Team:IOANNINA/Human Practices
Human Practices
Presentation at the American Farm School of Thessaloniki (11/10/2021)
Keeping in mind the importance of science communication in schools, we decided to organize a presentation addressed to students of the General and Vocational High School of the American Farm School (AFS). AFS is an independent, nonprofit educational institution located in Thessaloniki, Greece that aims to educate people of all ages about agriculture and the life sciences.
Our presentation included a brief introduction of the iGEM Foundation and Synthetic Biology as well as our project description. We also touched on the subject of Antimicrobial Resistance and how we believe that One Health is the best approach to this problem.
We hope that we have motivated them to further explore the fascinating world of Synthetic biology, especially its agriculture applications, and maybe even inspired them to study relevant sciences in the future.
Lecture about Chemical Synthetic Biology - 31/05/2021
In response to our need to spread the knowledge about Synthetic Biology in more disciplines (except from Biology), we organized a lecture to freshmen of the Chemistry Department of our University. We would like to thank Dr. Lefkothea – Vasiliki Andreou for her collaboration, as she let us make a presentation to her students in the context of an English for Academic/Scientific Purposes (EAP/EScP) course. The presentation was conducted virtually (because of the restrictions due to the COVID pandemic) and in English, so the students could familiarize with scientific terms and academic language.
The presentation included a brief introduction of our team and the iGEM Competition. Some basic knowledge about Synthetic Biology followed and then we tried to link Chemistry and Synthetic Biology by presenting examples of Chemical Synthetic Biology applications. Later, we raised students’ awareness about the extremely serious problem of Antibiotic resistance (AMR) and associated One Health approach and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) with this problem. Finally, we revealed our project, which aims to fight AMR. The students took part in this lecture by asking and answering questions. In the end, we found out that some of them would be happy to join iGEM team IOANNINA 2022, hopefully our university’s next team!
IVSA Thessaly
One of our main goals as a team was to raise awareness about Antimicrobial Resistance, One Health, and the relationship between them. We tried to achieve this goal by approaching the case from many different aspects and addressing our activities to different target groups.
In this context, our team got in touch with IVSA Thessaly, which is part of IVSA Greece and IVSA Global. IVSA (which stands for International Veterinary Students’ Association) is a group of active veterinary students, willing to do their best to benefit the animals and people through their profession and activity.
Discussing with them we decided to organize an online webinar with main pillars those of One Health and AMR. More specifically, we invited two professors from our universities to talk about the effects of the usage of antibiotics on animal health and the environment. Before the webinar, we also had a common presence on social media, uploading relative informative material.
The webinar was held on the 23th of April 2020 with main speakers Mr. George Valiakos, from the Veterinary Department of University of Thessaly and Mrs Ira Karagianni, from the Department of Biological Applications and Technology of University of Ioannina. Almost 180 people attended the webinar, on live streaming on YouTube.
We accomplished an online event, open to everyone, in which science was communicated in a way that non-specialised audience would find interesting on the topics of AMR and One Health - two very important topics, regarding the effect they have on the achievement of SDGs too - were explained.
The whole seminar organization was very constructive for us and made us realize the part of the antibiotic usage in productive animals even better as well as how antibiotic consumption affects the microflora. Plus, collaborating with a team with such different activity expanded our horizons in the field of One Health.
Presentation at HelMSIC’s conference- Project reveal
In February 2021, we were invited by HelMSIC to participate in their conference called “Medicine and research”. HelMSIC is an independent organization, non-profitable, non-governmental, and non-partisan, founded in 1958 by medical students. It consists of 7 local committees, one in each Medical School of Greece. We were invited by the committee of Ioannina to take part in the local event, as a research team. The conference aimed to gather research groups from Ioannina and give them the chance to present their work and goals.
The event took place on Saturday the 20th of March. As we had finished our project’s design, this conference gave us the chance to reveal our project. Kyrania Christofi, the head of the wet lab of our team, gave a exciting presentation on Synthetic Biology, the iGEM competition and the principles and the design of our project. The audience strongly interacted, asking questions about our project as well as about Synthetic biology and its perspectives.
"Mare nostrum" iGEM Meet-Up
On October 9 and 10, we were invited by iGEM Patra to participate in their online Meet-up, called "Mare nostrum" iGEM Meet-Up. The first day of the meeting included some talks of distinguished scientists, such as Professors, Postdocs and PhD candidates from Greece and Europe, and former iGEM participants, who are now mentors, coordinators and judging committee members. The second day hosted the project and team presentation of each Participant Team's project.
So, we had the chance to make a complete presentation of our project and get feedback from Dimitrios Michailidis, a judging committee member and Veteran Judge Award winner at iGEM 2020 Competition. He indicated some key-points in our project that must be well-presented in the judges in order to fully understand the significance of our proposal regarding fighting AMR. This Meet-Up was a good chance to rehearse our presentation and test ourselves in answering questions about our project. Thank you iGEM Patra!!
TEDx MavilliSquare 2021
In September 2021, we were invited by TEDx MavilliSquare to organize a virtual workshop in order to spread the knowledge about the Synthetic Biology and to highlight its importance and communicate this to the general public. TED is a non-profit organization dedicated to the moto "the ideas that are worth spreading", where TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED experience.
TEDxMavilliSquare is a project that took its name from the famous Mavili square, a trademark of the city of Ioannina and has undertaken to spread unique ideas, focusing on the "city of the Silversmiths"! It's content covers a broad spectrum of topics from academia and science to art, social work, sports, etc.
In our workshop with the title: ''Syn-thesizing a project: Simple steps to a synthetic biology strategy'', the goal was to familiarize the attendees with all the stages needed to structure a synthetic biology project and to highlight the crucial role of synthetic biology in solving real-world issues. Initially, we introduced our team and the iGEM competition and we presented the concept of Synthetic Biology. Then, we gave them a supposed problem-scenario and motivated them to solve it. We indicated them some key elements, about what process they should follow to design a synthetic biology project, in order to address the specific problem we posed to them.
Through the discussion with the participants we came up together with a solution that could exist for each stage of the project and we basically structured the project with the participation of the audience.
We were excited with the outcome of this activity! The engagement rate of the audience was very high and the participants were asking many questions about Synthetic biology, even after the end of the workshop. Finally, we had the sense that we achieved to communicate the field of synthetic biology through a practical example, in a way that everyone could relate to. It was an amazing and fruitfull experience and we are glad that we got involved in it.
Presenting the idea to our PI, Prof. Michaelidis Theologos
After our initial brainstorming and our decision to work with the deactivation of antibiotics, fighting against AMR, we presented our idea to Prof. Michaelidis. His field of expertise, Molecular Genetics, rendered him more than appropriate for consultation.
He found our idea very interesting and tried to understand it better. In the meetings that followed the first one, he kept asking the right questions, forcing us to look deeper and deeper in the problem. He made clear to us that we must fully understand how something works in order to propose a well-rounded solution. So, he asked us to prepare presentations for him about how some antibiotics work and how we can deactivate them. We spent many hours looking in the literature for any useful information. After these presentations, we were more ready to answer his questions and start building up our project.
These meetings throughout the whole year helped us focus on our goal. Prof. Michaelidis was constantly advising us and he was willing to help with any problem that we faced. His contribution has shaped our project more than anyone else’s has.
National Organization for Medicines
After the urge of our Professor Mrs. Antoniou, we emailed the National Organization for Medicines, the public authority that collects all the data that has to do with Medicines in Greece.
We had excellent communication with Dr. Farlopoulos Spyridon, a member of the Veterinary Medicines Assessment Section of the Organization. Dr. Farlopoulos provided us with detailed information about the antibiotics that have been used in stock raising during 2019.
This information completed the data we needed to finish our experiment’s design.
Scientific Congress of Hellenic Medical Students
On April 16 we participated in the 27th Scientific Congress of Hellenic Medical Students, which was an online event and it helps young scientist to keep up with new scientific developments in their fielad of interest. iGEM Athens 2021, iGEM Thessaloniki 2021, iGEM Thessaly 2021, iGEM Crete 2021 and our team collaborated under the supervision of Dr. Lefkothea-Vasiliki Andreou and presented different aspects of Synthetic Biology. We all wanted to present the advancement of Synthetic Biology, since we are part of the iGEM community.
The general subject was about the connection between One Health and Synthetic Biology. Our talk, specifically, given by Papathanasiou Athanasios, was about modelling tools, which are useful in Synthetic Biology. We hope that we have inspired our audience to further explore the field of Synthetic Biology and understand how useful it is in different aspects of science!
Virtual meeting with the manager of Fertilizer Factory and Rendering Plant (Animal Byproduct Plant) of Pindos, Konstantinos Tzamichas - 31/03/2021
One of our main goals was the proposal for an appropriate system, in which our engineered microorganism would act safely. Since biosafety is a crucial aspect, we thought that we should promote a system that will process a source of antibiotics (i.e., poultry wastes) and will not let our modified organism freely spread to the environment. The proposed idea was the release of it into a closed bioreactor.
Since we were not familiar with the process of poultry waste management, we decided to contact the manager of this kind of plant from a large, local industry, Pindos. Mr. Konstantinos Tzamichas happily introduced us to the interesting world of fertilizer production.
Mr. Tzamichas explained to us the entire process of poultry waste treatment, i.e., composting. He also talked to us about the facilities that are used, as well as the characteristics of the final product (i.e., fertilizer). We asked him about the quantity of the manure that this farm produces yearly (10.000 - 12.000 tons of manure every year), to have a better view of the size of the bioreactor that is needed. Finally, he gave us an insight into a problem behind this procedure, which is the high moisture.
Based on the information we gathered from this meeting, we tried to set up a proposed system for the implementation of our project. Mr. Tzamichas found our idea of spraying our engineered microorganism in the poultry waste during composting feasible and further proposed to combine its property to inactivate antibiotics with a second action for the optimization of the final product.
Our next step after this meeting was to discuss the added information and ideas in order to end up with a well-rounded solution to propose.
Meeting with Mrs. Antoniou- Pharmacology professor
In the initial stages of our project’s design, we were deeply troubled about the classes of antibiotics our system should target. Our aim was to target one or two classes that are widely used, in both livestock and humans. In this way, our system could be implemented in many different types of waste management units. Plus, high usage predisposes a higher chance for bacteria to develop resistance against them. Thus, targeting them, resistance could be avoided.
Our first step was to make bibliographic research on the rates of usage of each class of antibiotics. As the data differ a lot from county to country, we focused on what happens at the European level and –of course- in Greece, our own country. Having gathered some information, our next step was to contact someone that has knowledge and experience in the field of pharmacology. We chose to get in touch with Mrs. Aikaterini Antoniou, a professor of pharmacology in the Department of Medicine in our University, who held an administrative position at the National Organization of Drugs for the past few years.
On the first days of February 2021, members of our team had a discussion with Mrs. Antoniou and her colleagues. We gave them the outline of our project and shared with them our thoughts on the selection of the antibiotics to be targeted. They gave us particularly useful information about antibiotics’ usage in Greece. Plus, they suggested some local and national public authorities we could contact.
After our meeting, we were in a better position to plan our experiment. We set as a priority contacting contacting some of the suggested authorities so that we could collect the last data needed to finish the design of our project. The most important next step was the choice of the antibiotics we would target.
Public image
In order to communicate the principles of Synthetic Biology and those of the iGEM competition to the local community, we presented our team and our project in Epirus ∙tv1 channel (9th July) and the local radio (22nd July). We shared with the audience our thoughts about Antibiotic Resistance (AMR) problem and the connection between One Health and Sustainable Developments Goals concerning the AMR problem. Our team members, Afordakos Konstantinos, Alexiou Foteini and Chrystofi Kyrania described our team’s composition and the kind of support that we have from our professors and other expert scientists.
Furthermore, they presented the basic principles of Synthetic Biology, in order to spread this knowledge to a broad audience", and they highlighted its importance in everyday matters.
Taking part in a “Save your Hood” action - Sensitizing local community about AMR
Our public engagement activities included our participation in a “Save you Hood” action. Save your Hood Ioannina is a local, volunteer organisation, which consists of local community members of all ages, who voluntarily clean some neighborhoods of Ioannina. More specifically, this team gathers every week in a different place and collects the litter, contributing to the cleanliness of the most beautiful and most visited sites of their city.
Save your Hood Ioannina belongs to a wider group, Save your Hood Greece. This initiative started during the first quarantine in Athens and spread to many cities all over Greece. Now, almost every city has its own Save your Hood voluntary team.
We wanted to support our local team, so we joined them in three cleaning actions (17/04/2021, 06/06/2021 and 10/10/2021). In the last one, we also gave a presentation to them before the action, in order to link environmental volunteering with an environmental problem that directly affects our city.
Specifically, we would like to inform the public about AMR and its effects in Pamvotida Lake. The lake is our main attraction and a very common place for a walk among the residents. We started our presentation by making a brief presentation of our team and our project, introducing some basic principles of Synthetic Biology. Then, we felt necessary to explain the One Health approach and point out the significance of the excessive presence of antibiotics in the environment. This form of education was completed with a discussion of the causes and the consequences of AMR for Lake Pamvotida. Finally, we played an interactive card game to make our presentation more interesting for the participants. The game was pretty simple. Every participant had a card with a phrase on it regarding the cycle of antibiotics. The participants should get in the right row in order to represent the cycle. This game was a good chance to check participants' level of understanding.
We were thrilled by the outcome of this activity. People interacted with us, asking questions and wondering about what we can do to fix this problem. The whole presentation transformed into a public discussion. We felt that we managed to educate the volunteers about a problem that they were not aware of but influences their beloved city. At the end of the day, they confessed that they had learned a lot and they wanted to learn even more about it. They kept asking about more information and ways to contribute to the limitation of AMR. It was a unique experience and we loved that we were part of it.
Space Synthetic Biology Article
In our attempt to explore all the possible aspects of Synthetic Biology’s applications and at the same time communicate our science, we decided to produce popular science, i.e., interpretation of science intended for a general audience. So, we wrote an article about Space Synthetic Biology in our native language (Greek) and we shared it with the public via a science blog called ScienceView.
This article includes a brief reference of some characteristics of the space that make space exploration challenging for humankind. Because of our lack of knowledge in this specific field, we asked for the help of a Theoretical Physicist, George Antoniou (PhD candidate), who comes from our city, Ioannina, and got his bachelor’s degree from our university. George has a profound interest in science communication and wishes to share his knowledge about the space. Also, he has recently started his own YouTube channel, Gravitevo. His contribution to the completion of this attempt was valuable, as he not only shared his knowledge with us, but he also edited our article and worked with us about some Instagram quiz – stories, whose aim was to puzzle the public and evoke their curiosity about Space Synthetic Biology issues.
Some Space Synthetic Biology’s applications were also mentioned, in order to inform about the possibilities that this discipline offers. Special reference was given to microbes and their potential through genetical engineering. Finally, two specific projects regarding research about space were presented. The first one is referring to an experiment about the effect of different gravity in the growth of three kinds of microorganisms, while the second one is the work presented by iGEM team Stanford-Brown-RISD 2018 about transportation of material through space and their proposal to be explored the fungal mycelium.
This collaboration between IOANNINA team and George Antoniou resulted in a popular science’s article about Space Synthetic Biology, some intriguing Instagram quizzes from both sides and a more well-rounded audience regarding Synthetic Biology’s applications.
Virtual meeting with Prof. Haralambos Stamatis and Assistant Prof. Katapodis Petros – 11/02/2021
When we started thinking of the implementation of our project, own of our main concerns was the release of genetically engineered organism in the environment and the biosafety risk that comes with it. In order to overcome this obstacle in a safe and feasible manner we had a meeting with two of our Professors, who are experts in biochemical engineering.
During the meeting, we explained our project and our ideas about using a bioreactor for our engineered microorganism to Prof. Stamatis and Assistant Prof. Katapodis. They pointed out to us some parameters that we had to take into consideration, such as whether the organism will be growing in the bioreactor and if yes, which will be its carbon sources or how much manure an average farm produces daily. Finally, they recommended that we examine the case of a cylindrical bioreactor with rotation or a stirring bioreactor room.
This meeting gave us the chance to think more carefully about the proper implementation of our project. We realized that we were unaware of more specific details about the process of manure management. So, if we wanted to propose a solid plan for the use of our engineered microorganism, we should consult an expert in the field of manure waste management.
After this meeting, we decided to get in contact with a major poultry farm in the local area, Pindos, which owns a fertilizer factory, where the produced manure is processed. In this way, we would learn more about this process and we would understand in which stage of it our microorganism should be used.
Meeting with Professors from University of Thessaly, Department of Biochemistry and Biotechnology (24/01/2021)
At an important point of our project’s design, we had the chance to discuss with two very experienced scientists: Sotirios Vasileiadis and Dimitrios Karpouzas. They are professors at the University of Thessaly, at the Department of Biochemistry and Biotechnology and they have a lot of experience in their field of expertise, Microbial Molecular-Ecology/ Genomics and Environmental Microbiology & Biotechnology respectively.
Prof. Vasileiadis and Prof. Karpouzas had advised other iGEM teams in the past and were aware of the competition’s principles. Thus, their help was of great importance to us. We presented our idea, and they asked us several crucial questions. First, they pointed out that we must surely decide which antibiotics we will target. They gave us a view of some widely used antibiotics in livestock and their significance. Secondly, they made clear that the implementation of the project should not be near the chicken farm, in order to avoid horizontal transmission. Thirdly, they proposed an alternative idea, based on synthetic microbial ecology. More specifically, they suggested that we use microbial consortia instead of one microorganism, in order to achieve high stability and durability.
The advice we received made us think about different aspects of our project, which we hadn’t thought about until then. Plus, they provided us with very helpful bibliographical references. They contributed hugely to our project, as they enlightened us about its implementation and a whole new direction (microbial consortia). However, after consideration, we decided that we needed much more time in order to work on something so complex as this and we stuck with our initial plan.