We started the formation of our multidisciplinary iGEM team to make possible our project idea of a open source club “OpenBio”; however, at the beginning, we were a team of only Biotechnology Engineering. Our mission: To boost Synthetic Biology for new generations in Chile, Open Source way and non-profit. Our first challenge accepted was to have our first iGEM Team.
We have achieved from a multidisciplinary team for our project. The team is composed by Engineering students, Industrial Designer and Journalist.
We were announced that UChile OpenBio got 2° Award Competition for Innovative Ideas & Technology Copec-UC Foundation and StgoLabSpace. The award generated significant project visibility.
Sigma-Aldrich provided us for the laboratory reagents around USD $1900 (Golden Sponsor).
It was very important to decrease the time to providing reagents for project.
Attach archive Sponsorship Invoice.
The gBlocks are pieces of DNA around 500 pb long, so if you have gens of around 1Kb, you will have to link two gBlocks. For link gBocks, we use the Gibson Assembly technique.
The gBlocks arrived means to us that we could finally began to assemble our genetic circuit.
We participate of a sessions for guide and empower our project.
The development of entrepreneurial skills in the team was supported of OpenLab Beauchef. We participate in workshops innovation and entrepreneurship. It was a strategic stakeholder for the team.
On August 2015 ICEI Ingeniería y construcción Ltda. (Silver Sponsor) funded 1695 USD for 1 plane tickets and 1 registration fee. They also supported us with the purchase process.
On 13 August 2015 the team presented our iGEM competition Brochure to Juan Asenjo, director of CeBiB our actual partner. They Supported us with 5.000.000 CLP, (7309 USD at the time). This helped us to pay about 50% of the accommodation payment, 2 more plane tickets for the rest of the team and 3 inscription fee.
The registration was paid by CeBiB and DIQBT. They also provide their laboratories and spaces to develop the project.
CONICYT (Research, Science and Technology National Commission) Conicyt provided us for 4 event fee payments. We were visited this governmental organization during 4 months to look for financial support. At June we got its support. The support at this contest is around $2570 USD (Silver Sponsor).
“Silence is the element in which all great things are formed”
Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)
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.
