Team:Sydney Australia/Medals

Our project had to be adapted and run virtually due to the impact of COVID-19 outbreaks in Sydney from July to October, which prevented us from accessing our laboratory to conduct recombineering and bacterial transformation experiments to gather data and validate our design. Our team was inspired by the unique research challenge the pandemic posed and we have been able to accomplish many achievements and develop contributions for future iGEM teams. Click on the tabs below to see how our work meets the bronze, silver and gold medal criteria!

Bronze Silver Gold

Criteria	Pages that Contribute	How
Competition Deliverables	Judging Form	We have published our wiki, submitted our presentation video and completed the judging form.
Attributions	Attributions	We have described what work our team has done and how other people have helped us.
Project Description	Project	We have described the project, its inspiration, it's application in synthetic biology, and the part it could play in making the world a better place.
Contribution	Contribution Outreach and Engagement Free Coli Cloning Simulator	We have added 56 new basic parts and eight composite parts as part of our Natural Transformation Parts Collection. We have modelled the proteins for twenty-five natural transformation genes. We have developed our open-source Free Coli Cloning Simulator - a virtual lab simulator.

Criteria	Pages that Contribute	How
Engineering Success	Engineering Success	Due to Sydney’s COVID-19 lockdown, we were unable to enter into the lab and complete any lab work. However, with so many components to our project, we can confidently show how we would have employed the engineering design cycle to validate our design. We developed our novel recombineering strategy for multiple gene cluster insertions - ‘Babushka Blocks’ - to allow for insertion and selection of multiple sequential or non-sequential gene clusters without building up antibiotic resistances. This was developed after numerous iterations of the design cycles. We also designed a novel inducible salicylate promoter system that has tighter repression and has modifiable expression levels. We described a putative lab protocol that incorporates fuGFP to assay promoter expression levels, as well as troubleshoot any problems that might have arisen.
Collaboration	Collaboration	We collaborated with the US Stony Brook iGEM team through bi-weekly zoom meetings to troubleshoot project issues, provide insightful solutions and brainstorm as well as hosting journal clubs both within and outside our respective projects fields. We collaborated with UNSW Sydney by attending their Biodiversity Symposium on environmental protection and application of synthetic biology in solving global climate issues. We held regular informal conversations with UNSW Sydney to share our experiences conducting a research project during Sydney’s COVID-19 lockdown and to troubleshoot issues developing our respective wikis. We collaborated with a multitude of teams including TAS_Taipei by participating in the iGEM x SDG Challenge 2021. We completed tasks for other teams to advance their human practices work in SDG and other teams completed our survey to inform our human practices research and our educational content.
Human Practices	Human Practices	We have consulted with experts on antibiotic resistance to understand our project’s implementation in the context of the antibiotic resistance problem. We conducted a survey on attitudes about synthetic biology and accessibility and how these were influenced by education levels to understand community perceptions of safety and accessibility. We researched the UN Sustainable Development Goals to align our project and research questions to target the goals.
Proposed Implementation	Proposed Implementation	We have drafted a proposed Free Coli Cloning Protocol for in-lab use of our design for bacterial transformations. We have conducted a cost comparison of this protocol with traditional methods including chemical treatment and electroporation for competence. We have consulted with experts on antibiotic resistance to implement safety features into our design to mitigate potential safety concerns. We have submitted our Safety Forms featuring risk identification and management strategies for the wet lab experimentation and validation of our design (which we were unable to carry out due to the impact of COVID-19).

Criteria	Pages that Contribute	How
Integrated Human Practices	Human Practices	We have consulted with experts on antibiotic resistance to implement safety features into our design to mitigate the potential risk of a naturally transformable strain of E. coli contributing to the antibiotic resistance problem. We conducted a survey on attitudes about synthetic biology and accessibility and how these were influenced by education levels and used these results to inform our educational materials. We researched the UN Sustainable Development Goals to align our project and research questions to target the goals. Our project inspiration, design, proposed implementation and educational materials have been targeted to advancing these goals.
Project Modelling	Modelling Contribution	We used K-means clustering to model the optimal clustering of natural transformation genes to inform our design, experimental strategy, and contribute to future teams. We modelled the structure of twenty-three gram negative bacteria natural transformation gene proteins.
Education and Communcation	Outreach and Engagement	We aligned our project to the NSW Stage 6 Preliminary and HSC Biology curriculum and developed an educational resource to teach students curriculum content by demonstrating concepts’ real-life application in synthetic biology research. We developed a Primary School Educational Resource to teach younger students the foundational concepts that underpin synthetic biology.
Excellence in Another Area	E. coli EP	We wrote and recorded four songs parodying classic rock hits to teach the foundational concepts that underpin synthetic biology and our project to make education and learning accessible to people who prefer to learn through music.