Team:Franconia/Collaborations
In scientific research, exchanging with other research groups is crucial. This is not only to broaden one’s horizon, but also to support each other’s work with the motivation of togetherness instead of competition. To get this spirit of mutual success also to our iGEM project, we collaborated with other teams from different countries on different topics. We not only worked together on a scientific questioning with the team from Tübingen, but also on human practice projects with many different teams. We really enjoyed every one of these, as they all had a very positive outcome. Therefore, we again want to thank all of our collaboration partners!
During the development process of our Games app "Pathomon", we faced many minor and major problems.
But through collaboration with other teams we managed to turn at least some of them into advantages.
We always wanted the social aspect of the game to be a key feature of the application and so we decided to realize
it as a game, everybody can play during the Giant Jamboree.
As the whole game is based on the distribution of QR-codes, which you have to scan to play the game,
it was essential to us to find a place where we can put them.
At first, we thought this would be no problem and asked the convention center for permission, just to receive the answer, that there is a strict no
sticker policy around the center. Our whole idea seemed to fall apart and started to look useless, because nobody could play the game.
But we knew we still have a chance, we just had to collaborate with other teams!
We contacted almost every team and asked for their permission to attach our QR-codes to their poster in Boston.
The feedback was overwhelming and everybody who answered was willing to help and supported our idea.
What has been a workaround in the first place, turned out to be an improvement for our app and the Giant Jamboree. We had the possibility to introduce our app to the
other participants and at the conference the QR-codes will hopefully guide the attendees to the different posters.
But the QR-codes aren't the only way we want to bring the participants together. Our game "Pathomon" requires the direct interaction between the players, too.
To fight the so called giant outbreaks three "scientists" have to meet at the same place at the same time. To compare yourself with others you can have a look
at the leaderboard and see what university is the best in destroying viruses.
And if we really work together we even have the chance to eradicate all the viruses, at least at the Giant Jamboree.
Dresden
We participated in the iGEM german-wide meetup from 30.06. to 02.07.2017 in Dresden
and had a great chance on getting to know nine other participating iGEM teams, their projects, people and the beautiful city of Dresden.
From 30.06. to 02.07.2017, three of our team members -- Hannah, Maximilian
and Benedikt --attended the iGEM German-wide meetup in Dresden. Overall ten teams
from Germany participated and introduced
their projects to each other while having an opportunity to find collaboration
partners and spent time together.
On Friday, we arrived in Dresden and the whole meetup started with
participating in several funny “ice breaking games”
as well as joining a local party of the TU Dresden.
The teams presented their individual talks on Saturday. This was a great
opportunity to present our project to other teams. We joined many interesting
talks about the several iGEM projects afterwards. Also, a guest talk was given
by a representative from PROMEGA. Hannah was lucky enough to win a special goody
bag for scientists.
After the talk session, we were going on a sightseeing tour with
the fantastic tour guides from the Dresden team. Getting to know the city
of Dresden was really great.
A great tortilla party at the Biological institute was organized by
the Dresden team, giving us a great time and many new connections to the other iGEM
teams. Afterwards we went playing pool billiard at local pubs with a reduced number
of members from different iGEM teams. It was great fun.
On Sunday, an interesting talk was given by Prof. Dr. Hans-Georg Braun,
who used to be an old iGEM advisor. He presented some of his supervised and very
interesting iGEM projects of Dresden.
Then the Dresden team offered some workshops for us: e.g. a speed-dating
for iGEM collaborations and a workshop for the “iGEM goes green”-initiative, introduced
by the iGEM team Dresden. Again we had a great time and learned many things about the carbon
footprint of the everyday lab work. Please visit the website of this beautiful project to learn
more about this initiative! During our time in Dresden we found
many potential collaboration partners such as Cologne-Dusseldorf, Berlin and Potsdam.
After a short coffee break and the closing ceremony, where a photograph of all iGEM teams
has been taken, we made our departure from this beautiful city.
We would like to thank the iGEM Dresden team for organizing the whole meetup. We had
a great weekend and loads of fun getting to know the other teams and their projects!
Delft
From the 6th to the 8th of July we were invited from the iGEM Team TU Delft to come together at their university town. So four of our team members had the possibility to take part at this year´s European Meet up. Amused by the mistake of the naked-camping- place we booked an Airbnb in our neighboring country and set off by car at 5 AM on the 6th of July. Tired of the long drive and walk we met several teams at an All You Can Eat in Delft in the afternoon which was proposed by Team Delft. There we had the first chance to compare notes with the others and look for some collaboration partners. Despite our tiredness we had much fun and Leo enjoyed the free beer. Even on our first day in the Netherlands we found out that there are more bicycles than people in this country. That is why you have to pay more attention to bicyclists than to cars. The next day, after forgetting our poster and running back to our Airbnb to take it, we all met at the university in Delft. Two biologists gave lectures on iGEM topics and provided the basis for discussions. At lunch we met Team Freiburg. Or rather Team Freiburg met us. They knew some of our team members from the German Meet Up several days before and mentioned us, what we enjoyed very much.
After lunch time the
most interesting part began: the poster presentations. We realized next to the other posters our
was – although designed that way by choice – really minimalistic and simple but anyway we
did a great job and could get the others into our project. Altogether there were many
interesting projects presented and we’re excited to see them all in Boston when they’re
finished. In the evening we had a BBQ with all participants which were organized by Team
Delft, too. This was a really great opportunity for us to come together and talk with people all
from Europe and not everyone is being biologist. It was great to meet students from different
schools. The last day of this event we spent in Rotterdam on a Pannenkoekenboot. This means
All You Can Eat Pancakes. We enjoyed it. Sitting together with our new iGEM friends on a
boat driving through the Rotterdam rivers and eating All You Can Eat Pancakes. As I said –
we enjoyed. In the afternoon we walked through Rotterdam and went to a Beer Bar ‘De wilde
Hollander’ in Delft. We enjoyed Beer with the members from Newcastle and had long talks
into the night. On our last day in the Netherlands on the 9th of July we drove to Den Haag and
walked along the beach before we took our way home. Of course, every evening while talking
about the day we ate traditional Dutch cheese and drank different Delft Beer. I don´t want to
mention the monster spiders there in Delft because we’re on our way to forget them. And a
big thank you to those bus drivers who let us drive for free because the tickets are too
expensive.
To sum up, we all had an amazing, exciting and informative time in Delft and great thanks to
iGEM Team TU Delft for organizing this big event.
This year the team from Düsseldorf and Köln invited on the iGEM Collaboration Side all teams to join their postcard campaign. We really liked this idea, because postcards are an easy way to reach people, especially since many people collect pretty postcards. Additionally, the combination of a short text and a picture, representing explanation and visualization, enables a simple understanding of the subject, even to people without any background knowledge. Thus, we decided to take part in this campaign. For the front side of the postcard we chose a depiction of the 3D-structure of the SpyCatcher/SpyTag System for it plays a key role in our project. Also, since we believe that many people do not exactly know how to picture a protein because these structures are often illustrated differently, this should give people a basic idea of real protein molecules. Together with a short explanatory text on the back, we printed our postcards and sent 300 of them to Düsseldorf. A few weeks later, we received a package with the postcards from every participating team. All these cards looked amazing and seemed very thought-through, showing how successfully all teams visualized parts of their projects. We were happy to distribute all these cards at the Long Night of Sciences and in our universities.
Our postcard frontside
Our postcard backside
This year, as one of our Human Practice projects, we developed a card game called „Pathologia“. The game consists of cards that represent human pathogens, cures, vaccinations and other special effects that affect human health. The aim of this was to educate about health and disease – with a special focus on the pathogens that cause the disease and their characteristics – in an easy and fun way. As we construed the game in English to enable it to be played all over the globe, we came to realise that a game is best played in one’s native language. This especially applies to our game since most of the cards contain special medical expressions that are not included in the general vocabulary of a foreign language. Additionally, aiming to educate about human health, we tried to include the – in our opinion – most important or most dangerous pathogens. But since many thousand human pathogens exist and different people think of different ones as important, it is nearly impossible for one team to make the game all-embracing. Also, to emphasize the influence of synthetic biology within the game, more new methods or ways to treat diseases using genetic engineering or similar approaches could be added. To address these problems, we decided to invite all teams to collaborate with us on making the game more international, more understandable and as comprising as possible. Thereto we personally asked other teams at the Germany-wide and European Meet-Up as well as posted a collaboration request on the official iGEM Collaboration Side looking for other teams that could translate the basic set of cards and rules to other languages or create new cards for the set. Luckily, many teams got in touch with us wanting to contribute to this project. So first of all, we want to thank all of these teams for making these collaborations possible and the game very versatile. We think, that every single one of these collaborations was very pleasant because we could not only broaden our and the game’s horizon, but also received a lot of feedback on the concept and implementation of the game as well as suggestions for improvement.
Our card game was translated into many languages.
The following teams had a part in the development of our card game:
Team Peshawar:
The team from Peshawar contributed the card “Treponema pallidium” to the English basic set of cards. This was a very good addition, because it causes a very severe and still wide spread disease. Thank you!
Team Cologne-Duesseldorf:
The team Cologne-Duesseldorf made a great effort and translated the game into five different languages, which is amazing and for which we are very thankful. Adding Greek, Portuguese, German, Hindu and French to the repertoire, they contributed a very broad spectrum of languages. Also, we discussed the card game in a skype session, receiving different suggestions for improvement.
Team GIFU:
Team GIFU from Japan helped us improve the card game with very constructive suggestions regarding the execution. They also translated the basic set of cards to Japanese, whereby they adapted the concept of the game to common Japanese games. We think that this is very helpful, because it enhances the playing experience by making the rules and the procedure of the game easier to understand. Therefore, thank you! Download the card game in Japanese here!
Team Eindhoven:
As Eindhoven is located in the Netherlands, the team Eindhoven collaborated with us in translating the game into their national language Dutch. So now every German can play our game with our Dutch neighbours. Thank you, Team Eindhoven! Download the card game and the rules in Dutch
Team NYMU-Taipei:
The iGEM team from NYMU in Taipei translated the basic set of cards to Traditional Chinese. Chinese is the language with the most native speakers on the globe, making this translation a real enhancement for our card game. Thank you! Download the card game in traditional Chinese!
Team UNBC-Canada:
Team UNBC-Canada create five new cards for the English version, all being a great addition to the set. Representing MRSA, Vancomycin, Methicillin, Hand Hygiene and Staphylococcus Enterotoxin B, the new cards capture pathogens resistant to common antibiotics and used treatment methods. Thank you!
Team AFCM-Egypt:
The team AFCM-Egypt translated the basic set of cards to Arabic, adding another widely spoken language to the card game versions. In a very interesting skype meeting we exchanged ideas, talked about our project and also received great feedback and suggestions for improvement regarding the card game. So, thank you! Download here the card game in Arab
Team RPI_Troy_NY:
Team RPI_Troy_NY: The team from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York created the card “Sophorolipids” to the English set of cards. This is a very nice addition, since it represents a possible new treatment method and the key part of their project. Thank you!
Team Groningen:
Team Groningen: The team from Groningen this year also develops a card game, wherefore they approached us to exchange and discuss our games. With their comments about our game, we could further improve our own game. They also send us a set of their cards to test the game, after which we also shared our playing experiences with them.
Team Tübingen
At the European Meetup this year in Delft we met the Team from Tübingen. We talked about our projects and learned, that their project for this year’s competition involves the synthesis of a novel antibiotic to be used in humans. As we exchanged ideas we came up with a way to collaborate. Since it is interesting to examine against which bacteria a novel antibiotic has an effect, we planned to test the antibiotic, made in Tübingen, in another bacteria, in Erlangen. Thereto the Team from Tübingen sent us Clorobiocin, a molecule similar to their novel antibiotic, a protocol for an agar diffusion test as well as the needed material. As test bacteria, the corynebacteria C. glutamicum has been chosen and we finally studied the influence of Clorobiocin on the C. glutamicum strain 13032 with the PEKEX2 plasmid for selection. We performed the test with different concentrations of the antibiotic and – for control – with ampicillin, water and MeOH, resulting in the pictures presented below.
Hence, the tested antibiotic works just as well as ampicillin against C. glutamicum. We really enjoyed this collaboration, as we think the project from Tübingen is very interesting and the work on novel antibiotics is very important – especially in the fight against bacteria that are resistant against traditional antibiotics. So, thank you very much Tübingen!
| Sample | 1 Clorobiocin (CB) | 2 CB | 3CB | 4CB | 5 CB | 6 MeOH | 7 Ampicillin | 8 H2O |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Amount | 40 µg | 20 µg | 10 µg | 5 µg | 2.5 µg | 10 µl | 10 µl | 10 µl |
| Radius in cm (left) | 2 | 1.4 | 1.0 | 0.6 | 0.4 | 0.3 | 2.3 | 0.0 |
| Radius in cm (right) | 1.8 | 1.4 | 1.0 | 0.5 | 0.4 | 0.4 | 2.2 | 0.0 |
