iGEM Phototrophs - Bielefeld Partnership
This partnership between the Marburg and Bielefeld-CeBiTec teams sowed the seeds for a wider iGEM-Phototrophs community, we promoted high engagement between teams that collaborated in organizing our meetups and in writing the Handbook.
Introduction
Phototrophic organisms seem to provoke a great deal of interest in synthetic biologists. Their ability to convert light into chemical energy makes them attractive for a diverse set of metabolic applications, many of them intended to address current issues affecting the developing world. Furthermore, as carbon in the atmosphere becomes an increasingly urgent problem, their potential to fixate it has catched the attention of many.
In spite of their potential, iGEM teams still face major challenges when engineering them. But why? One possible answer is the lack of enough well-characterized tools. And even when the tools are available, many teams do not have access to the expertise from PIs who are experienced in working with phototrophic organisms, and - more specifically - with synthetic biology in those organisms.
The slower growth and complexity of phototrophs might be another issue discouraging teams. This might not be a problem for teams working with other model organisms, but the already challenging time constrainments of an iGEM season further aggravate the position of teams working with plants or cyanobacteria. They can only achieve a limited number of DBTL cycles before wiki-freeze. Considering that those working in academia do not have to present results within such a short timeframe, there is a general absence of protocols and resources laying out more rapid workflows.
During our meetings and coffee breaks we often discussed other iGEM projects that worked with phototrophs in the past, and the topic of the lack of a tighter phototrophs-community was a recurring topic. We believe that many of the hurdles mentioned above could be solved if teams had contact with specialists developing synthetic biology applications in phototrophs and if they could cooperate with other teams who have similar interests. Together, this community can achieve what individual teams could only dream of.
With the intent of bringing iGEMers together and providing an opportunity for this necessary knowledge to be disseminated, we teamed up with the iGEM team from Bielefeld (Germany) reach out to other teams and invite them to our Slack workspace, where we organized the meet-ups and coordinated the creation of our Phototroph Handbook. Starting on the 4th of May, we scheduled weekly meetings, with extra attention in organising the sessions at a time where teams from different timezones could join at humane times.
Online Meet-ups
In our effort to broaden the Phototrophs-community, we went the extra mile to find out what the needs of our fellow teams working with phototrophs are. In our Slack workspace, we promoted a survey to assess areas where they felt the most critical difficulties were, and on what topics they wanted to have covered in the meet-ups. Our results indicated that the following topics needed to be addressed:
- Measurement
- Standardization of cultivation
- Cloning Methods
- Part standardization
With that in mind, the Marburg and Bielefeld teams turned their attention to finding experts in each one of these fields. The initial idea of promoting a single event covering these topics was quickly expanded to dividing them into 4 meet-ups. This way, we could focus on the individual topics and have an event where teams have enough time to openly discuss their individual issues with the special guests and with each other. Having the participation of renown experts added significant value to our events, helping to increase the number of teams joining. Moreover, we could introduce them to teams, who on several occasions kept in contact with them to further discuss specific points of their projects and to share lab protocols. Their presence made our troubleshooting sessions overall a lot more productive, and we are very thankful for the time they dedicated to answering our numerous questions ( list of speakers and special guests ).
The Phototroph Handbook
The biggest outcome of this partnership - the Phototroph Handbook - was profoundly shaped by our interactions with Bielefeld and with 9 other teams; In order to pass on what we learned during this season and to address the hurdles of starting out an iGEM project with phototrophs, we agreed to collaboratively write a “Phototroph manual” covering topics like “Acquiring Organisms”, “Transformation Protocols” and “Cloning Methods”.
We were positively surprised by the number of teams who joined our effort. The Chapters were distributed among teams according to their expertises, and in the end we had created a 161 page long book with everything a team might need to start engineering phototrophic organisms!
This is, however, not the final version of the Phototroph Handbook. New methods and protocols are going to be created and new model organisms established. Science moves forward! Therefore we also turned it into a “living document, and we invite future iGEM teams to continue working on it, improving it and promoting phototrophs genetic engineering.
Conclusion
Coming together as a community has tremendous benefits. The information we gathered from fellow iGEMers allowed us to determine what the main knowledge-gaps are, and to fill them in with input from experienced researchers. The most explicit example of this teamwork is the creation of the iGEM-Phototrophs Handbook. We do not believe it would have been possible to get so many teams behind this project if we had not first brought everyone together and created a sense of community. The Handbook is evidence that we struck a chord with the Phototrophs-community, and that we can accomplish great things by working together.
As a symbol of our appreciation for the hard work all teams put into this project, we created badges for their wikis:
We would like to thank the Bielefeld team for working so tirelessly with us to make all of this possible, and for coming to visit us in Marburg in order to work on the Handbook.