Collaborations

Edinburgh UG
Tel-Hai
Uppsala
Mediterranean Conference in Marseille
Peshawar
Tolerance Photo Challenge

It is the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) that those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed.

Charles Darwin

We believe that collaboration is one of the most important facets of the iGEM competition. It is only natural that certain teams will have skills that others lack and vice versa. The great advantage of working within the iGEM framework is that we are stronger together than we are apart. In light of this we worked with as many teams as possible in order to achieve as much as we could, while helping other iGEM teams to do the same. Overall we collaborated with 12 iGEM teams from 9 different countries. Without them, our project would not have been the same.

Edinburgh UG Collaboration

Initially we set out to design a CRE-Lox based “kill switch” for our system. It was during this time we discovered that team Edinburgh UG was working on creating a recombinase based tool kit. After reaching out to them we held a video conference in which we each presented our projects and discussed how we could collaborate in a meaningful and effective way. We discovered that team Edinburgh had created an extremely powerful mathematical model capable of predicting crucial, and application specific, information regarding recombinase usage. Team Edinburgh generously offered to simulate our “kill switch” design using their advanced model. The information they provided us allowed us to modify our plans and more confidently proceed with our chosen "Kill Switch". Additionally, we tried very hard to coordinate a wet-lab collaboration in which we were meant to further characterize one of team Edinburgh’s many recombinases and compare it with their modeling predictions. Unfortunately, different academic schedules and a lack of time did not allow us to complete this final task.

Team Edinburgh also conducted an in-depth analysis of the synthetic biology learning process and the exchange of skills between advisors and students from different backgrounds. In an attempt to aid them, multiple members of our team wrote in depth reports concerning our personal experiences both learning and teaching different skills that were necessary for iGEM.

Collaboration with Team Tel-Hai

Our collaboration with Team Tel-Hai centered on the topic of ethics. As previously mentioned, our team wrote an ethics handbook we hoped could serve other iGEM teams. After discussing potential avenues of collaboration with team Tel-Hai we discovered that we both were dealing with significant ethical issues and could work together. We sent our ethics handbook draft to Tel-Hai, and they organized a meetup with two professors of ethics from their college. Together, with the aid of their professors, we discussed our ethical handbook, how it may be applied to their project, and the ethics of synthetic biology in general. The advice we received from their professors, as well as their valuable input, was tremendously beneficial to the final version of our ethics handbook.

Additionally, at the same meetup, we supplied team Tel-Hai with standard iGEM primers they were lacking.

IGEM Uppsala Ethics Collaboration

Team Uppsala was kind enough to organize a multi-national (5 iGEM teams from Germany, France, Netherlands, Denmark, and Israel) group discussion regarding ethics and synthetic biology. We participated in the discussion regarding “Social Responsibility.” It was truly a wonderful and eye-opening experience to discover both the similarities and differences of opinion concerning social responsibility and synthetic biology. During our discussion each team presented their project and discussed two fundamental questions in the field of social responsibility:

How can we responsibly and accurately report our project in media and inform public about the science we are doing?
Who do we want to report to? Is it other iGEM teams, journalists or general public? What is our niche?

The full discussion can be seen at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHIO7Ios2uc

Mediterranean Conference in Marseille

We received an invitation for an iGEM meet-up in Marseilles, France, organized by Team AIX. This is the first Mediterranean conference ever held.

Even though we were in the early stages of our project, we decided to participate in this exciting conference. We thought it would be a great opportunity to discuss our idea with people from different countries and cultures. In addition, we were excited to bring our message of “Tolerance” to another country and share it with other iGEM teams.

This is the first time that a team from the Technion Institute has participated in an iGEM meet-up abroad. In total four teams participated. Two teams from France, one from Spain and us. Each team presented their project and received feedback from the judges that team AIX arranged and from the different teams. The Feedback was constructive and helped us improve our presentation and poster as well as our project as a whole.

The projects presented were interesting and inspiring. The atmosphere was great and allowed room for discussion and collaboration. We truly experienced the unique and special nature of the iGEM community.

We hope that in light of this experience, future teams from the Technion and the Middle East will participate in multinational meet-ups abroad.

Collaboration with team Peshawar

Team Peshawar and the Technion have a rich collaboration history . This year we collaborated with Team Peshawar by video chat. We shared our project ideas and brainstormed regarding problems and potential solution. We also discovered we were both planning to write position papers concerning our projects, and shared insights regarding planning and execution. Additionally Team Peshawar went to extra lengths to produce a very thoughtful “Tolerance photo” that received incredibly positive feedback on social media (shown below).

Tolerance Photo Challenge –

Team Tel-Hai , Team Heidelberg , Team Groningen , Team Peshawar

Many iGEM teams from around the world participated in our tolerance photo challenge, demonstrating the great diversity of their teams, universities and countries. Below are some of the fantastic pictures they sent us (from left to right: Team Tel-Hai, Team Heidelberg, Team Groningen, Team Peshawar):