Team:NAWI Graz/Collaborations

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The iGEM Team NAWI_Graz looked for different possibilities to collaborate with other teams. These ranged from simple e-mail communication to learn more about the competition and the support provided by iGEM, online discussions in the field of security, material support for other teams with our own constructs, and the development of a software to improve our robot algorithm and therefore giving other teams the possibility to support us from their own location. They all looked much more difficult and complicated than we originally thought, but they all helped us to realise our project in this form.

European Meet Up

From the team [https://2017.igem.org/Team:TUDelft| Tu Delft] we have been noticed by an e-mail that they will organise a European Meet up. The idea of ​​an earlier, smaller version of the Giant Jamboree in Europe excited  the whole team and we decided to send 7 people to the Netherlands to get in touch with other iGEM teams.  Due to the Meet Up we also gained our first experiences in poster presentations. With lots of euphoria and motivation we enjoyed the various lectures at the TU Delft. They arranged excursions in Delft and Rotterdam, (lovely Pannenkoekenboot, really delicious) and above all the large poster presentations of the different teams. It was a great opportunity to meet other iGEM teams and to improve our skills by presenting our project to them. The send summary  of all presented posters helped us to find and rework our own poster design for Boston.

General Support

Already in Delft, we have communicated more intensively with the team TU_Darmstadt, because it has been shown that as a relatively fresh Grazer team, the 3rd at all, we had less information than thought about the competition and standardized support of long-standing partners of the iGEM Foundation. As an example they have drawn our attention to the free sequencing of MycroSynth. In addition, we wanted to form an even closer cooperation by demonstrating a degradation product from their experiments and thus directly prove that their experimental setup and our construct function. For this, there were video conferences, but the plan was rejected because the substrate amounts would not have been high enough to activate our promoter. Although no physical exchange has taken place, we would like to express our gratitude for the willingness to establish a new team in the competition.

Online Discussion about Safety

As part of the preparations for our lab work, we have seen the call for an online discussion of the team [Uppsala] on the official iGEM Collaboration page. After the subsequent contact, we got seats in the session about Genetic Engineering with special attention to safety. The questions were focused on the areas of "uncontrolled dissemination" and "harmful abuse of our openly accessible GMO". Together with the teams [https://2017.igem.org/Team:ETH_Zurich| ETH_Zurich], [https://2017.igem.org/Team:UiOslo_Norway| UiOslo_Norway], [https://2017.igem.org/Team:Lund| Lund], [https://2017.igem.org/Team:Groningen| Groningen] and the hosting team [https://2017.igem.org/Team:Uppsala| Uppsala], we determined whether and how we could assume our GMOs behaviour in the wild and whether we could imagine any way possible harmful misuse of our GMO. The results of this discussion helped us to complete our Safety Form.

Interactive Maze Design

After we announced on the official iGEM Collaboration site to help us improving our robot algorithm by being part of our obligate group of beta testers for our online maze design software, the iGEM Team [https://2017.igem.org/Team:Groningen| Groningen] contacted us. The first mazes of the team, as simple as they were designed, could not be solved by our robot.

Due to these feedbacks we have extended the code of the program significantly and found a way to insert a coherent storage possibility, which allows the robot to escape much better from angled corners again and find the end of the maze. After sending the link to the updated version, our friends from Groningen sent us several new designs, which were all solved by the robot.

[https://2017.igem.org/Team:INSA-UPS_France| INSA-UPS_France] contacted us some time later to test the labyrinth design software too. Using their highly creative approach to design several mazes, we were able to correct mistakes and validate our results even more.

Support by sending our Promotor Construct

We reached out for [https://2017.igem.org/Team:SVCE_CHENNAI| SVCE_Chennai] after reading their collaboration proposal on the iGEM Collaborations page. We realized we had many similarities in our project as both of us were working on pH as well as temperature regulatory systems and the alkaline inducible promotor was actually the same, alx. A skype call between both teams,which gave us a chance to interact and express any difficulties we had, was organised. Since they had some issues with changing pH in their medium, we helped them out by giving them some useful suggestions. Since they had some amplification issues with their gBlock, we also shipped them our alx gBlock so that they could work with it.

Augmented Reality at the Giant Jamboree

After seeing the post of the iGEM team [https://2017.igem.org/Team:Franconia| Franconia] on the official Collaboration Site, and declining it as a very creative, interesting and amusing one, we decided to support them. They organise an augmented reality game for smartphones with the help of QR codes distributed throughout the Giant Jamboree. A "plague" breaks out at the event and the QR codes represent either "cure" or infect the respective scanning smartphone. The goal of the game is that at the end of the conference all virus outbreaks are cured. With very little effort to support, this game can create a very special component of the Giant Jamboree 2017 and this is why we want to be part of it.