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Collaborations

A huge part of the iGEM project is the collaboration between the teams participating in the project. Helping existing and future iGEM teams with measuring results or improvements in the lab is one of the key participants for the iGEM succes. Improving on work done by already existing or earlier teams is also something the iGEM project supports a lot.

Figure 1: Nothing says collaboration like smoothies and labtops. It was indeed a "Feel Good Day"!

As a part of the project we sent some of the team members to Lithuania from the 1^st to the 3^rd of June to help the Vilnius iGEM Team getting started on their project. As a new team the Vilinius iGEM Team had very little experience with what iGEM is and “how to do” iGEM. The members of the team shared their experiences with iGEM with the Vilinius iGEM Team and held some lectures about iGEM in general. Other than that the visit consisted of social events, lectures from guesting professors and a trip to Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc.

The Biobrick System is one of the measures underlining the importance of collaboration in iGEM. The most important Biobricks done by each team is submitted to the iGEM headquarters for safekeeping and upformation. The next year these biobrick becomes a part of the standard kit, which is send out to every iGEM team in the world. This system supports that all teams can use something created by another team for their own project if they want to. This is a huge help for all teams participating in the iGEM project, because you don’t have to start from scratch each year. While pursuing the goals for our project we collaborated with other iGEM teams and participated in both a Danish and a Nordic Meetup.

The Danish Meetup was hosted by the DTU iGEM Team. This meetup took place the 24^th to the 26^th of april, where a lot of the other danish teams participated. The core of this meetup was a biobrick workshop, which took place in the DTU laboratory. This workshop was meant as an introduction for how to build a biobrick. A lot of the team members doesn’t have much experience with wet lab before iGEM, so this was also a general “how to”-guide for wet lab. But the meetup also consisted of lectures about ‘How to do - Wiki’ and some cosy social games and a dinner.

Figure 2: All the awesome people from the Nordic Jamboree. You guys rock!

The Nordic Jamboree was hosted by the Uppsala iGEM Team in collaboration with the Stockholm iGEM Team. This took place at University of Uppsala from the 24^th to the 26^th of July and a lot of the nordic iGEM teams participated in this event. The main event of this meetup was the Nordic iGEM Jamboree competition, which was held on the 25^th. The competition was meant as a chance to practise for the Giant Jamboree in Boston. The winning team of the Nordic Jamboree would receive The Golden Pipette, which this year went to the Stockholm iGEM Team. Other than this the event consisted of workshops, social events and a dinner saturday evening with a following barcrawl.

After the Nordic Jamboree we were contacted by the Uppsala iGEM Team. They wanted us to help them finding out how many other iGEM teams that is or has been using antibodies for the last couple of years. This happened to help us as well in the making of a business plan for our project. This was carried out and the result of this search was shared between both teams (we have used the results in our Business Plan).