4biotec - Four days of Biotechnology

The Federal University of São Carlos received the 4biotec event (Four days of Biotechnology) between the 4th and 7th of August this year, arranged by the junior company of the biotechnology course “Consultoria & Soluções em Biotecnologia Jr”.

This event was attended by 150 registered students, includingthe participation of biotechnology students not only by the UFSCar campus in São Carlos, but also of other universities such as the Federal University of São Carlos campus in Araras, the Federal University of Alfenas and Technological University of Paraná.

The event included a special program covering different areas of biotechnology, human and cultural aspects such as: lectures, TED Talks, round-table discussion, academic works, practical and theoretical mini-courses and, finally, cultural nights for public entertainment.

In this context of entertainment and knowledge, our team was invited to present a lecture on the last day of the event, which introduced the iGEM competition, the project, the team, the plans for Giant Jamboree and it showedthe publicour individual experiences about the participation on the team.

In addition to the lectures, our team had an opportunity to expose our work on a stand during the coffe break between the lectures and also to participate in a TED Talk nominated “Biologia sintética e aplicações” (“Syntethic Biology and Applications”), ministered by our team member Célio Dias Santos.

Our participation had the purpose, besides advertising the activities developed for the competition, promote interest in other universities’ students to get inside the synthetic biology world not only with knowledge, but also to help bring new teams to life. Our objective had been reached the moment we had interested students in iGEM contacting the members of our team, being that effective and reported with more details in “meetings” session.

Jamboré

On July 18th, three Brazilian teams that would attend Giant Jamboree for iGEM 2015 assembled at Universidade de Sao Paulo, Campus São Carlos. The event was organized by Brazil-USP team, and was played by stream. The teams Brasil-USP, UFSCar-Brasil and UFMG-Brasil presented their projects. Besides our Bug-Shoo project, team Brasil-USP presented RubberBye, where E. coli bacteria is modified to degrade rubber. Team UFMG-Brazil presented LeishMANIA, which proposes engineering the protozoan Leishmania to treat rheumatoid arthritis. Common problems for all teams such as difficulties in obtaining sponsorship and bureaucratic issues that hampered the importation of biological material have been discussed (Wiki link).

The meeting also was attended by a representative of the iGEM Foundation, Ana Sifuentes. She addressed aspects of the competition, related problems commonly faced by Latin American teams (lack of sponsorship and bureaucratic issues, mostly) and clarified our doubts on these subjects. There was also a brief presentation on the importance of mathematical modeling.

Finally, there was a round table discussion on Synthetic Biology challenges, biosafety and biosecurity issues with Dr. Paul Lacava and Dr. Francis Nunes, both UFSCar Professors, and Ana Sifuentes.