open to suggestions on these steps and can’t wait to hear from participating teams! Teams that finish all Steps in the challenge will be able to advertise their Emerald qualifications, and will be advertised on our wiki and presentations!

Find out more and access our miniguide and checklist for step 1 on our wiki: https://2019.igem.org/Team:UCL/Sustainability
Or contact us via email (ucl.igem@ucl.ac.uk), twitter(@UCLiGEM), instagram (@ucligem2019) or facebook!

UCL iGEM 2019

Description:
As part of our collaboration effort, our team has joined the Expanded Polystyrene Task Force under UVA Sustainability to address Styrofoam use in labs. Our survey will estimate its use in iGEM labs to determine its global distribution, size preference and disposal. This data will be used to weigh the accuracy of similar data collected at UVA and other local waste facilities to aid use-reduction efforts. https://forms.gle/okNcWLsXADFTVDTG6

To thank teams for their contribution, everyone who fills out the form will be featured on our collaborations and/or integrated human practices tab on our wiki!

Description:
Merhaba iGEMers,

Today we would like to announce our “Cooking with iGEM” competition. In this competition, we ask from you to cook cookie(s) that express the iGEM the best! After making the cookie(s), please send us a picture of them to our mail. The winner will be announced on our Instagram account “igem_saintjoseph” The winners will get a special prize!!! It’s time to get creative ;)

The deadline is October 21.

Description:
Bonjour iGEMers around the world,

We want to know, what you think about waste waters with an mini-survey. Our survey is the link below. Thank you for your cooperation.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSffAuyjvb2C3JMh1IC-esP3H5UZ3vH2VvGf9qaCKnPc3wH7Ow/viewform?usp=sf_link

The deadline is August 20.

Description:
Dear iGEM Community,

This is a collaboration request to ALL iGEM teams! Join us in showcasing the wonderment of iGEM and synthetic biology by creating a science sketch (or writing a script and storyboard for one) of your team’s project or any major techniques/principles that your project is using.

Through the series of 1-3-minute sketches, we hope to promote public awareness of the iGEM competition as well as to show how synthetic biology can be utilized to solve problems facing mankind in an innovative manner!

The aim of the science sketches is to make a collaborative educational playlist with videos from teams all over the world, about their projects and/or the scientific principle behind their project. This playlist will be made public, so that any iGEM team can use it in their outreach activities, thus enabling all teams to spread the knowledge of synthetic biology to their communities.

You can either send us the complete science sketch video or a recorded script and written storyboard, and we’ll illustrate it for you! It is preferable that we receive the video of the science sketches before the 20th of September, 2019. This would give us enough time to make the playlist and also show it in outreach events. Please make sure to add your team's name and your institution's name at the end or beginning of the video.

Should you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us! We have also created a detailed description of how to make a science sketch. Hope this helps!

Curious about what science sketches are like? Check out the science sketch that our team has created for iGEM! Here are two other examples explaining RPA and LAMP for those considering making one for scientific principles/techniques.

Join us and have a lot of fun! Be creative!
We look forward to hearing from you!

Warm regards,
iGEM NYU Abu Dhabi 2019

Description:
The UNSW iGEM team are looking at bridging the gap between science and business. We are asking for help to form a global business plan scaffold for scientists. This will provide other iGEM teams, as well as the science community at large, a standardised method for commercialising ideas, building on the entrepreneurial elements of iGEM.

Description:
Hello everybody!

We, the Nottingham iGEM team, were wondering if anybody out there is working with anaerobes or has access to an anaerobic cabinet!

If so: email or message us on Instagram and we can talk through potentially collaborating!

Our idea is to replicate each others growth curve data (or if you have any other ideas involving working with anaerobes/anaerobic cabinets we can do that too)!

Many thanks,
Nottingham iGEM team 2019

Description:
Golden Gate Assembly is an awesome method that uses the ability of Type IIS restriction endonucleases to cut DNA outside of its recognition sequence for scarless cloning. This provides lots of possibilities for modular cloning, giving you more freedom and control about the constructs you want to build!

If you want to learn all the necessities to build your own Golden Gate constructs, tune in to our webinar! Here's what you can expect from this session:

• Motivation - Why should you use Golden Gate? What are its applications?
• 101 Golden Gate - everything about Type IIs restriction enzymes and different standards
• Construction of your own toolbox - how to implement GoldenGate into your project
• Methods - actual workflow in the lab, tips and tricks for efficient cloning
• Do it yourself - we will guide you through your first constructs!
• Already using GoldenGate? - brand new ideas, additions and useful expansions

These are the dates on which the webinar will take place:

• Tuesday, July 30th 2019 10:00 CET
• Wednesday, July 31st 2019 18:00 CET
• Thursday, August 8th 2019 24:00 CET

Furthermore, we created a slack workspace that you can join by following this link. We will post all our protocols and provide you with support for all the questions that might arise when working with GoldenGate.

Just contact us, check our social media or fill out this google form, if you want to join:

• Instagram: igem.marburg.2019
• Twitter: @iGEMmarburg2019
• Facebook: @IGEMMarburg2019

See you in the webinar!
Your Syntex Team from Marburg

Description:
To our beloved iGEMers out there,
From the central office of the iGEM Wageningen 2019 team, we have been designing a plan to create the ultimate merge of iGEM, science and art. That’s why we present to you The Voice iGEM contest! The only thing you need to do as a team is to send us a PARODY song via email before the 11th AUGUST!!, which should have original lyrics (feel free to express your misery) and be sung by one or multiple members of your team. It may include a video or not, that’s up to you. The songs will be evaluated by a very professional jury at Wageningen University and three winners will be announced:

• Best lyrics
• Best singing voice
• Best video

The winners will have their parody song posted on our glamourous wiki.
Are you up for a challenge in the most iconic scientific song contest ever? Then join The Voice iGEM and send us your parody song before the 11th August! You can sign up by sending us a message via Instagram (@igem.wageningen) or by sending an email to igemsongcontest [at] gmail.com

Description:
We are planning to do a video-series of very short explanation videos about the most important points and challenges that students face during the competition. It is not only going to be a collaboration between this years iGEM teams but also to all future students taking part in the collaboration. Our experience and solutions will help future teams navigating the requirements of the competition. The following videos are planned:

1. What it iGEM?
2. How to -> Wiki? (How to upload text, documents and pictures in the wiki)
3. How to-> Distribution Kit? (What does it contain, what can you use it for an how)
4. How to -> Biorbick? (How to use biobricks, and how to design your own)

Teams can collaborate with us by sending us ideas on what they think future students will need help with or by telling us what their team was struggeling with. If the idea fits in the concept of this video-series the collaborating team can send us a script for a video and we will record the audio and add visuals to help the explanation. Each video will be around 1-2minutes, so the script should not be longer then one page.

Description:
Namaste fellow iGEMers!

iGEM is not only a platform for students to showcase their scientific expertise but also to spread the ideas of synthetic biology. Therefore, this year’s iGEM team of Indian Institute of Science(IISc) has come up with a fun & engaging way to collaborate with other iGEM teams via a unique challenge, the ‘Sorting CereMonera.’

In this challenge, all the participating iGEM teams will play the role of the SORTING HAT (from the popular Harry Potter universe). They will sort microorganisms (bacteria, fungi or viruses) into different Houses/Characters of Harry Potter and/or Game of Thrones. Teams will have to justify their sorting creatively, through a picture, drawing, video or comic strip which must then be posted on Instagram (tagging our ID and hashtag). We intend to show the best comic strips and ideas to students during our sessions in schools and colleges. And of course, the most creative team wins a small prize from us.

Since the Harry Potter and Game of Thrones fan communities are extremely widespread, with this challenge, we hope to ignite a spark among the non-scientific community to encourage learning. Thus, we not only expect the challenge to be a good team building exercise but we also aim to reach out to a larger community and spread knowledge about biology.

Cheers.

Thanking you,
iGEM team
Indian Institute of Science 2019

Description:
Do you have what it takes to make a SINGLE labcoat, into something ready for the runway? Stony Brook iGEM presents the #labcoatchallege

How it works:
Take one standard lab coat, and without cutting, sewing, duct tape, etc, ONLY by tying, make the lab coat into an outfit other than the standard lab coat use. DO NOT DO THIS IN THE LAB, lab coats should only be worn in the standard way, when in the lab.

When your team has come up with their design, have a member “model” it off by walking down a “runway” to whatever music you think matches your outfit design. Once you have created your design, post your video on your team's Instagram page and tag @igem.stonybrook and one other team that you are challenging to a "walk off." The challenge will start July 1st and end July 14th... and the winner will be announced! Email the Stony Brook team at igem.sbu [AT] gmail.com or DM us @igem.stonybrook on Instagram to sign up and participate! The submissions will be posted on JULY 15th on our team’s Instagram, @igem.stonybrook, Twitter, @IGEMSBU, and our Facebook page, @iGEM at Stony Brook, where you can cast your votes for which design you like best!

Best of luck to the competitors!
Stony Brook iGEM 2019 Team

Description:
Hi fellow iGEM teams!
We'd like you to join us in promotion of our project by making a collaborative comic with us. For this we need three photos of you (one about you running away, another about you entering a building - preferably your university with its visible name, and the last one in a building, scared). Please, if you're interested - send them till 7th of July. Best photos will be included in the comic!

Description:
This year our team is working to optimize our last year's device which uses CRISPR to help in the diagnosis of autosomal recessive diseases. If you have any experience in modeling proteins or testing their activity, please contact us! We would also like to help any of the iGEMers in sequencing, FLO cytometry, and protein purification. We look forward to working with other teams and adding to this collaborative platform.

Description:
The wiki is a vital part in telling the judges, public, current, and past iGEM teams about your team. Here's another vital iGEM truth - everyone dreads the wiki freeze and many teams are hesitant to begin their wiki. It can be a struggle, but we're here to help.

What are we doing? We're putting together a wiki wealth of knowledge - a comprehensive guide that combines all wiki knowledge from teams past and present, source code that you can use on your wiki, and a YouTube video series where we walk you through all the major things you need to know about everything wiki related.

Who are we looking to help us? Everyone. We need first year teams to give us feedback on if our guide covers all of their questions and how it helped them create their wiki. We need teams to write up a couple bullet points describing how they create their wiki. If you use our guide/video series in any way, please let us know so that we can make sure to thank you on our collaborations page!

What inspired us? We are a third year team who puts many hours into our wiki every year. Our very first year, we collaborated with a team who answered a lot of our initial questions about how to code our wiki; this helped us immensely and helped to inspire this collaboration.

Thank you so much and we can't wait to hear from you about your wikis!
US_AFRL_CarrollHS (yes, the Mike the Microbe team - see collaboration request #9)

Description:
This year, Tufts iGEM is interested in improving upon the electrical concentration sensor in Shewanella, designed by Cornell 2012. We are interested in enhancing the sensing accuracy and precision, as well as expanding the sensor for use in detecting other chemicals.

If you have an idea for a promoter or other regulatory element dependent on presence of a chemical, please don't hesitate to message us about it! Better yet, if you are working on a sensor/detection project yourself, we could try our sensor output with your sensing design!

Description:
The iGEMxSDGs challenge aims to promote the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) proposed by the United Nations. The iGEM teams are challenged to map their project to 1 to 4 SDGs and post about it online. A template to keep the usage guidelines of the UN is proposed on our official collaboration subsite: https://2019.igem.org/Team:Costa_Rica/SDG-Challenge. The iGEMxSDGs challenge is spead on social media by being tagged by a team that has already completed the challenge. Each team will call 3 to 4 other teams to follow them. The mappings will be stored in the gallery of our website.

The challenge will launch on June 22nd 2019.

A contact for the challenge is: igemxsdgs [AT] gmail.com

The contact for the video conference on 14th September hosted by Team Taipei: igemtas [AT] gmail.com

Description:
Hello, fellow iGEMmers! This year, our team's project is the construction of a UV radiation-resistant fermenting yeast, that could be used to optimize fermentation processes in alcohol industries and also in the future colonization of other planets, such as Mars.

In order to test if our engineered yeast would actually survive in an environment as hostile as Mars, we had planned to perform experiments on a stratospheric probe, since the stratosphere has comparable conditions to the Red Planet when it comes to radiation incidence, pressure, and temperature. In order to find out if and how we could do that, we have decided to conduct an overall review on different countries' and space agencies' legislation on stratospheric and space experimentation, to understand what was expected in cases like this.

So far, we have found little to no information on the topic since most legislations only discuss biological experimentation inside a laboratory or planned releases, and this case fits in neither. We also found some legislation in Brazil related to experimentation on a "containment regimen", but no specifications on what this "containment" would be.

This is why we need your help! And you can do so by answering some of our questions about this kind of legislation on your country on this form: https://forms.gle/YvDiCXtohfJcZ5oc7.

Feel free to leave any of the questions blank if you can't find the information requested, and if you have any doubts please contact us at ufscar.igem2018 [AT] gmail.com. Thank you!

Description:
Hello fellow iGEM teams. We at MIT-ADT University are working on the menace of ever increasing plastic wastes, particularly menstrual waste. As part of our project we would like to assess the level of awareness regarding menstrual waste in countries across the globe. iGEM provides us with an excellent opportunity to do so, facilitating you, our fellow iGEMers to take part in this survey and help us approach our project with a more holistic outlook.

You can help us by filling in the survey available at the below link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScw5PZeZnLlQxLopdcVJgRFIousLC3GmkjvvceOwzG8ZYq1EQ/viewform?usp=sf_link

Do feel free to contact us and share your views, experiences and ideas about the plastic waste crisis we find ourselves in. You can find us at: Igem.mitadtbio.pune [AT] gmail.com or @igemsbsr on Instagram

Note: None of the questions are a compulsion and you can skip any of them while your responses will remain anonymous.

Description:
Bonjour fellow iGEM teams,

We, Nantes iGEM team, are really excited to announce that we will be holding an iGEM art exposition here in Nantes at the end of August! We would love to be able to present works of art that express Synthetic Biology through any creative means you are inspired by. To help the flow of creative juices we have come up with three themes that might spark more interest for you:

• The position of Humans in Synthetic Biology
• The fusion of 2 different worlds (Engineering and Biology)
• The impact of Synthetic Biology on the world.

To participate please contact us by email or through our social media (@IGEMNantes) and we will give you more specific details concerning our adress, exact dates etc. You can then send in your artwork digitally (photography, digital artwork) or by mail (painting, sculpture, etc...) by August 9th.

Your team is completely welcome to be present during the art exposition :)

Description:
Hi 2019 iGEM teams! As you may know iGEM 2019 does not have an Interlab. So this year we wanted to invite teams from any country to participate in Minterlab (Mini Interlab)!

What is Minterlab? Minterlab takes the concept of having scientists around the world working on one experiment and enables scientific experimentation to elementary and middle schoolers through an Interlab-like opportunity.

How does it work? Teams around the world will host camp sessions that are 5 days long. Each day will have lessons will be 1-2 hours. However when and where a camp session is held can be chosen by the hosting team. One Minterlab session should cover a curriculum that we will prepare together (but feel free to put your own spin on it!) as well as the main Minterlab experiment which we can develop together. At the end of the summer, we will compile all the “data” accumulated from the Minterlab sessions across the world and compile it on one website for everyone to see!

If you are interested in further details or wish to participate in Minterlab, please email igem [AT] sound.bio by *June 23rd 2019 11:59 PM PST*

Description:
Each year, we send out our team mascot, Mike the Microbe, as a "Flat Stanley" and ask other teams to take pictures with him and post them on social media. We would like to do that again this year, along with sending our newest mascot, Chia the Chitinase.

Description:
Hello fellow iGEM teams!
You are invited to take participate in our one week Instagram Challenge starting on Sunday, June 16th! The goal is to promote unity between the iGEM teams, and increase iGEM teams’ internet footprint through social media postings! We have created a theme for each day for one week:

• Sunday: Introduce your Project #iGEMproject2019
• Monday: Meme Monday #mememonday
• Tuesday: Agarart #iGEMagarart
• Wednesday: Lab bonding, photo of your team hanging out outside of the lab #iGEMTeam
• Thursday: Fail day #labfails
• Friday: Vine/Youtube video remake done your way #makeittheiGEMway
• Saturday: Shenanigans #iGEMShenanigans

The Instagram challenge will take place from June 16th through June 22nd. Please let us know if your team will be participating so we can feature your posts on our pages: our team’s Instagram, @igem.stonybrook, Twitter, @IGEMSBU, and our Facebook page, @iGEM at Stony Brook.

Thank you and we look forward to seeing what posts your teams come up with!
Stony Brook 2019 iGEM Team

Description:
Hello fellow iGEM teams! This year, our team is dedicated to creating a protocol handbook in addition to our main project. The purpose is to make synthetic biology techniques easier and more accessible for future endeavors and iGEM teams. We believe that the wealth of knowledge and unique techniques from teams across the globe will make lab life easier, fun and interesting. Thus, the virtual donation box is made so that protocols from different iGEM teams are free to view and try. It is highly appreciated if your team could contribute by uploading a few protocols to our virtual donation box.

Please indicate the type of protocol, your team name and country in the title for the files. Example: E.coli Inoculation - uOttawa iGEM (Canada)

Invite to the donation box: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1AlC9Wk9pEy1uqpixq8MmoctnYnYWDhBp

If your team is having trouble sharing the protocol on the weblink, feel free to send us an email and we will place it in for you.
Thank you and hope to see you all at the Giant Jamboree.

Description:
We would like to gather all aptamers-related iGEM 2019 Teams, in order to set up the iGEM Aptamers Hub. The iGEM Aptamers Hub shall serve as a shared resource for all iGEM teams that are doing a project using aptamers. This hub will contain information on aptamers, their uses, wet and dry lab protocols/tools, past iGEM aptamer projects, organised aptamer-related parts from the registry, etc. We hope that this will allow more teams to integrate the use of aptamers in their projects and find the information or expertise they might be lacking.

If your team is focusing or just using aptamers this year and you would like to contribute to the iGEM Aptamers Hub, please contact us at igemaptamers [AT] gmail.com.

Description:
iGEM is an organization that is driven by young people's idealism. Because of this, iGEM provides the perfect atmosphere to drive progress within STEM both technically and socially. Creating an inclusive space starts by being aware of the shortcomings of the organization, and from there moving to address any issues that prevent the organization from achieving diversity.

The UAlberta iGEM team is interested in investigating the age, sex, gender, and race demographics of iGEM teams, to examine if there are any inclusion disparities in iGEM teams, and learn more about iGEMers experiences so that any issues can be remedied.

How you and your team can help us is by completing this survey https://forms.gle/uTTwJ9RV5ciN8f5S9, and emailing us to share your thoughts about inclusivity in iGEM.

Note: You can skip any questions on the survey that you would like, and will remain anonymous. If you or your team would like to fill out the survey in another language please email us as we have translated the survey into a verity of languages to make it as accessible as possible!

Description:
Greetings fellow iGEM Teams!
This year our team's lab address was relocated----we got a brand new lab !
Our team members hope to redesign our lab. So we hope to get help from your team.

You can help us in this way:
1.Draw a plan of your lab and give us some photographs of your lab.
2.Briefly introduce the main laboratory apparatus in the laboratory.
3.We are willing to know what experiment your lab can do. (The more detailed the better)
4.Show a picture of your dream synthetic biology lab in your email and add a detailed description.
If we successfully receive your email, we will promptly reply it and appreciate your help in our team's wiki. Also, we will select the best design we think and show it in our wiki.
PS: At the jamboree, we will bring a mysterious gift from China to your team as a ‘thank you’.

Description:
Greetings fellow iGEM Teams!

Have you ever imagined having less work in the laboratory? Being able to outsource it somehow, to focus on other (important) tasks? Well, we did! In recent years automated lab processes have improved.

Our contribution to the iGEM-Opentrons-Community will be a colony picking bot, more precisely, modules and scripts, that allow others iGEM Teams to turn their own OT-2 into a colony picking robot.

To achieve this goal we need the help of other iGEM Teams. We need to train the artificial intelligence with data, so that it is able to recognise the colonies by itself. This is where we need your help: As most iGEM Teams are working with E. Coli, it would be nice if you could provide us with pictures of your agar plates with colonies! So that we are able to compile a large database of pictures to train the AI.

We will publish every script, code and module we create and we also give away some prizes! The first ten teams that send us 100 pictures will get some small surprise and the team which sends us the most pictures until 31st of July will get a bigger surprise!

All further informations for the collaboration, like registration form and instructions, can be found at www.vinca.de/igem.

Thank you for participating and helping us out!

Greetings from Marburg,
your SYNTEX Team

Description:
This year, Lambert iGEM is partnering with the Thirst Project, the largest youth-led water organization in the world, to build an international iGEM well for a community in Eswatini (formerly Swaziland). Our goal is to raise $12,000 to change the lives of these villagers through the combined effort of international iGEM teams! We would love your help raising donations, and we will be sure to put your team's name on the iGEM well for any amount contributed. Collaborate with us while making a difference. Thank you so much! Let's end the water crisis together!

Here is the link to our fundraising page! https://my.thirstproject.org/team/216038

Description:
Hello iGEM Teams,
As we all know, iGEM is not only about our projects, but also about engaging the public with synthetic biology. In order to do so, the previous iGEM teams of the Heinrich-Heine-University Duesseldorf created a project to promote synthetic biology in public by using self-designed postcards. Each year the amount of participating iGEM teams has grown, with a big pool of beautiful and funny postcards as a result. We would like to continue this community effort one more time and ask YOU to be a part of this collaboration.

How does it work? Every participating team designs a postcard which shows an image related to synthetic biology (or your topic) on the front and a small informational text on the back. Afterwards each team sends a package with their postcards to us, they are exchanged with the postcards from other teams, and the package is sent back. In the end, every participating iGEM-team is going to have collected postcards from all over the world. The received postcards can then be shared with people in the neighborhood, during public events, at the Giant Jamboree etc.If you want to check out the previously designed postcards for inspiration, visit the wiki of Duesseldorf 2016, the wiki of Duesseldorf-Cologne 2017 or the wiki of Dueseldorf 2018.

How to design your postcards: Standard postcard format (A6; 14,8cm x 10,5cm) Image related to your project or synthetic biology on the front Small informational text on the back If you are interested in joining us, please let us know until the 15th of June, so we can figure out how many postcards each team should print and send. Please don't forget to include your address! Important: This is not the deadline for sending and designing the postcard!

We’re looking forward to hearing from you!
Much love,
iGEM Team Duesseldorf 2019