Team:NIT Warangal/Collaborations
Collaboration with Team MSP Maastricht for MSP Vector Journal
We collaborated with Team MSP Maastricht for their iGEM proceedings journal initiative, 'MSP Vector'. The journal provides an opportunity to get familiar with the process of wiring and publishing our work. This initiative was a significant opportunity for our team to get familiarised with the academic writing process. Our article "Biological Detoxification of Gossypol in Cottonseed Meal" was a review paper based on the research papers published on the degradation of Gossypol. Our article was peer-reviewed by Team Calgary. We also reviewed two articles published by Team RUBochum and Team Calgary.
This collaboration with Team MSP Maastricht allowed us to understand various research articles published on Gossypol and thus summarising them into a review paper. By publishing our work through this journal, we learned to effectively communicate and create awareness about our project and Gossypol present in the cottonseed to the scientific community.
Collaboration with iGEM Warwick on iGEM Collective outreach program
iGEM Warwick came up with the idea of creating a booklet that would contain information about synthetic biology, targeting high school students aged 16-18 years. The booklet aims at enhancing their understanding of biology beyond the high school curriculum. We were enthusiastic about this collaboration as it was an astounding opportunity to raise awareness about the presence of Gossypol in cottonseed meal and Synthetic Biology in general among high school students. We collaborated with Team Warwick by providing an article about Gossypol that is easily understandable to students. An activity, namely a crossword puzzle, was also included in the booklet, which would make it more interactive. We also helped in the better outreach of the collective booklet. Full booklet can be found in the Communication section.
All India iGEM Meet
The All India iGEM Meet was held virtually from July 23-25, 2021. The event was jointly organized by the Indian teams
IISER Pune,
IISER Berhampur,
IISER Tirupati,
MIT MAHE,
IISER Thiruvananthapuram, and
IISER Bhopal.
The three-day event was filled with talks by professors, researchers. The event also consisted of fun-filled activities like quizzes, games, and ice-breaker activities, which helped us get to know each other. The participating iGEM Teams were required to give a presentation about their respective projects. Each of the presentations lasted for 20 minutes. The following 10 minutes were reserved for questions from judges and audiences to the team members.
Our team's presentation consisted of the background information on Cottonseed and Gossypol. The discussion also continued about the nutritional benefits of Cottonseed. The presence of Gossypol in Cottonseed limited its consumption and, thus underutilizing a nutritious food source. These existing problems paved the way for the need for low Gossypol Cottonseed. The presentation was followed by a discussion of our dry-lab work consisting of the in-silico mutagenesis and screening of enzymes. Our team also discussed the collaborations, human practices, and outreach aspects of our project.
After the presentation ended, we answered specific questions posed by the judges and the audience. The questions covered aspects of our project, lab work, and human practices. A piece of advice we received from the judges was to perform a SWOT (Strength, Weakness, Opportunity and Threats) analysis and a cost analysis, which would make our project stand out from the existing de-gossypolisation methods. Overall the event enabled us to analyze our project further and gave us great exposure to other projects. We incorporated the advice received by the judges into our project.
Collaboration with Team IISc Bangalore
IISc Bangalore approached us for a possible collaboration. We agreed upon a mutual review of various aspects of our projects such as human practices, education and public engagement, wiki. IISc Bengaluru reviewed our human practices and wiki work and gave us some suggestions. Team IISc also provides us with insights about the judging session of iGEM. Our team provided a few insights and suggestions over the wiki development. We agreed to mutually support each other in case of any issues faced during the wiki development. As a first-time iGEM team, these inputs from IISc helped us in further improving our project.
Collaboration with Team Alma
We reached out to Team Alma through the mail for a possible collaboration. We had a collaborative meeting virtually. We discussed our respective projects, lab work, and human practices. Our teams presented the project through a PowerPoint presentation. After the presentations, we discussed our projects. We noted down Team Alma's opinions on our project. Since both of our projects dealt with environment and nutrition, we discussed the importance of human practices and outreach. We have tried to incorporate the inputs given by Team Alma into our project.
Collaboration with Team IISER Thiruvananthapuram
Team IISER Thiruvananthapuram reached out to us for a possible collaboration. We had a virtual interaction and discussed our projects through a PowerPoint presentation. Being first-time iGEM teams, we both decided to collaborate and support each other in the iGEM journey. Our team gave suggestions on using the molecular docking servers and wiki development to Team IISER Thiruvananthapuram. Team IISER Thiruvananthapuram expressed a positive opinion on our project.
Collaboration with Team IISER Mohali
We did a collaboration with IISER Mohali iGEM team in the month of October. This collaboration helped us in improving the entrepreneurship aspects of our project. We sent them our detailed market research manuscript and discussed the business plan and the marketing strategy for proposed product launching for real customers. With these data and inputs, they did market analysis for our product and gave us the detailed business model and explained the point over the video call. We discussed our iGEM projects and suggested possible pitfalls in each other's projects. This informative conversation between our teams helped us build our project in a better way. Their suggested business analysis for our project is provided on our Entrepreneurship page in its original version.
Collaboration with MIT MAHE
Team MIT MAHE approached us to review their website. The website automated the process of generating the CAD model of a basic CSTR (continuous stirred tank reactor). We used the tool to make a basic model of a CSTR. Subsequently, we have filled the feedback form. In our experience, the tool was efficient and easy to use.
Outreach to past iGEM Teams
As a first-time iGEM team, we reached out to teams who participated in previous editions of iGEM to get insights into the iGEM cycle. A summary of our discussions with few teams are listed below.
Team BITSPilani_Goa
We reached out to Team Team BITSPilani_Goa to understand the iGEM cycle from their past iGEM experience. Team BITSPilani_Goa made us familiar with all the aspects of iGEM like collaboration, human practices, funding, etc. All the facets such as judging, wiki, track selection, and brainstorming ideas were also briefly discussed. This interaction helped us tremendously to kick off our iGEM journey. Team BITSPilani_Goa shared their crowdfunding experience, which aided us during the crowdfunding process we initiated through the platform Ketto.
Team IISER Pune India
We reached out to Team IISER Pune India at the initial stages of our iGEM journey. IISER Pune helped us get familiarized with the wiki development process. Aspects such as design, content, attributions, deadlines, and the importance of wiki were discussed. Inputs we received from IISER Pune turned out to be very crucial during our wiki development.
Survey
Genetic Engineering Survey by TU_Kaiserslautern
TU_Kaiserslautern conducted a survey about the awareness of genetic engineering and how it affects our lives. Their survey was well laid out covering various aspects of genetic engineering. We contributed by helping in the outreach of the survey. Each member of our team filled out the form and gave our views.
Hardware Repository Survey by SUNY Oneonta
SUNY Oneonta was working to make a hardware database for non-biological parts. In the last competition, they found a need for a database for hardware parts/devices. So, they conducted a survey to gauge how useful a repository like this would be to other teams. We contributed/collaborated by filling out the survey.