Team:Brasil-USP/Collaborations
Collaborations
Team
We have collaborated with several iGEM teams, sharing experiences and problems we have faced during the development of our project. In the following, we described each of our partnerships.
Cooperation with UFSCAR Team
Bioinformatics and modeling seems to always be challenging for most of us. This year, we wanted to create a supplementary material that summarizes useful tools to analyze data, simulate synthetic circuits and give us prediction power. Click here to learn more about this material.
On July 3rd, we met with UFSCar-Brasil team to talk about modeling of biological systems, and present a supplementary material we developed as a didactic introduction to these topics. Thiago, the physicist of our team, compiled these topics into a 2 hours talk with hands-on activities. We conducted an informal discussion about Python and the main tools in this programming language for Synthetic Biology, reviewing state-of-art numerical methods for bioinformatics and gene expression simulation through deterministic models. We believe this interaction provided us with constructive feedback to improve our material, while hopefully helping UFSCar-Brasil team with modeling.
Participation in a survey from Team CGU_Taiwan
iGEM projects often address timely and appealing issues that could potentially raise our quality of life. However, the actual impact of an iGEM project depends on how the public opinion will see your project. For instance, we are all constantly struggling for financial support, which strongly depends on how appealing a solution would be perceived by the general population. Thinking of this topic, The CGU Taiwan team wanted to create (created) a survey to assess the feedback to several iGEM project descriptions from populations of differents countries. This could generate significant information on how to propose better projects in the future.
To this end, CGU Taiwan approached several teams asking for simple questions related to their own project. Then, all questions were presented to people from different countries, with significant different backgrounds. We have contributed with two questions:
- How long does it take for one regular tire, the one used in our cars, to degrade if left in an open environment?
- Is tire disposal regulated in your country? If yes, are these laws able to control correct disposal and recycling of rubber waste?
To help them share this survey with in Brazil, we have translated it into portuguese. Visit CGU Taiwan team’s wiki to learn more about the answers to these questions and the overall feedback on our project.
Contributed to Modeling-Experimentation quizz from Team Aalto-Helsinki
The scientific method is based on a closed loop between experimentation and analytical reasoning (modeling) on the data. While both are completely indispensable, there is a historical segregation between experimentation and modeling in natural sciences, probably due to a natural background divergence among different scientists. Team Aalto-Helsinki proposed a survey to investigate how most of iGEM team members see this issue and how each team is tackling the experimenting-modeling discrepancy. Visit Aalto-Helsinki to learn more about this survey!
A few members of our team answered this poll. In particular, we are very happy that we could arrange a group of team members dedicated to modeling and bioinformatics. This group was in close connection with the Wet Lab, always keeping the Experimenting-Modeling cycle closed and working.
Participating in a survey from Paris-Saclay team
In iGEM, we have a broad range of different backgrounds regarding to techniques and backgrounds. To better understand which chassis are being used and why, Paris-Saclay team prepared a short survey to gather this data. For instance, we have used E. Coli, from DH5a and BL21 strains.
As a token of their appreciation, Paris-Saclay team share with us a Thanks Badge.
Participating and sharing a survey from UCL
While iGEM projects are often motivated by day-to-day issues, solutions based on Synthetic Biology may yet not be well accepted by the overall population. It is, then, fundamental to understand how people will see your final product and make sure that there is some space for it in ther market. UCL team proposed a survey to investigate this topic, and we have helped them translating it into Brazilian portuguese and shared it in Brazil.
As a token of their appreciation, UCL team shared with us a Thanks Badge.
Skype calls
Aix Marseille
“No more gun on our streets” is the motto of Aix Marseille team. Acknowledging the problem of accumulation of chewing gum as the second urban pollutant on the streets of Europe. Beyond economical aspects and a rather negative visual impact, the accumulation of gum represents a real danger to the wildlife (such as birds), often choking to death. This issue motivated their team to create a synthetic-biology based solution that can degrade rubber polymers. No need to say this project is very similar to our own, and we were very happy to know that the idea of degrading rubber was driving another team! The basic mechanism behind their solution is indeed very similar to ours: in special, they also wanted to use Lcp enzyme to degrade rubber polymers. For this reason, we have been in contact with Aix Marseille team to share experiences and technical information.
Freiburg
The Freiburg team proposed an exciting project to scan for various diseases only using few drops of blood. In the beginning of the year we have met via Skype to exchange experiences, especially regarding funding, how to manage tasks in order to organize the team and our modeling approaches. We also discuss about team management and how to get the best of each member.