The Amazonas Brazil Team had problems with the LUDOX solution during the InterLab experiments and ran out of it, so we sent them a sample and helped them completing their participation in the InterLab.
The Brazilian teams also collaborated in many aspects through a WhatsApp group. There, we discussed and helped each other with wet-lab issues and discussed doubts about the iGEM deliverables. Since it’s our team’s first time in iGEM, the group helped us a lot in getting some information about how to do a lot of things! We also had a Brazilian meetup early this year where we got in touch with Amazonas_Brazil, USP-Brazil, teams from the previous years and groups interested in participating in iGEM next years. To learn more about the Brazilian Meet-up see the page on the USP-Brazil Team, here.
We collaborated with the Harvard Team by creating a Global Perspective Outreach Survey about biomanufacturing. This survey was intended to standardize the way teams reach out to experts and authorities related to their projects and how the information is documented. Also, a goal from this collaboration was to understand the gap between academia and industry, the level of public knowledgement about biomanufacturing and the main challenges to push foward the development of biomanufacturing in the world.
Our team created a few questions for the survey that would be asked to the general public, academics, industries, politicians and regulatory agencies. After we created the questions, all participating teams gave their opinions and Harvard Team compiled the best ones and we began to spread the survey and get the data. In this work we have also collaborated with Linkoping, Aalto-Helsink and Hamburg Teams.
Our team has collaborated creating the questions below:
To academics:
How do you think your research could contribute to the advance in biomanufacturing in your country/region?
Do you consider easy to be in contact with the industry and have a research the benefits both, done together?
To industries:
Are you interested in work with universities to develop a biomanufacturing process that benefits you or improve your currently way of production? Is the communication with universities easy?
To politicians:
What do you think you or the government could do in order to encourage the industry to change its way of production to biomanufacturing?
How could the government work towards raise awareness on the general public about biomanufacturing?
Are there any laws in your country/region that regulates the biomanufacturing specifically?
By spreading the survey we were able to get 11 responses in our College and help with some data from academics.
You can see the details and the results of this collaboration on Harvard Team's wiki, here.
In this collaboration, we aimed at creating a document that would illustrate that very depth and diversity of law. For this reason, the first issue we discussed is law-related politics, the second its bureaucracy, third law’s impact on business, fourth on science and finally on consumer behaviour.
This collaboration was very useful for us to understand the laws in our country as the research we undertook made us realize the complexity of Brazilian legislations regarding GMOs used for therapeutical reasons and the importance of the work we have been doing. Our project is to develop a new treatment for type 1 diabetes using a genetically engineered probiotic bacteria, which means that to this project became a real product someday, it would have to go under several safety assessments and approved to be used in humans.
Over this year, as we worked in our project, we were always worried about the legal requirements for a GMO like ours become a real product and how biosafety laws affect and guide the development of new GMOs. This document was very useful to us to research and understand the laws of our country, and also other countries, the steps that we would have to take if we wanted our project to became a product. It was also very important to know the laws of other countries and see how GMOs are seen around the world.
You can see the details and full results of this collaboration here and here.
The Oxford Team contacted us to help them with some aspects of their project about diagnosing Chagas disease. We helped them with their survey to get data about the Chagas diagnosis in Brazil and they helped us sharing some data diabetes in the UK, insulin prices and accessibility.
We got in touch with the Lund Team because we’ve learned that they were also having trouble with getting data from the InterLab experiment. We had a Skype conversation where we discussed what could have gone wrong and how we troubleshooted to solve our problems.
The Linkoping Team contacted us to collaborate with them in their human practices event in a city festival where they talked about synthetic biologic and its uses, so we sent them a summary of our project to be showed in the event.
We contacted the Groningen Team as soon as we learned they were also working with Lactococcus lactis as chassis. We had a Skype meeting to discuss about our projects and some aspects of working with L. lactis. Since they have great experience in working with L. lactis, the Groningen Team also shared their transformation protocol with us and helpes us with troubleshooting.
We got in touch with the Tartu_TUIT Team and helped them creating their crowdfunding campaign, sharing some thoughts and ideas of how to create a successful campaign. They shared some information about diabetes and insulin prince and accessibility in Estonia and we shared some data about the ethylene production in Brazil, since their project involves a new way to produce ethylene.
The Sydney_Australia Team from University of Sydney contacted us for a collaboration, since we were both working with insulin. Their project aims to simplify insulin production to make it more accessible using E. coli and B. subtilis and we thought would be a great opportunity to learn more about diabetes treatment and insulin prices in other countries.
We had some Skype meetings and shared some ideas about lab work, human practices and modelling. We shared some information about insulin prices and accessibility in Brazil and Australia. Because we have problems in working with L. lactis and started using B. subtilis as chassis, Sydney team helped us with some protocols and ideas on how to work with B. subtilis.
