Team:Lambert GA/Excellence

• TEAM
  • TEAM MEMBERS
  • ATTRIBUTIONS
• PROJECT
  • DESCRIPTION
  • DESIGN
  • CONTRIBUTION
  • PROPOSED IMPLEMENTATION
  • ENGINEERING SUCCESS
  • PROOF OF CONCEPT
  • EXCELLENCE IN ANOTHER AREA
  • SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
  • PARTNERSHIP
• WETLAB
  • PARTS LIBRARY
  • PARTS DESCRIPTION
  • PART COLLECTION
  • PHO
  • NAR
  • PPB
  • EXPERIMENTS
  • NOTEBOOK
  • RESULTS
• DRYLAB
  • HARDWARE
  • MEASUREMENT
  • MODEL
• HUMAN PRACTICES
  • INTEGRATED HUMAN PRACTICES
  • EDUCATION
  • SCIENCE COMMUNICATION
  • COLLABORATIONS
  • SAFETY
• JUDGING FORM
• POSTER

EXCELLENCE IN ANOTHER AREA

OVERVIEW

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic restricted nearly all aspects of daily life. Most notably, travel restrictions prevented iGEM teams from not only attending Giant Jamboree but also partaking in local meetups and collaborations. Despite being a team of 28, only 4 members from our team have been able to experience the magic of Jamboree, a reward worth undergoing the stress of early morning meetings, wiki freeze, and a multitude of failed experiments. Lambert iGEM was just one of the hundreds of teams across the globe that faced this reality. which was directly reflected in the decreased number of competing teams since March 2020.

We believe that iGEM is not only a competition but also an opportunity to excite our passions for synthetic biology and build extensive relationships with young scientists across the globe that, despite coming from vastly different countries, cultures, and life experiences, are united under their drive to better the world through genetic engineering research.

INSPIRATION

In an attempt to foster collaborations and partnerships with other teams, our lyophilizer committee reached out to Florida State University (FSU) iGEM back in August. After a long hiatus from interactions with other teams, they welcomed a potential partnership and scheduled a virtual meeting to learn more about AgroSENSE. After an exciting first impression, FSU introduced us to a range of iGEM teams from across the United States, allowing us to connect the iGEM teams of Johns Hopkins University (JHU), University of Pennsylvania (UPenn), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and University of Florida.

EXTENSION

During our weekly collaboration meetings, Lambert iGEM encouraged the creative idea of developing a Minecraft server to build visual representations of each team’s project. This casual yet enjoyable server allowed everyone to develop not only a deeper understanding of each team’s project but also a sense of community, fulfilling iGEM’s core mission of promoting a connected worldwide synthetic biology family.

FSU built a model of DNA, an integral part of their project: developing a chitinous wrap and spray to increase the shelf-life of food (Figure 1), while JHU built a scaled model of their entire university (Figures 2 and 3). This inspired our team to virtually replicate our high school (Figure 4), laboratory (Figure 5 and 6), and other aspects of our project. For example, we created blueprints of a lyophilizer, plate reader and well plate to illustrate the importance of quantification in AgroSENSE (Figures 7-9).

Figure 1. Minecraft representation of University of Florida’s project.

Figure 2: Sky-view of Johns Hopkins University.

Figure 3. Front view of Johns Hopkins University.

Figure 4. Front view of Lambert High School.

Figure 5. Lambert iGEM lab representation.

Figure 6. Lambert iGEM lab representation.

Figure 7. Well-Plate representation.

Figure 8. Plate-reader representation.

Figure 9. Lyophilizer representation.

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CONCLUSION

Despite being subjected to the restrictions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, our drive to promote unity amongst iGEM’ers through Minecraft has established a sense of community between all teams involved, preserving the overarching idea that iGEM is a place to interact with young researchers who utilize their talents to solve local and global problems. And it was fun!