Human Practices: iGEM WashU

Team WashU is working towards engineering yeast to produce a wheat rust resistance protein. As a collaboration activity, they expected to collect responses from variety of wheat farmers across the world. We helped them with relevant data from India. During one of our IHP visits, our team interacted with wheat farmers and collected responses to the specific questions sent by the WashU team. Team also provided the contacts of some farmers in India as part of the collaboration activity, thus helping them to improve their network of farmers and gain information about specifics of damage caused by wheat rust and their preventive measures.

Modelling: iGEM Tec Monterrey

Before going to actual in vitro studies, we wanted to check how our design of oscillatory circuit works in silico. We had already prepared a stochastic model of the circuit, but we wanted to verify it from experts. We had a discussion with iGEM Tec Monterrey to discuss about the project earlier in this iGEM Season and they helped us out with our modelling. They verified our program and equations for us, and suggested the concepts such as leakage transcription which we missed to take into account. Their help was very valuable in terms of refinement of modelling of our initial circuit design. Even though we were not able to gather the experimental data and decided to go about designing a different circuit altogether, conversations with iGEM Tec Monterrey were highly informative and educative for our modelling experience.

Healthy Recipe: iGEM HAFS

Team HAFS is working towards finding optimal solution to diabetes. As a collaboration activity, they expected to collect healthy recipes from all around the world. ICT-Mumbai participated in this activity. We shared the recipe of Beetroot Raita, which is very commonly prepared in Maharashtrian households. The main ingredient, Beetroot, has been found to have many health benefits such as lowering blood sugar, detoxification to name a few. This very easy to make, and very tasty at the same time, recipe was an excellent contribution to the healthy recipe initiative of iGEM team HAFS.

Science Sketch: NYU Abu Dhabi

NYU Abu Dhabi came up with the very creative idea of explaining Syn-Bio to the world via simple, interactive animated sketches. They aim of to make a collaborative educational playlist with videos from teams all over the world, with the science sketches explaining about their projects and/or the scientific principle behind their project. Towards this collaboration, we made our very own sketch video describing our project and its applications. The link to our video can be found here.

Language Project: IIT-Madras

Team IIT-Madras is working towards spreading Syn-Bio knowledge to as many people as possible, disregarding the barriers of their native language. To do so they have created a series of educational videos which they have translated to many regional languages for people all over the world. In collaboration with them, we contributed our own small bit by translating their videos to Marathi and Urdu, two commonly spoken languages in our country, India. It was a fun and enriching experience!

Surveys

Team iGEM ICT-Mumbai completed the following surveys as a part of collaboration activity:

Team	Survey
IIT Kanpur	To fight water pollution
UNebraska-Lincoln	Invasive Species
UCopenhagen	Public engagement of iGEM teams
TecCEM	Burn General Knowledge
iGEM Bielefeld-CeBiTec	Dual Use and Dual Use Research of Concern
SKLMT-China	Chassis Bacteria and Nicotine
UC San Diego	Creating a better iGEM environment for you
Uppsala	A better iGEM for future teams!
Imperial College	Team Communication and Issues
Thessaloniki	Synthetic Biology
Pasteur_Paris	Synthetic biology and infectious biofilms