Team:BostonU/Collaborations/Wellesley

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NEGEM

Wellesley

Collaborations

Collaboration between iGEM teams is one of the most important aspect of the competition. Instead of competition where teams are struggling to out perform each other, teams are encouraged to work together for the betterment of synthetic biology as a whole. The Boston University team has taken this ideal to heart and has worked in several different ways to collaborate with other teams.

Wellesley

Through the NEGEM meetup we were able to interact with the iGEM team from Wellesley College. We were so excited to go to Wellesley College and experience their iGEM project for a day. They created a museum exhibit to expose visitors to synthetic biology. The basic premise of the project that they presented at NEGEM, was that an explorer was travelling to hostile environments and utilized synthetic biology to create necessary products. This project will be featured at The Tech Museum in San Jose, California upon completion. They invited BU iGEM to come to Wellesley and give feedback on their initial prototype. When we reached their Human-Computer Interaction Lab, we were met with not only their prototype museum exhibit but also many other gadgets such as Google Glass and Oculus Rift.

Their project was displayed on a multitaction screen in which we were explorers in harsh environments like space, and would combine existing parts of the environment, such as soil, with bacteria to create necessary products like food. Some critiques we were able to give to their first pass was to include more pertinent information about synthetic biology, such as more about the science behind the reactions to engage older children. Their final device incorporated information about iGEM, including specific parts from the registry. We also suggested that more detailed information about the methodologies to be included, so they decided to use “how to screens” which better explained phenomena. We were so excited to be troubleshooting an exhibit that people will actually be using, and thrilled that we could incorporate more syn bio and specifically information about iGEM into it.