Throughout the last couple of months, we realized that iGEM is much more than a competition. During the iGEM season, we had the opportunity to meet people from all around the world and work together to overcome the obstacles that surged during the development of 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 questions making the students aware of possible mistakes.

After the presentations, we had the opportunity to meet the other teams and interact with them. 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.

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. While developing our projects, the team Tec-Chihuahua and our team had some struggles. After a long time of working hard, but not having results, we discovered that our IDT parts did not work properly. At that moment we started to examine the problem, 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 the 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 the information with the primers to Tec-Chihuahua for them to continue with their amazing project. By this making, they achieved results for their project.

So a problem that both of our teams had was worked out together for us to develop our projects and succeed at the competition.

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. Because of this, the Biolluminati Team from ITT Kanpur were working to eradicate all kinds of detergents from the ocean. Being conscious of this problem, when they asked for the previous iGEM TecCEM from 2015 part (BBa_K1629002) the sdsA Alkyl sulfatase enzyme from Pseudomona, which is capable of degrading SDS, we were happy to share it with them.
Also, we had the pleasure of answering a survey they posted in the iGEM Teams/Collaborations page called“Survey to Combat Water Pollution”, this information helped them to understand what actions are taken around the world to prevent water pollution.

Washington

People may perceive science as a complicated and boring topic, but the Washington iGEM Team decided to prove this as a common misconception. To achieve this goal, the team designed a synthetic biology booklet meant for kids. This book is easy to understand and states the importance of science through interesting experiments and fun explanations. However, in order to succeed, our team had the task of fully translating it to Spanish, with the objective 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.

UChile_Biotec iGEM LATAM

How would 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 as 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.

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 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:

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.

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 on 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.

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 was achieved by holding an event on August 25th, the iGEM day, where they presented the projects of several iGEM teams, their experiences, and troubleshooting, among others. Gladly, we have the pleasure to share our project and our ideas with them.

IGEM IISER Kolkata

Sometimes when you are developing a project that focuses on a big problem but without access to a lot of information about it, you can commit some misconceptions. This is what happened to IISER Kolkata while trying to attack the high concentrations of Arsenic in pluvial systems.
This compound is highly concerning all around the world, therefore, they had to gather information of concentrations of Arsenic in other places and also what actions are being developed to solve this problem. So, we had the pleasure to gather this information in our country and share it with them.

General Knowledge of Burns Survey

Since TecTissue addresses an issue that affects people all around the world, we designed a survey to gather information regarding the treatment of burn injuries in different countries. This activity allowed us to identify important aspects of our project. We would like to thank the teams that participated in their responses help us to consider a more accurate social and ethical impact. The teams that took part in this survey were:

1. IISER-Kolkata
2. UIUC_Illinois
3. Bielefeld-CeBiTec
4. CPU_CHINA
5. RHIT
6. Pasteur Paris 2018
7. METU HS Ankara iGEM 2018
8. Manchester
9. Hawaii
10. Washington
11. ICT-Mumbai
12. Lambert GA
13. HAFS
14. Vilnius-Lithuania-OG

iGEM Düsseldorf Postcards

“A picture is worth a thousand words”. That’s the idea behind the collaboration proposed by the iGEM team of Düsseldorf, which consisted of a collection of postcards that represented the wide diversity of applications of synthetic biology. The postcards created by different iGEM teams from all around the world depicted their projects and helped to bring together the iGEM community by randomly sharing the pictures among the participating teams. We decided to join this dynamic and represent the elements that conform an iGEMer. The back side contains a brief explanation of our project.

RHIT iGEM “League of Superheroes”

Science is a matter of inspiration, creativity, and imagination. These elements allow iGEM participants to create their project superheroes and turn to them for help in case of adversities. As one may imagine, evil is around the corner when it comes to obstacles during the project. For this reason, the superpowers of “Hacatto”, the protector of the Tec CEM team came in handy to inspire the team and help us with the project. Thanks to the collaboration proposed by the RHIT team, we transformed frustration into inspiration.

iGEM NEBRASKA SCRAPBOOK

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. However, the best way to acquire experience and improve one's performance at a given activity is “resilience”. Embracing our mistakes and learning from them allowed us to overcome obstacles throughout the development of our project. Even though people may consider mistakes as a failure, for iGEM Nebraska, it’s all the other way around, or at least that is the impression we got from the collaboration they organized: A scrapbook that contained and displayed with pride the worst electrophoresis gels of the participating teams. Thanks to the scrapbook, teams like ours presented some of the mistakes made during the competition. This collaboration inspired us to do our best and changed our minds to understand mistakes as opportunities to improve.

Videoconferences Photo Gallery

• Tec-Chihuahua
• Ecuador
• USP-EEL-BRAZIL
• UNEBRASKA-LINCON
• Tartu_TUIT
• DÜSSELDORF
• HEBREWU
• UNESP-Brazil