In September, five of our team members visited iGEM Stockholm in efforts to motivate and inspire new students to apply for the iGEM team Stockholm next year during their recruitment event. Thereafter, iGEM Stockholm and our team presented our projects, and exchanged constructive feedback to further enhance. To this event we also invited a class from Johanna-Geissmar-Gymnasium (high school) from Mannheim, Germany. The most essential advice iGEM Stockholm suggested was moving the linked fluorophores in closer proximity to the proteases in order for the detection system to work correctly. We also asked iGEM Stockholm for their insight on how to restructure our team and recruitment process to further increase the quality of our program.

iGEM goes green is a project with the goal to not just make lab work more green, but also to motivate iGEM participants to think more sustainable in their daily life.
When we heard about the initiative created by TU Dresden, we were immediately interested in the concept and wanted to take part in it. So, with their iGEM goes green guide in mind, we started to make subtle changes in our lab. From implementing reusable inoculating loops to acquiring an electricity meter for measuring our power consumption, we learned that even small things can make a difference. Even when we were not actively searching for these changes, the thought of iGEM goes green was always in the back of our minds.
When TU Dresden reached out to teams and asked them to create a short sequence for a video on iGEM goes green, a couple of our members took it upon themselves to participate, and went to work. The filming of the short clip was a lot of fun, and made us rethink why we wanted to create a more environmentally friendly lab space in the first place.
We want to thank TU Dresden for the great amount of work they poured into creating iGEM goes green, and for trying to bring this amazing cause into the forefront of people's minds. For us, it was a great way to learn how to think more about how we act in and out of the lab, and about what we can do to help our planet in the long run.
We are also very much looking forward to seeing the finished iGEM goes green video at the Giant Jamboree!

Webseminar with Berlin diagnost-x:

Next to our work in synthetic biology, we also set ourselves the challenging task of developing a hydrogel. Since these hydrogels are supposed to be used on wounds, we needed to learn more about wound care and healing. We also focused on researching which effects the hydrogels would generally have. So, we got in touch with the iGEM-Team from Berlin. We believed since most of their team is made up of medical students, they could help us with our questions. On top of this, they are also in contact with some experts at their university.

In our first meeting, we talked about our project and what we are planning to do with our hydrogel. Our detection system for wound infections was also a topic we brought up. In this meeting, we decided to hold a web seminar via Skype so they could help us with our questions. For this, the Berlin team prepared a presentation based on our questions and also consulted a dermatologist for research into the topic.
In the following seminar we learned a lot about different wound types, wound healing and wound care, especially in regards to hydrogels. We learned about applications for hydrogels on burns and diabetes wounds, because their moist setting supports wound healing.
The Berlin iGEM team gave us great information about what we need to consider for the development of a chitosan-hydrogel. We learned which pH-value supports wound healing best and which substances are used to treat burns currently. They also gave us helpful feedback about our ideas and plans.

When iGEM team Bielefeld-CeBiTec asked us to test their software named Labnotes Generator as beta-testers, we decided to give it a try and utilize it for our wiki. They sent us a python script which automates the process of converting a notebook txt file to an HTML file. As the handling is very simple, we were able to finish the work of the notebook wikipage quite fast without any difficulties. Thank you iGEM Bielefeld-CeBiTec, you have done a great job and lightened our workload considerably.

We had the great oppurtinity to test the BioDesigner tool from HFUT China. An impressive online platform to search all iGEM projects of the last year. We strongly hope, that this platform is still available, because it is handy for future iGEM teams to start their research. We gave the following feedback:

First of all, we would appreciate the clear design decisions of your website. Sign up for your service is really easy. Now lets check the interesting part: Search for projects similiar to ours. Enter "Chitosan" into the search mask yields promising results. We see great potential in the search mask. Just a short search yielded results as good as a long Google search. Also lovely, the possibility to have an overview of the total project of other teams, their parts and their final position. This is a realy good tool to get an overview of old projects without the need of reading their Wiki. Unfortunately, a small sample on teams related to chitosan showed many empty fields. Using the feature "Project" and designing custom parts is a little bit buggy . The select'n'drop feature is an awesome idea for sequence design, but the resulting sequence was shown at the top of the window, It is also a bit confusing that some parts have quite good informations in the information box right, but other ones have none or they are not dislayed. In addition it is noch really clear how one can select special parts. This is just a small test of your tool. We see tremendous potential in the searchable database for related projects and we want to encourage the next-year's iGEM TU Darmstadt team to use your database as a possible start of their research.