Collaborations

• iGEM Teams Participating in Vilnius-Lithuania BioHackathon
• iGEM Team Worldwide
• iGEM Goes Green Survey
• Exchanging Self-Designed Postcards
• Dry Lab Collaborations

iGEM teams participating in BioHackathon

As you may have already read in other sections of this wiki page, our team has organised BioHackathon - the international coding competition. Since symbiosis between Life Sciences and IT fields in Lithuania still is in its initial stage, we considered about gaining valuable experience from other countries, especially from other iGEM teams. Because of that we have invited iGEM teams to visit Vilnius and take part in 48 hours-lasting BioHackathon: Lab Issues event. As a result, team Aalto-Helsinki (Finland), team Lund (Sweden) and team Groningen (Netherlands) accepted the invitation. We considered it to be a very meaningful collaboration because everyone was working on the same goal – to create programmes or tools which were supposed to ease teams’ everyday laboratory life. Most of the BioHackathon ideas grew from from difficulties faced while working on their own iGEM projects. In that case, final applications and tools, created during BioHackathon, had improved their projects or at least relieved the realization of ideas. Some teams have been in touch with mentors after the event and received qualified advices. We have also used some created tools including team Lund search-engine that helped us in searching for particular BioBricks. Additionally, as team Aalto-Helsinki stated, it has been a great chance to learn about other iGEM projects, exchange knowledge and experience as well. As BioHackathon took place in the Life Sciences Center where the major part of our project development happened, teams had an opportunity to take a look at our laboratories and daily workspace. We strongly believe that such an event might become a pattern for the future collaborations.

iGEM Teams Worldwide

Many people and organisations are trying to reach the general public on social media by posting on Twitter, Linkedin, Facebook or Instagram. Our team is not an exception and we also have those accounts. But one of the most entertaining experience was to be a part of project @igem.teams.worldwide on Instagram, created by team Toulouse INSA-UPS. The main idea of the project is that various iGEM teams can manage this Instagram account for a week and introduce themselves by showing their casual life, laboratory issues and everything they imagine. We also had such an opportunity from 9th to 15th, July and it was a pleasure to share some brilliant daily routine moments, receive supportive comments about SynDrop project, gain more followers on our own Instagram account, and present Lithuania at once. It was not only an entertainment or a possibility to familiarize ourselves with other teams and their projects, but it has also induced our creativity in order to present ourselves differently.

iGEM goes green Survey

Last year team TU Dresden 2017 initiated the project “iGEM goes green” intended to share the ecological improvements of their work. This year the team didn‘t take part in iGEM but team METU_HS_Ankara was so impressed by this idea that they decided to continue the project this year. After agreement and permissions from team TU Dresden were given, team METU_HS_Ankara has sent a Lab Poster and “iGEM Goes Green Guide” to us which were placed in our laboratory. Also they asked to enter our data on GHG Emissions Calculator, as well as share it in Lithuania widely. That helped us to turn our community’s attention to the environmental impact of a daily working routine and share eco-friendly thoughts in Lithuania too. For more information about the movement visit team METU_HS_Ankara page. https://2018.igem.org/Team:METU_HS_Ankara

Exchanging self-designed postcards

In June we received an invitation from team Duesseldorf to exchange self-designed postcards between iGEM teams. The idea was to bring synthetic biology closer to general public by sharing other teams‘ postcards in our neighborhood and events. We had to send 100 postcards to Dusseldorf with the image on the front and a small piece of text on the back describing the idea of our project. As you may presuppose, we designed a liposome with the Iron Wolf, the main symbol of Vilnius, howling on its membrane. When all postcards from different teams have reached Dusseldorf, they were mixed and sent back to us. In the end, we now have plenty of postcards in our office in the Life Sciences Center which our guests and community can see and learn more about synthetic biology or teams of the iGEM competition as well!

Dry Lab Collaborations

eXplaY model in collaboration with team Groningen

When team Groningen visited Vilnius and participated in the life sciences BioHackathon, we have spent many hours together while friendly communicating, as well as exchanging ideas about modeling our project. We intended to design a liposome-surface display system and team Groningen was so interested in SynDrop idea, that they even offered some help. Finally, through this collaboration a molecular thermodynamics model, called eXplaY, was built that we are grateful being able to use.

Mathematical model for necessity of mRNA addition to IVTT system

While creating our cell-free system we had hypothesized the necessity of adding initial mRNA over single DNA into our liposomes. With the help of team Edinburgh, mathematical model proving our theoretical concept was designed. This model might be helpful for creating more efficient cell-free systems for membrane protein research.