At that time there was an organized group from Universidad de Chile called OpenBio . That team was founded on December 2013 by Luis Rodriguez and Pablo Troncoso (we miss you!). Organization’s main objectives are:
1.- Boosting Synthetic Biology in Chile.
2.- Development of low cost Biotechnologies machines.
3.- Periodically attendance to the iGEM Competition.
The group used to participate in different activities in university to spread synthetic biology through workshops and informative talks.
Thanks to the activities that the group developed and others that were attended by them, was possible to contact with people interested in being part of the project and very committed to the tasks involved in developing it.
Finally we formed the Team iGEM Uchile-OpenBio, we all feel part of the team and if you want to know more about the members of the team we invite you to see our Team Description
The group inscription fee was paid by CeBiB and DIQBT for a total amount of
4000 USD. CeBiB also lent us their laboratories to developthe project and help us with diffusion.
Centre for Biotechnology and Bioengineering (CeBiB) is a center of excellence in frontier research by an interdisciplinary team composed of renowned national and international, able to investigate key issues of modern biotechnology and bioengineering, including important applications in industry.
Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology (DIQBT) is part of Faculty of phisics sciences and mathematics (FCFM), Univerisdad de Chile. It teaches two engineering specialities: Chemical and Biotechnological Engineering.
¿How did we obtain this support at the first time?
Ignacio Ardiles and Luis Rodriguez created a Sponsorship letter offering to the institutions being our sponsors. In exchange for their support we offer them:
1.- Team official clothing.
2.- Our official Website and social networks.
3.- 10 cm downside the official poster.
4.- Our Wiki project, actually this part.
Also we will honor our sponsors at the end of our presentation with special mentions. The sponsorship letter is attached at the following link.
After the registration the team set up weekly meetings to plan the work of each week. Also each member of the team has adopted a project area. The distribution of areas was agreed by all members.
We agreed that the responsible of each area will coordinate all the activities of that specific area. However, all team members are responsible for asisting in the areas applying for aid.
Each area has to report their advance and show their main activities for next weeks. With this assigment we are training our leadership and planning skills on each member.
Project areas and responsibles
We received an invitation for a contest conducted by Aplica tu Idea and Fundacion COPEC UC where you can give a short pitch on 3 minutes to present your idea. The first place wins $ 200 to support the project. Despite the price was less than 1% of our budget it was a great oportunity to show our project and get prepaired to next presentations.
Gustavo Calvo was in charge of creating the speech and make the presentation at the headquarters of the Universidad Católica. He obtained the Second place on the contest and was awarded with a special price for the team. Although we did not get 200 dollars, the contest opened our way to make the project better known.
gBlocks were provided by Integrated DNA Technologies . The arrivals means to us that we could finally began to assemble our genetic circuit.
But... Why are important Gblocks?
For every design in synthetic biology, a high fidelity technique is imperative to obtain large fragments of DNA for coding our gene of interest with the regulation elements. The group initially considered obtain the genetic source from the microorgansisms, amplify them and then produce the assemblies by overlap extension PCR. Thanks to gBlocks we could save all this work in laboratory that would require weeks, shipping times of biological material and we would not be able perform codon optimization
Open Beauchef consists of a co-working space (collaborative work) that FCFM facilities. It is located at 851 Avenue Beauchef in the OpenLab. It is designed to create a meeting place for cooperative activities that allow interaction between various innovation actors. It includes students, researchers and developers from every faculty of the Universidad de Chile, together with participants from academia, business, public sector, graduates and investors.
The contact was made first by Severine Cazaux , who tried to contact our Dean Faculty. At first he conducted us to the OpenLab to obtain some team support. They helped us with Mentoring through 2 workshops where we could see our team interests and availability for the project. They also gave us some tasks to gain support on the project: We had to collect 4 interests letters related to our project.
After that and other meetings they wrote a report of the team with the results of the activities. Finally they gave us tips for our team work.
It realy helped us to align all members interests. Also it was our first approachment to our Faculty.
Diario Atacama is a daily newspaper of the Atacama Region, Chile. The contact done was with Catalina Canales (Journalist at Diario Atacama) and it was done by Ignacio Ardiles. Also it was possible thanks to the project description done by David Sepulveda. The project description is attached at the following link.
ICEI Ingeniería y construcción LTDA was funded in 1995 in Chile, as an association of professionals with proven experience in the development of industrial, mining and real estate throughout the country projects.
ICEI Ingeniería y construcción LTDA. supported us with 1695 USD (Silver Sponsor). The money was used to pay 1 plane tickets and 1 individual registration fee. They also supported us with the purchase process of 7 plane tickets by lending us money until we get the money of the Crowdfunding Campaign.
This company was contacted directly by Anariky Negrete.
Finally they lend us more money, to purchase the lasts 2 plane tickets. This was a gesture of great confidence with us because we were waiting for the confirmation of next sponsor. We really appreciate what the have done for us!.
CeBiB supported us again with 7309 USD (they became our Platinum Partner). The money was used to pay the reservation on the 40 Berkeley Hostal, 2 plane tickets, 3 individual inscription fee, merchandising, the Official Clothing and other travel expenses.
The colaboration of CeBiB was announced after Luis Rodriguez and Ignacio Ardiles had a meeting with our instructors Dr Juan Asenjo and Alvaro Olivera. We presented our Team planning brochure with main activities and objectives of our visit tour at Boston USA. We also presented the team Budget and the letters of interest collected for OpenBeauchef. Brochure is attached at the following link
CeBiB published a journalistic article on its official website after their huge resources support. It was done by Noemi Miranda (Communications Officer at CeBiB).
Faculty of Phisics Sciences and Mathematics published a journalistic article on its official website after their agree to be sponsors of our team. It was done by Noemi Miranda (Communications officer at CeBiB) and Ana Maria Saez (Communications coordinator at FCFM).
El Mercurio is one of the most recognized newspapper in Chile with large national outreach. The contact was done by Noemi Miranda (Communications officer at CeBiB) and Ana Maria Saez (Communications coordinator at FCFM).
The insight arose from the FABLAB UChile, after Pablo Troncoso met Fernando Torres (project engineer in FABLAB). They told us how important was the PLA in the 3D impression. We also share interest in the open source philosophy so they gave us all the support for our project including an letter of interest.
After that our team looked for different uses of PLA in the society concluding that it was a powerful project and José Duguet provided us the scientific literature. The conception of the idea was born and the main goal of the project is to reduce the cost of synthesis of polylactic acid to encourage a massive use of this new material. We hope to stop pollution by plastic made from fossil fuels
Research, Science and Technology National Commission (CONICYT) provided us around $2570 USD (Silver Sponsor). We used the money to pay 4 event fee payments.
CONICYT was founded in 1967 as an advisory entity to the Presidency in matters of scientific development. Their strategic pillars are: the promotion of human capital formation and strengthening scientific and technological base of the country.
The contacts were made by Severine Cazaux since last may through emails to Leticia Toro, representative of CONICYT. Our first letter sent asked for 8 inscriptions fee for the iGEM Competition.
At first we did not have answers. Then Severine Cazaux and David Sepulveda visited CONICYT offices requesting a response. That act was well received by the institution and finally on 18 June we got the PCI CONICYT letter, giving notice of the funds allocated for 4 people.
“Silence is the element in which all great things are formed”
Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)
We decided to launch a crowdfunding campaign where we could explain our project and get funds to travel to Boston, USA. The goal was to collect 2,600,000 CLP (3715 USD) for the next 45 days.
The platform selected was Fondeadora, a Mexican platform which has expanded its business to Chile. It has a All or nothing model.
The campaign was designed by Gustavo Calvo and Ignacio Ardiles, edited by Natalia Urtubia and the music of the video was provided by Nicolas Cazaux, Severine's Brother.
The choice of platform was made for three main reasons.
1. One of the creators of the platform came from Mexico in 2014 to present our university and we considered that it was a great and effective platform.
2. The platform has good payment methods, such as Web-pay or transfers that are well accepted by the people of our country.
3. The platform has offices in Chile which facilitates our direct communication.
The Campaign started on 16 of June on 2015. After that we strive to spread the campaign on our networks with different messages, banners and other kind of posts.
Sigma Aldrich is a leading Life Science and High Technology company focused on enhancing human health and safety, manufactures and distributes more than 250,000 chemicals, biochemicals and other essential products to more than 1.4 million customers globally in research and applied labs as well as in industrial and commercial markets.
Sigma-Aldrich provided us laboratory reagents valuated around USD $1900 (Golden Sponsor). The contacts were made by Luis Rodriguez. He contacted Cristian Torres (Company’s Sales Manager) by email, asking him for support in first time (and attaching our sponsorship letter).
They told us that they usually don't give funds for those instances but maybe they could support us with laboratory reactives.
After that we defined which was the list of reactives we could ask for this institution. We sent the list on may 26 and last June the reactives arrived to our laboratory. Thanks to Sigma aldrich we could start our lab experiments.
We reached the goal of 3715 USD (Silver Sponsor). It was very important to support 4 ticket travel. We used Fondeadora crowfunding page because it is a easy donate way, we had contact direct to support and confidence in Chile, they are a rising platform in Latinoamerica. Unfortunatly, they were slow to give us the money.
We use the support of IDT(Golden Sponsor) to the iGEM’s teams for synthesize the biobricks that we used in our proyect. This biobricks came in the format of gBlocks.
Finaly on 10 August we made our budget and we were ready to present it to interested Organizations. At that date we had covered 43% of the total expenses.
