Erwinions

Collaborations

Aalto-Helsinki

Erwinions had the opportunity to do a great and productive collaboration with the Aalto Helsinki Team. Our first start with them was when one of our team members, Alejandra Ogaz Ramos, was in Helsinki, Finland, and so the collaboration was in person. Since she was there, she had a conference with the team to discuss the ways both teams could have helped each other on their projects. During the conference, our team discovered that European Union legislation would not help us with our project because mostly in all EU the transgenic food is prohibited.

Nevertheless, our team member went to the Aalto University on the 26 of July of the present year to help the other team members with a sample collection of sweat for their project. The Helsinki´s team wanted to extract different types of sweat so they could run exams on them and determine the characteristics of the human sweat and if the place and climate influenced on the sweat production.

As a matter of fact, our member spent a whole afternoon with the team in a sauna in order to obtain samples of the “Mexican sweat” for their lab project. She can tell that it was quite a Finnish experience and that the other team members were very nice. The greatest discovery was that our team member didn’t sweat that much, or at least as the Aalto team would have imagined, definitely because the temperature climate of the Finnish sauna is likely like the normal summer weather in Chihuahua. So, because of that our member, spent like 3 hours on the sauna and finally could get some little drops of “Mexican sweat”.

The collaboration concluded with an investigation our members did about legal issues on patents for the usage of the antimicrobial peptide dermcidin for skin care, this because the Aalto Helsinki team doesn’t have members specialized on legal aspects, and that was the reason why our Human Practices members helped them. After the meeting with our member in Finland, Aalto team send us patents and patents applications so we could double check the analysis that previously the Aalto team did. We investigated about the regulation of the European Union patents, the duration, and their effects. After that, we send them our conclusions so they could apply their knowledge and ours on their wiki.

Tec-Guadalajara

Unfortunately, the iGEM Tec-Guadalajara team got their kit late because of border control issues, plus it also it seemed to be damaged. This problem did not allow them to perform the necessary transformation required to meet the bronze criteria. But this didn't stop them from doing their project; the collaboration between our teams, involved us to do two of the transformations that they needed, the first was BBa_I744204 -plate 3, well 20F-, in E. Coli BL21B3. The second part, BBa_K137055 -plate 4, well 13I-, was also transformed in E. Coli BL21B3. There was no inconvenience in the transformation protocol, and the procedure was successful, with the expression of the corresponding proteins that Tec-Guadalajara needed for their transformation. On October 24th, both transformed bacteria were shipped through DHL from Chihuahua City to Guadalajara.

Tec-CEM

In order to promote and reinforce the relationship with our brother team Tec-CEM, we asked for their help to characterize one of our BioBricks, (T7 promoter + RBS) + (epsE) + (T1 terminator), which can be found here as a whole [BBa_K2471002], the individual parts being (BBa_K525998) + (BBa_K143032) + (BBa_B0010). This BioBrick is an essential part of our project, as its expression confers the capacity of inhibit the virulence factor of motility in the bacteria. The collaboration developed as follows: On October 15th, we shipped the BioBrick to Tec-CEM, which they characterized by SDS-PAGE. Once the results were obtained, they shared them with us, completing a successful collaboration. You can review the results on our bronze results section.

Experiment handbook

Erwinions made an important collaboration with Tec-Guadalajara and Tec-CEM, working together in the development of an experiment manual validated by SEP (Secretaria de Educación Pública) containing 30 scientific experiments. Our main objective was to motivate and involve elementary schools’ children in scientific subjects. The experiments were divided into three blocks by complexity: easy level experiments were planned for to 6-8-year-old children, intermediate level for 9-11 years and finally the expert level for 12-13 year-olds.

The three teams planned to present one experiment of each section in three different elementary schools. The team attempted to explain the theoretical framework of the experiment widely and performed step by step each experiment together with the children to ensure the correct realization of each experiment. At the end of the experiments, a survey and some general questions about the experiments were asked to the children to know the quality of the information given by the team and the satisfaction level of the children while they carried the experiments out.

Meetup

The "Mexican Teams Meetup" had several activities. Amongst them was a collaboration in Human Practices, which laid the foundations for the Laboratory Handbook. This handbook is a guide that aims to introduce children from elementary school to science, and a presentation of the progress that we had until that point regarding our project. It also helped us see our areas of opportunity, which consequently allowed us to improve and be able to be more competitive in the Giant Jamboree. Although these were the technical aspects of the meeting, it was thanks to this meetup that we were able to establish relationships with the members of the various teams that participated. This experience has not only helped us with areas concerning the project but has also made the iGEM community of Mexico closer and stronger than ever.

IONIS PARIS

The IONIS Paris team contacted us for a team collaboration. We worked together for several months, mainly focusing in Human Practices and Modeling. The IONIS modeling team helped us to visualize one of our enzymes: “yhjH,” based on bibliography and the optimal enzyme conditions, they managed to simulate it in silico, helping us to establish and assume model parameters and enzyme behavior, among other things. Our teams also managed to collaborate in Human Practices. Based on the IONIS human practices project, some of our team members contacted winegrowers and oenologists to interview them about how climate change has affected their vineyards. The information gathered was used for a comparative framework between French and Mexican wine production actual adversities. During the meetings with the experts, we also discussed the IONIS team proposal, so they could let them know their points of view and their opinions about it. Therefore, the IONIS team got an international perspective of their project impact.

Video Call with Alicia Magnanon from team IONIS Paris and Mexican winegrower expert Consuelo Melendez (October 10th).

"We want to thank the team Tec-Chihuahua for their help and support for our human practice project, they helped us to understand how farmers in Mexico deal with climate change and how we could use Softershock to solve the problem. They gave us information about synthetic biology in their country to put it on the interactive map to share their experiences with their country Mexico and the rest of the world." -Team IONIS Paris

Greece

Team Greece worked on their big Human Practices campaign with a survey. They wanted to know the opinions of the PIs and Instructors of other teams around the world about their project and its social, public and health impact. They included a summary of their project to fill us in, and after that, we sent the survey to our team PIs and Instructors. They were happy to help because they are not often this involved in collaborations.

UNL

The University of Nebraska-Lincoln team and Tec-Chihuahua team collaboration goes back to the beginning of the summer. We first presented our projects to each other to get to know us a little better. Later on, the UNL team asked us to share their General Public Survey to get to know Mexican opinion. We ended up video calling to officially meet each other and got a great feedback on our projects.

Leuven's Central Hub

Did you know there are more than six thousand languages around the world? Some of them are widely spoken, like Mandarin, Chinese or English, while some others are less spoken, like Tarahumara and Náhuatl in Mexico. In iGEM’s Tec-Chihuahua, we are in favor of diversity because we are sure every language is singular: in composition and expression. With this in mind, and with iGEM KU Leuven team initiative, we participated in the multiple collaboration of the Central Hub: a platform in where more than a dozen iGEM teams share project descriptions to be translated into ten different languages. We translated several teams project descriptions to our native language: Spanish; at the time, our description was translated into ten different languages.

Team:Tec-Chihuahua/Collaborations