Team:Valencia UPV/Integrated Human
Introduction
As a team, one of our favourite parts in iGEM have been collaborations. They reminded us that iGEM is not only a competition but a chance to share and let other teams be a part of your project, and that is wonderful. Below is shown the different universities that have collaborated with us. By clicking in the index or in the images you can go directly to the explanation.
Harvard University
Universidad de las Fuerzas Armadas ESPE
Philipps-Universität Marburg
Imperial College London
Universidad Complutense de Madrid
Harvard
Team Project
When explaining Printeria to people, we see they are reticent to use it because of the genetically modified bacteria that we do. A part of our project is to fight the stigma against Synthetic Biology and Harvard was claiming for teams disposed to do so.
Collaboration
Their collaboration was about doing a report of your project and create a series of newsletters and articles to show how we are using bacteria and demonstrate that we are doing it taking into account demanding security measures. However, throughout the summer they changed their mind and now they are doing a magazine instead of a series of articles. They will distribute it in their university and of course in the Giant Jamboree. You can download our report and the magazine by clicking in the buttons below.
Ecuador
Team Project
Ecuador iGEM team has been working on the development of a new biomaterial to speed up the healing in bone injures. This biomaterial called (C-lastine), is based on the cross-linking of bacterial cellulose and Elastin-like polypeptides. This cross-linking is mediated by a carbohydrate binding domain and a BMP2 protein (an osteoblasts differentiation inducer). To achieve this objective they are using E.Coli as a biofactory, specifically C41 strain which is resistant to Cellulose synthase operon protein D, codified by gene bcsD and responsible of pore formation in the membrane allowing cellulose to exit the cell. The final result is a bandage matrix that can be applied to the wound during a surgical intervention.
Collaboration
If we think about it, Printeria is a kind of biofactory so, we thought that trying to make Ecuadorís biomaterial in Printeria would be a good trial to show that Printeria is ready to become something greater in the biotechnological industry and why not, it could be used in hospitals as well. However, due to the fact that there were problems with the size of the parts for Golden Gate and with the customs, it could not become a reality. This idea would be developed with Imperial College. Instead, we did several things.
We did a survey to get some feedback from the potential users of both projects. It consisted in a video in spanish and then a survey to fill out. In our case, the survey was made to know what users thought about Printeria and Synthetic Biology. In no case this survey represents the collective of users (only 15 people were surveyed) it was just made to have an idea.
Furthermore we provide them with a special strain called C41. This was really important for them due to the fact that without it, they could not continue with their iGEM project.
Marburg
Team Project
Do you know that there is something that grows faster than a Bacteria? If it grows faster...why not use it as a chassis to do pharmaceuticals and chemicals in the industry? This is the fantastic idea that Marburg team has developed. They want to demonstrate that working with V.Natriegens is cheaper, faster and possible with todays methods.
Collaboration
Initially, they requested us to do the interlab study with V.natriegens and to annotate how fast V.natriegens grows but this gave us a really good idea. Why don't we try to use V.natriegens in Printeria? If all goes well, it would mean that Printeria is ready to work with other organisms which grow faster than E.coli, this way we reinforce the biofactory idea of Printeria.
However, as things do not go as we spect in certain moments we could not make the interlab with V.natriegens. (Aunque) Marburg team gave us almost all the elements to do it we had to buy V.natriegens in the CECT and unfortunately they arrived one week before the deadline. We tried several times using a (alquilada) frozen centrifuge but 3 tries later we could not achieve electrocompetent cells. As we do not have sponsors and (alquilando) the frozen centrifuge was not cheap we stoped trying.
on the other side, trying V.natriegens in Printeria has been an an enormous success. We achieved the (ensablaje) of (no se cuantas partes). You can see the results in the next photo:
Imperial College
Team Project
This collaboration was born when Ismael (Imperial College iGEM team supervisor) came to the Univertitat Politécnica de Valencia to have a meeting with Diego Orzáez one of our instructors. Taking advantage of that situation we met with him and he explained us the Imperial College project called PixCell.
PicCell aims to get electronics and Synthetic Biology closer designing an innovative sistem where the culture is controlled by voltage.
Collaboration
As they are using Golden Gate grammar we thought that it could be a good opportunity to do what we could not do with Ecuador team, try their construction in Printeria and compare results handmade and Printeria made.
Complutense de Madrid
Collaboration
One of biggest problems during iGEM project is to learn how to work with Wiki sintaxis. As not everybody is acquainted with programming with marking languages like html or xml, managing the wiki is a difficult task for every team.
Francisco Javier Quero, team leader of Madrid-OLM team, contacted us at the beginning of the summer to ask for help with their wiki. To help them solve their problems our software team did a call via Skype to talk these topics:
An explanation of how mediawiki works and the main problems they will find working with it.
Tips when saving the code, for example, separating it in different structures like navbar, main content, footer…etc.
Recommendations at the time of choosing a web template because not all the technologies available will work in the wiki and knowing this will make a big saving of time.