Throughout these last couple of months, we realized that iGEM is much more than a competition. This turned out to be a great opportunity to meet new people all around the world and work together to overcome the obstacles that pop up during the development of projects or to simply make the iGEM season even more fun and interesting. We had the opportunity to interact and make friends with people from different countries and help each other with our projects. But we did not want our relationship with the other teams to be based only on serious technicalities, which is why we organized and participated in several activities to share all the iGEM love!

Latin American MeetUp

While working on a project it is essential to receive feedback from experts and teams working in the same area to improve your work. Thus, we reached out to all Latin American teams for them to assist our Meetup, held on July 13th of the present year. We got the participation of 8 teams, these being teams from Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Tec-Chihuahua, Tec Monterrey and TecMonterrey_GDL. Throughout the event, the members and representatives of each team had the opportunity to present their project. These presentations were divided, some of them were online and the other ones were face-to-face. The experts asked a series of key questions making the students aware of possible mistakes, in other words they received feedback to improve their projects.
After the presentations, we had the opportunity to meet and interact with the members of the other teams. With this activity, we had the chance to participate and encourage collaborations between the teams.

Thanks to this event, we were able to analyze the obstacles of our project and found other alternatives and implement them. There’s no doubt that the feedback provided by the specialists was crucial for the proper development of the projects, and beyond the scientific issues, we were able to get to know each other, get along and create bonds of collaboration and support between the teams.

Finally, our MeetUp was so relevant that it appeared in the magazine of our university CONECTA, so all the professors and students hear about it. The note can be found in the following link.

https://tec.mx/es/noticias/estado-de-mexico/investigacion/realizan-el-primer-meet-de-igem-nivel-latinoamerica

Tec-Chihuahua

A great number of the iGEM teams are formed by undergraduate students, being still students difficulties may come up during this period of time. During the development of our projects, the team Tec-Chihuahua and our team had some difficulties. After a long time of working hard, but not having results, we discovered that our IDT parts did not work properly. In that moment we started to search and talk, in order to find a solution together. We found out that our oligos were missing base pairs before the suffix and after the prefix, affecting the correct function of restriction enzymes during ligation. Therefore, during a brainstorm between the two teams, Tec CEM decided to create specific primers for the suffix and prefix, which add this extra pairs when our parts are amplificated. So, we designed and studied the best protocol to implement them and sent this information with the primers to Tec-Chihuahua for them to continue with their amazing project. By this making they achieved results for their project.

A problem that our teams had was worked out together so we developed our projects and have success in the competition.

Washington

People may perceive science as a complicated and boring topic, but Washington iGEM Team decided to prove this is a common misconception. To achieve this goal, the team designed a synthetic biology booklet meant for kids easy to understand, stating the importance of science through interesting experiments and fun explanations. However, in order to have success, our team had the task of fully translating it to Spanish, as a way to reach a much wider audience, including all the Spanish speaking countries. This also was done with the intention of giving them some feedback about the booklet.

iGEM TEAM Bioluminati IIT Kanpur Part BBa_K1629002 and Survey

Our planet is begging for help and each day that goes by our ecological footprint grows bigger and the conditions of the environment get worse. The Biolluminati Team from ITT Kanpur were working to eradicate all kinds of detergents from the ocean. With the help of the previous iGEM TecCEM from 2015 part (BBa_K1629002) the sdsA Alkyl sulfatase enzyme from Pseudomona capable of degrading SDS could help them to reach their goal and we were happy to share it.
Also, we had the pleasure to answer a survey they posted in iGEM Teams/Collaborations “Survey to Combat Water Pollution”, this information helped them to understand what measures are taken around the world to prevent water pollution.

Latin America iGEM GROUP

“Fellowship” is one of the words that widely represents the iGEM competition. Thus, we created a Facebook and a WhatsApp group for the Latin American iGEM community. This groups represented an opportunity to, first of all, know each other's project, and of course, troubleshoot about all kinds of issues and look for solutions together. Finally, the teams arranged collaborations to enhance the projects and strengthen the bonds between nations and present a united front.

Video Labs Like Us Collaboration

Music is a universal language that helps us communicate our feelings. That is why iGEM TEC CEM 2018 team decided to bring all the teams together and use music as a way to express all the ups and downs lived in every step of the competition, these aforementioned being stress, despair, happiness, motivation, etcetera. We had the participation of 24 iGEM teams from different countries. We produced two videos covering two popular songs, one is “Labs like you” and the other one is “Moves like iGEM” (inspired on Maroon 5’s Girls Like You and Moves Like Jagger respectively). The aim of the music videos is to demonstrate that despite being from different teams and countries we all went through the same situations. The teams that participated are:

1. iGEM IISER Bhopal
2. iGEM AFCM
3. iGEM UNESP BRAZIL
4. iGEM WASHINGTON
5. iGEM Tust China
6. iGEM team Bielefeld-CeBiTec
7. iGEM IISc-Bangalore iGEM Team
8. iGEM BRAZIL USP
9. iGEM DUSSELDORF
10. iGEM GRONINGEN
11. iGEM DALHOUSIE
12. iGEM LEIDEN
13. iGEM UFLORIDA
14. iGEM TartuTUIT_IGEM
15. iGEM Toulouse NSA UPS
16. iGEM MICHIGAN STATE
17. iGEM UCHILE_Biotec
18. iGEM ECUADOR
19. iGEM BRAZIL USP EEL
20. iGEM Tec-Guadalajara
21. iGEM Tec-Chihuahua
22. UCSC IGEM
23. iTESLA-SoundBio Team
24. Tacoma RainMakers Team

IGEM DAY (IGEM IISER Bhopal)

iGEM IISER Bhopal is transmitting science in their community and all the things that can be developed through synthetic biology. This is achieved by holding an event where they present the projects of several iGEM teams, their experiences, and troubleshooting, among others. Gladly, we have the pleasure to share our project and our ideas on August 25th in the iGEM DAY.

IGEM UNESP Brazil

While developing a project involving synthetic biology you need to consider how is it going to be received in other countries, focusing mainly in local regulations. That is why Brazil asked for our help, in order for them to visualize how their genetically modified probiotics would be seen here in Mexico. Thus, we provided them with a report about how in Mexico this type of GMOs are a big taboo and there is a lack of regulation about them.
And also, during the realization of our project, we needed to know how burn injuries are seen and treated in other countries. Therefore, UNESP BRAZIL team did an amazing work making this report universal.

UChile_Biotec iGEM LATAM

Howwould you describe iGEM to a stranger? More than a competition it could be part of a culture. How can someone who has never been part of it, can get to know what iGEM is? UChile_Biotec decided that it was time to show the world what does it means to belong to this community.
Collecting information from teams all over the world, they designed a magazine that gathered several aspects of the competition and the projects of the participating teams, as well integrating the participant teams culture. We joined their strongest and more attractive collaboration by sharing details and the implications of our project, our own experience as iGEM members and describing some interesting, fun elements of the Mexican culture regarding science and biotechnology.

IGEM IISER Kolkata

Although the most optimistic iGEMers may believe that their project will succeed in the first attempt, truth is that it may take several attempts before even getting the first expected results.
Sometimes when you are developing a project that focuses on a big problem but with scarce information about it, this is what happens to IISER Kolkata that is trying to attack the high concentrations of Arsenic in pluvial systems, this compound is highly concerning.
Therefore, they had to gather information of concentrations of Arsenic in other places elsewhere and also what things are being developed to solve this. So, we have the great pleasure to gather this information in our country and shared with them.

Burn General Knowledge Survey

The actual treatment for burn injuries is not available for most people due to its high costs, thus the frequent complications presented worsen the issue. We decided to expand our horizons and understand how burns are treated around the world in order to identify elements that could help us to strengthen Tec Tissue and widen our target population. For that purpose, we designed a survey to gather information regarding preventive culture and treatments around the world. We would like to thank the teams that participated in the survey since their responses contributed to the evolution of Tec Tissue to fulfill the goals we established considering a more accurate social and ethical impact.

Since Tec Tissue addresses an issue that affects people all around the world, we designed a survey in order to gather information regarding burn injuries treatment in different countries. This allowed us to get a wider perspective on the subject and identify important aspects of the approach of our project as well as the preventive culture in other parts of the world. We would like to thank the teams that participated in the survey since their responses contributed to the evolution of Tec Tissue to fulfill the established goals considering a more accurate social and ethical impact.

When developing a social work-related project, you seek to have a huge impact, and therefore you need to have the global perspective.
To achieve this, we posted a survey in Teams/Collaborations iGEMs page in order to gather information from all over the world and get a bigger picture on how exactly burns are seen and dealt with in other countries. This information was very important to us because it helped us to understand the problems of our project. The teams that took part of this survey were: