Difference between revisions of "Team:Grenoble-Alpes/Notebook"

Created in 1992, the Science Fair is a French national event of scientific popularization. 2017’s topic was “How can we change the preconceived ideas in science ?”. We had the chance to have our own stand to present the iGEM competition as well as our project SnapLab. Our main aim was to popularize synthetic biology and the field in which it is applied. We met a lot of different profiles: adults and kids, with or without scientific backgrounds, with or without knowledge in biology… This is why we had to adapt our explanations depending on the type of public we were facing. This allowed us to tremendously improve our scientific communication skills ! As we had the visit of classrooms, from middle and high school level, we also organized quizzes about the basics in biology: “What do you know about DNA ?”, “What is a genetically modified organism ?”. The experience was very enriching and receiving the enthusiasm of the public was extremely gratifying. We were even interviewed and got an article about iGEM project in a newspaper!

Our team was contacted by Cyril, a journalist working for the world class radio “NRJ”. On September the 26th, our team was welcomed at NRJ’s studio. We started by introducing ourselves as well as the iGEM contest and the applications of synthetic biology. Cyril also asked for a little bit more informations on our project, from the administrative part to the fundraising campaign and the scientific realisation of our kit: SnapLab.

This is the new tradition of our university: once a year in September, all students are welcome to the central place of the campus. Many different animations, associations and activities are proposed to the students for free. For the very first time, iGEM Grenoble-Alpes was represented during this event. Despite the bad weather, we met several people interested in SnapLab and low-cost diagnostic kits. At the end of the day, a giant concert took place. We would like to thank the organizers as well as all the people he talked to.

Before being able to detect fluorescence that bacteria are going to emit, we have to make sure our system is capable of detecting fluorescence! And, that’s what we did! First time we detected fluorescence, we are on the right direction but still lots of work to achieve!

What a better way to thank everyone that supported us so far than organizing an “Apéritif Dinatoire” as we would say in French.

Such a beautiful day for a photoshoot session! So as to present ourselves on our website, we had this idea to take photos in a street art environment. Grenoble hosts each year the Street Art festival, giving us the opportunity to discover amazing piece of arts as well as artists. In the depths of Grenoble’s streets, fun we had!

After struggling with electronics vibes for a while, we were first able to make our electronic circuit work. A first step in making our temperature control system to work…

Motion design is a graphic art design consisting of creating animated objects delivering a message in a fun way. It has to be dynamic, fast, creative and attractive. In this spirit, we realised a short motion design movie for our crowdfunding campaign. The scenario was divided into 4 parts, each of them represented by one colour, with flat designed objects. This is the final result, we apologize for it being only in French.

In laboratory, DNA is usually extracted by the means of different types of kit. The most famous are the « Mini preps » kits and they use a centrifuge. But, to respect our portability criterion we had to find a way to extract DNA without a centrifuge! How ? That is the question. After many hours of thinking and putting ourselves under pressure, it was indeed pressure that was the answer to our problems. Pressure can force a liquid to pass from one compartment to another but again the question was now! How does pressure need to be applied in the extraction column? Well, the idea would be to use a needle of the same diameter as the column’s and replace every step of centrifuging by the pressure using the needle. In the end, we planned to obtain a good genomic DNA concentration that would permit the diagnosis! You can look at our results for more informations!

FabLabs are collaborative workspaces that welcome people from any age or field to help them carry out their projects. They are an alternative to mass-production, giving people access to computer-controlled tools that are usually restricted to industrial uses such as 3D printer, laser cutter or vinyl cutter. Fab Labs have thus embodied the “Do It Yourself” approach, encouraging the use of free and open source software. We had the chance to work in collaboration with the Fab Lab “La Casemate” in Grenoble for our iGEM project. We had a great time sharing with the other Makers on various projects, as well as on our own with which they were very helpful throughout the different issues we faced, so thanks a lot!

One of the demands of the iGEM contest, which we have at heart, is to make science accessible to everyone by the popularization of science. To this end, a popular scientific conference was organized. On this “Café Science” evening, we received 3 speakers from 3 different scientific fields. Yahia Chebloune, director of PAVAL Lab in INRA Grenoble (top right photo) talked about his latest amazing progresses in the design of an HIV vaccine. Then, Eduard Ayuso, INSERM researcher from University of Nantes (bottom left photo) gave a wonderful lecture about viral vectors and gene therapy. Finally, François Rousse, PhD student in INRIA Grenoble (bottom right photo), was the last speaker with a presentation about biomimetics in mathematics, i.e. the way mathematicians try to mimic natural biological processes. At the end of each talk, the public had the opportunity to ask any kinds of questions or/and start a discussion with the researcher. Around 50 people attended this conference; the public was mainly composed of students -bachelor and master’s degree- but also teachers, speakers’ colleagues, and even students’ relatives. This nice evening of exchange ended with a buffet offered by our team.

In the recent years, 3D-printing has become a fast and simple way to implement any kinds of ideas. As this technology is compatible with many different domains, such as food industry, pharmaceutical field, biotechnology, 3D-printing has a fast unlimited growing potential. As a matter of fact, in cell therapy, new innovative treatments have been brought by 3D printing, like the creation of blood vessels from stem cells. Completely impressed by what could be achieved with 3D printing technique, we came down back to earth and focused on how we could concretize our kit. Well, 3D printing is obviously the answer! This limitless technique was the solution to create SnapLab, and even though it sounds simple we still had to optimize the process. But, we cannot deny this feeling of satisfaction when the first pieces of our kit was 3D printed ! Just remember that 3D printing is for sure a technique opening a wide new range of possibilities that we definitely must take advantage of.

We decided to organize a concert as our very first outreach event. EVE was the most appropriate place in Grenoble because this place was built for students. By making it affordable to everyone, this cultural event was an undeniable success. Everyone had fun and were positively surprised by the variety of music genres, from Jazz to Death Metal. We would like to thank each group that participated in this concert.
Organic Groonje played some efficient Jazz and happy music, which was the perfect warmup to wake up the crowd! Anomaly ‘s performance was incredible, which we will definitely not forget. Norwalk has confirmed all the good words after the contest Headbang that they’ve won. Plague From The Void played their new set, they put EVE on fire and gave us a great help before the concert. Finally, Crawl To The Past finished perfectly the night, they even broke their wands to fed this crowd.

After a teacher mentioned iGEM in two different classes, iGEM Grenoble team started. A few simple words raised a strong motivation! Weeks later, a meeting was organized between teachers of the School of Pharmacy (who first wanted to start a new team); teachers of Phelma Engineering School (who supervised the previous iGEM teams in 2012 and 2013) ; and 3 students in Biotechnology who expressed their interests in the project. From that day, a call for applications started to gather every Biotechnology students that was interested in iGEM. We contacted the 2013 participants so they could give us information, advices, and also… the association, created in 2011 by the very first iGEM Grenoble team. The main aim of this association was to ease the finances. In parallel, we met a few times for brainstormings, to define a project among the tremendous number of ideas we accumulated. It appeared very quickly that we would need students from other fields with other skills, notably in engineering. So, one of us went to present the contest at the beginning of a class of biomedical engineering students, at Phelma. Candidacies arrived within the week and we all met to improve our brainstorming. We particularly learned to know each other the night of our first event: the concert. Soon after, our project was chosen unanimously ! Other recruiting processes were organised in different education sectors but students did not show as enthusiastic as the engineers. During the fundraising period, some students left the adventure. After a few months, we presented the project to designer students, who showed high motivation to help us to present SnapLab. One year later here we are, a smiling team of 12 students: 6 studying Biotechnology/Biology, 5 studying Biomedical Engineering and 2 in 3D modelling/VFX !