Team:Brno Czech Republic/Achievements
We won the gold medal!
During our iGEM journey, we have learned and achieved many things. We became better at every aspect of science - research, design of experiments, lab management, wet lab work, presentation of our results and science popularization. We also learned how to work as a part of a scientific team composed of people from very different areas of expertise. And last but not least, we became a part of a great community of people interested in synthetic biology.
For us, iGEM was not only a competition, but a lifestyle - for a year, we put aside some of our other hobbies and sacrificed every minute of our free time for a common goal. And we are glad we could do it. When we look back at everything we have accomplished, we are enormously proud. Our team has grown in size too, 11 new motivated students joined our journey to iGEM 2021. Together with more than 20 supporters, we pursued our vision to make the world a better place with a complex design of a water cleaning system, a broad collection of science-popularization content and offering our insight into the legal system applicable to science and biotechnology.
On this page, we list everything we accomplished not only to win the iGEM Medals, but also to fulfill our ambitions, wishes and dreams.
MEDAL CRITERIA
Gold
1. After consulting our ideas with experts, stakeholders and the general public, we made sure to implement their recommendations and reflections into the design of PHOSCAGE in a meaningful way. For more information, visit our Human Practices page.
3. Since one of the goals of iGEM is to design synthetic constructs with unique DNA sequences, we wanted to be able to understand the properties of the encoded proteins in greater detail and therefore, we created a 3D visualisation of BMCs with the help of AlphaFold. Find out more on the page dedicated to Modeling.
6. We created a broad collection of science-popularization and educational content covering topics related to synthetic biology, science and technology. We aim our educational efforts at a wide age spectrum. We have created materials for young children, teens and adults. The highlight of our educational activities is the public lecture “GMO under the magnifying glass”, as well as the online courses with corresponding quizzes to each topic. Our main goal is to inspire young people to get engaged in science and to have an open dialogue with the public. We feel it's important that people have the opportunity to ask the scientific community questions and that they receive answers they can understand. We invite you to read more about our work in this field on the Education page of our Wiki.
7. Having gained valuable experience from the establishment of our NPO last year, we decided to examine the GMO legislation in the European Union more extensively. To demonstrate Excellence in another area, we provide an overview of the current legislation and offer an outlook for future perspectives of synthetic biology in the EU.
Silver
1. We made sure to follow the engineering design cycle throughout our project. We have managed to transform three of our constructs into both E. coli and B. subtilis. We have also tested their functionality using a combination of methods and while not everything worked as we predicted, we have a lot of data to suggest what needs to improve. We invite you to read the Engineering success page to find out more about our accomplishments in the wet lab and the dry lab.
2. One of our goals was to actively participate in the iGEM community and we managed to do so by attending meetups to discuss our projects where we gave and received feedback from others, as well as by mentoring other iGEM teams. You can also find out more about our Collaboration efforts at the dedicated page.
3. In order to make sure that our project is responsible and helpful to the world around us, we asked for the opinion of the general public and consulted our ideas with experts. Visit the Human Practices page to find out who we have talked to and what we have learned from them.
4. From the very beginning of our iGEM journey, we planned for PHOSCAGE to be a real product, useful in real life. Find out more on the Future Implementation page.
Bronze
1. We have completed all Competition deliverables. You are presently viewing our Wiki. You can find the basics about our project in the Project promotion video and for more detailed information in our Presentation video.
2. We summarized the work of all team members and all our supporters in Attributions. We are very thankful to everyone who helped us on our journey!
3. You can find out more about the reasons which led us to work on PHOSCAGE in the Project description.
4. As a Contribution to the iGEM community, we also made a Handbook which aims to provide the basics of synthetic biology all in one place.
Igem Team Brno, Czech Republic 2021