Team:Thessaloniki/Collaborations

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Collaborations


The following collaborations are presented in chronological order.





27th SCHMS


| Collaboration Type: Conferences and Presentations


On the 28th of December, we had the immense pleasure to start a collaboration with four of our fellow greek iGEM Teams (Athens, Crete, Thessaly and Ioannina) in order to prepare a round table debate concerning the One Health initiative. The debate took place in the 27th Scientific Congress of Hellenic Medical Students on 16th of April and we referred to both the iGEM Competition as well as the ways the iGEM teams cope with One Health to tackle global issues such as Antimicrobial Resistance. The debate at the end of each presentation was truly insightful and we exchanged opinions as well as provided our fellow team iGEM Ioannina, with more ideas concerning their own project, which deals with One Health.

|Starting Date: 28-12-2020
|Ending Date: 16-04-2021



Learn More:

Communication




Project Presentation and Troubleshooting


| Collaboration Type: Conferences and Presentations



On 28th of March our team met with iGEM Crete to present our projects and discuss a possible collaboration regarding the FR sector. In our conversation we were privileged enough to go through our entire project ideas and do some troubleshooting. Since our project was not yet ready to be published, we took into account all the suggestions and welcomed positive criticism from our fellow iGEM Team, in order to better shape our project.
iGEM Crete commented on our project : “iGEM Thessaloniki's 2021 Project is certainly promising and has great future potential in the field of diagnostics.The quantification of biomarker results (by using the Toehold switch) is a fresh idea that offers endless opportunities for future teams to expand upon that methodology.”

|Starting Date: 28-03-2021
|Ending Date: 28-03-2021






FR Training


| Collaboration Type: Conferences and Presentations


On 4th of April, after getting in touch with iGEM Crete a week before, we organised an FR Training in order to help our fellow team. Through a presentation we prepared, we provided them with useful tips on how to build a strong FR strategy. Afterwards, an open conversation followed concerning the key elements of success, such as the booklet and the proper way of communicating your project to the public.

|Starting Date: 29-03-2021
|Ending Date: 04-04-2021






iGEM Meet Up: Greek edition


| Collaboration Type: Conferences and Presentations


On 21st of April in a conversation with the Greek iGEM teams, our team took the initiative to organise and co-host the iGEM Meet Up: Greek edition with other 4 teams (Athens, Crete , NOUS, Thrace)! Through weekly meetings and countless debates via Discord our collaborative online meet-up came to life and took place on 24th-25th of July via zoom.
In the form of a 2-day webinar it covered various subjects such as Synthetic Biology, presented by Dr. Skretas George and Ms. Bisia Alexandra in the form of 2 separate views on the subject, Entrepreneurship, by Mr. Livieratos Antonis and Mr. Bensansson Simon and last but not least Artificial Intelligence with a very unique approach. The first half concentrated on the physical brain by Dr. Poirazi Panayiota and the second the machine by Dr. Tsamardinos Ioannis.The webinar, also, included interactive workshops, such as Graphics Workshop by Mr. Nazlidis Alexandros and Mr. Chatzoudis Pavlos and a Medical Statistics Workshop by Mr. Karstidis Panagiotis.
One exciting part of our meet up was project presentations by iGEM teams with particular attention to troubleshooting! Specifically, each team presented its project and presented in a separate presentation all the problems they faced during this project developing journey. After these presentations, the other teams as well as the participants could pose their questions and all their proposals. In this way, we had the chance to get feedback on our project and even discuss possible improvements. Also, in our program we incorporated open conversation with Alumnis and old iGEMers a section called “a nBLAST from the past”, as well as our beloved Greek Ambassadors, who provided some insightful advice through their experience on iGEM. At the end of each day, our teams were ready to get into action with fun activities and team bonding games, such as "Never have i ever: iGEM Edition '', and "iGEM Kahoot".

|Starting Date: 21-04-2021
|Ending Date: 25-07-2021



Learn More:

iGEM Meet Up: Greek edition program




Collaborative Video iGEM Nantes


| Collaboration Type: Creative


On 21st of April we took part in IGEM Nantes's Collaboration! In light of their project presentation in front of college students, they wanted to promote the international spirit that characterizes the iGEM Competition. That's where we came in. With a short video we introduced a member of our team in our mother tongue, our national language, greek. Many other teams contributed from all over the world and the result was indeed mind-blowing.

|Starting Date: 03-05-2021
|Ending Date: 11-07-2021






Machine Learning and Toehold Collab


| Collaboration Type: Dry Lab


On the 11th of February, we had our first call with the Greek iGEM Patras team to introduce our teams and projects and decide what we have in common. Our dry-lab team discussed toehold switches, our machine learning approach and it's difficulties, as well as ideas for further collaboration.
Almost three months later, during our partnership,on May, the discussion was focused on creating an educational bioinformatics Scratch game for highschool students, as well as receiving advice for our machine learning approach suggesting the use of a Random Forest Regressor as it tends to work better than a sequential model when the dataset is small.
We also analyzed a multitude of Toehold sequences and mRNA triggers for them using our evaluation code, and we provided iGEM Patras with a comprehensive report containing the best performed sequences, frequency of the MFE structure, exact binding of the miRNA with toehold, Complex Energy difference and finally the Concentration Dependency Plots.

|Starting Date: 29-05-2021
|Ending Date: 06-06-2021






Toehold Generator


| Collaboration Type: Dry Lab

On the 30th of June, after communicating through social media and later by email, we had our initial call with the French UParis IGEM team as IGEM Thessaloniki to discuss our toehold models and a potential collaboration. We decided to go for a dry-lab collaboration, as part of which, we will run their two toehold switch sequences through our code to evaluate the binding energy of the sequences, as well as the free energy of the RBS-linker and produce the Concentration Dependency Plots.
As the results of the sequences were less than satisfactory, within our report we also included two suggested toehold switches that our tool predicted would behave the best.
In our follow-up communication they provided us with two more sequences to analyse. We reported to them that our code predicted these two sequences to be better compared to the first generation of toehold switch sequences that they sent us.

|Starting Date: 09-06-2021
|Ending Date: 30-06-2021



Learn More:

Collaboration Report




"The SynBio Academy " Podcast


| Collaboration Type: Creative


On 28th of July, we had the honor to take part in another collaboration, this time hosted by our dear partners, iGEM Patras. "The SynBio Academy" Podcast is an initiative to promote the iGEM Competition through Spotify and the iGEM teams. We were the first iGEM team to be on their podcast, and it is safe to say that Alexandra (our hostess) and Dimitris from iGEM Patras organised an amazing interview. We talked about our project, our team and everyday life in iGEM.

|Starting Date: 28-07-2021
|Ending Date: 28-07-2021






Rosalind Chronicles


| Collaboration Type: Creative


On 30th of July our team and iGEM Patras announced our collaborative project "Rosalind Chronicles", a photo collage to honor the Women in Science! The idea was to gather a photo of every team's very own female iGEM teammates and a photo of the team’s favorite female scientist that changed the world in her own way! After we gathered all of the photos we placed them in chronological order upon a timeline, with a little surprise in the end - photos of women in science today, the female team members of every team.
Soon, we realized that iGEM Concordia-Montreal and iGEM Ulaval had a similar idea. So, in order to honor the women in STEM on a larger scale, we decided on a new merged collaboration, "Rosalind Chronicles", a Bulletin Board. We also added the requirement of some basic information regarding the female scientist of choice to be emailed to us! At the end, we created an interactive bulletin board in which the photos and information were placed in chronological order.

|Starting Date: 30-07-2021
|Ending Date: 30-08-2021



Learn More:

Rosalind Chronicles
Padlet



PCR and dNTPs survey


| Collaboration Type: Survey


Our fellow team iGEM Athens needed to collect data on how to direct their project of creating de novo dNTPs to the needs of the science community. We filled the questionnaire anonymously and provided all the knowledge we have acquired from our own PCR experiments.

|Starting Date: 03-08-2021
|Ending Date: 03-08-2021






Morse Code (Insta Challenge)


| Collaboration Type: Creative


On 30th of July we received an invitation for an amazing collaborative idea. An instagram game organised by team iGEM Aix-Marseille with one aim; to describe our project in the best possible way using only emojis. Through a brainstorming session with our team we came up with a Morse Code idea to spell out METIS using only emojis (circles and minus signs ). The game was held on the 17th of September and we can safely say it was a blast ! You can see how we spell METIS using Morse Code down below. The purple color symbolizes the fight against pancreatic cancer!

|Starting Date: 05-08-2021
|Ending Date: 17-09-2021






Endometriosis Survey


| Collaboration Type: Survey


The project of team iGEM GO Paris- Saclay is focusing on a non-invasive diagnostic method for endometriosis and they wanted to obtain some information regarding the awareness of endometriosis around the world. We filled the questionnaire anonymously to provide a statistical sample from Greece.

|Starting Date: 06-08-2021
|Ending Date: 06-08-2021






Wiki Collab


| Collaboration Type: Dry Lab


The development of the wiki is a challenging but rather interesting task assigned to us by iGEM Competition. During our collaboration with iGEM Patras we exchanged ideas for background and front end development and we overcame the difficulties of coding and styling our websites. We also proceeded into the exchange of small parts of code such as html classes alongside their css styling where needed.

|Starting Date: 09-08-2021
|Ending Date: 21-10-2021






Scratch: A SynBio Game


| Collaboration Type: Dry Lab


To adjust our educational material to Junior High School years and provide the students with an interactive learning experience, we collaborated with iGEM Patras to create a virtual game in Scratch -a software widely taught in Greek schools. The game combines the educational material taught in schools with information about synthetic biology in a form of questions - answers.

|Starting Date: 09-08-2021
|Ending Date: 05-09-2021



Learn More:

Education



"The Remote Lab project" survey


| Collaboration Type: Survey


On 23rd of August, in order to reach an understanding about the needs of other iGEM teams, concerning genetic assembly, iGEM Marburg and iGEM Paris Bettencourt constructed a survey to collect the experiences and opinions of iGEMers around the globe. So, we provided our honest answers and hope to have helped with their bright project idea.

|Starting Date: 23-08-2021
|Ending Date: 23-08-2021






the iGEM Crete Braille Initiative


| Collaboration Type: Creative


On 25th of August, we came upon iGEM Crete’s idea to create a large database of biology related subjects in Braille to cope with the scarcity of Braille books. So, we used a text from the Biology book of our country’s 3rd year high school class concerning animal viruses, all written in our native language, greek. We hope to help, at least a little, in solving this challenging issue.

|Starting Date: 25-08-2021
|Ending Date: 26-08-2021






NTU iGEM Survey Promotion


| Collaboration Type: Survey


On 29th of August, we had a zoom call with iGEM team NTU Singapore to discuss a possible collaboration. Αt the end of it we decided to promote their surveys for the public to see through our social media. This way, they could get the opinion of the Greek people concerning Covid detection and Cancer testing and finally raise awareness for 2 of the most important issues our world faces at the moment.

|Starting Date: 29-08-2021
|Ending Date: 12-09-2021






Women in STEM


| Collaboration Type: Conferences and Presentations


On 1st of September we started the preparations for our collaborative presentation with teams iGEM Patras, ULaval and Concordia-Montreal for the “Women in STEM : Diversity and Inclusion Workshop”. The purpose of this workshop was to highlight the female figures that laid the foundation for our generation of female scientists to reach for their dreams and make them a reality.
Our team opened the ceremony with a presentation of women in STEM from our country Greece and their stories that greatly impacted the way women are treated in science now. Specifically, we outlined some real life testimonials of sad and outraging biographies of those women, one of which also took her own life as a protest to her being banned from the university.
Also, our workshop was accompanied by Nemira Zilinskaite of WiSTEM / After iGEM and her participation was indeed important. We hope to have successfully informed the public of both Canada and Greece and every other country that participated for the bright figures these women were.

|Starting Date: 01-09-2021
|Ending Date: 16-09-2021






What is your favourite flavour? Survey


| Collaboration Type: Survey


On 9th of September our team filled a survey form for iGEM RUBochum to help them with our team’s opinion. Their project this year aims to manufacture a series of milk proteins from genetically modified fungus that do not differ from the ones that animals produce, and since they want their end product to be a flavoured yoghurt they asked for the opinion of other people.
One hint for the end; Chocolate is our to go answer.

|Starting Date: 09-09-2021
|Ending Date: 09-09-2021






Oral Cancer Survey Awareness


| Collaboration Type: Survey


On 13th of September we filled out a survey from iGEM IISER Bhopal regarding Oral Cancer Awareness. iGEM IISER Bhopal aims to achieve a way to diagnose signal susceptibility to Oral Squamous Cell Carcinoma and wanted to raise awareness regarding oral cancer. With this survey we helped them gain some insight on the impact their proposition might have on the public opinion.

|Starting Date: 13-09-2021
|Ending Date: 13-09-2021






1st Global Diagnostics and Therapeutics Conference


| Collaboration Type: Conferences and Presentations


On 18th of September we decided to participate in the 1st Global Diagnostics and Therapeutics Conference held by iGEM Team Korea_HS. Our team presented our project which is dedicated to the field of diagnostics, one of the main parts of this conference. We also had the ability to talk and exchange thoughts and ideas with the other participating teams; iGEM teams UParis, IISER Berhampur, NOUS (Greece_United), Estonia TUIT, Queens Canada and Manchester. We hope for a continuation of this super informative conference for next generations!

|Starting Date: 18-09-2021
|Ending Date: 26-09-2021






Spotify Music all over the iGEM World


| Collaboration Type: Creative


On 20th of September we participated in a brand new initiative by Reconby-iGEM-Unizar. They wanted to create a music playlist in Spotify using songs that we listen to, while on our wet lab work. Specifically, they asked us to forward them a song in our native language which in our case was “Panta Gelastoi” by Dimitrios Mitropanos which in greek means “Always Smiling” and a favourite song of our team while working in the lab and we chose “We Are The Champions” by Queen. At the end, they added all the songs in a shared Playlist in Spotify named "Playing iGEM”.

|Starting Date: 20-09-2021
|Ending Date: 20-09-2021



Learn More:

Spotify Playlist



iGEM Survey


| Collaboration Type: Survey


On 20th of September iGEM UNESP Brazil 2021 team invited us to submit a survey regarding the iGEM Registration Fee based on our country’s minimum wage and the local currency! We hope that this way we were able to help them understand the financial burden to participate in the Giant Jamboree, since many teams face different economic circumstances depending on their respective country’s financial state.

|Starting Date: 20-09-2021
|Ending Date: 20-09-2021






Water sampling from Thermaikos Bay


| Collaboration Type: Wet Lab


On 21st of September we collaborated with team iGEM Bulgaria, a fellow team from Balkan! Their project this year is about genes that cause antimicrobial resistance and they wanted to check the difference between the samples from Sofia to those from Thessaloniki.
Since Thessaloniki has Thermaikos bay, a bay known for its waste waters, we got together with a team member of iGEM Bulgaria that was in town for a few days and we went to the bay to collect a water sample.

|Starting Date: 21-09-2021
|Ending Date: 21-09-2021






Webinar Series: How to survive iGEM Fundraising and Graphics edition


| Collaboration Type: Conferences and Presentations


On 23rd and 24th of September we co-hosted alongside iGEM Patras an informative webinar for future iGEMers and also for everyone interested in Fundraising and Graphics. On 23rd we covered the Fundraising part of the webinar with a presentation, open conversation and a great Kahoot game that summed up all the information that was mentioned during the entire segment. At the end of the Kahoot game the winner also got a gift; a calendar to write down all the FR tasks, dials for sponsorship etc. On 24th of September, iGEM Patras took the stage to present the Graphics segment with an interactive presentation of Adobe Illustrator, one of the best graphics tools, that they also use for all their graphics. We got really positive feedback from all the participants.

|Starting Date: 23-09-2021
|Ending Date: 24-09-2021






It's All About iGEM: A SynBio Day


| Collaboration Type: Conferences and Presentations


On 30th of September we held a joint presentation with our partners, iGEM Patras in Thessaloniki, at ΚΕDΕΑ center. The name of the presentation was “It's All About iGEM: A SynBio Day'' and it covered subjects of Synthetic Biology, starting with a presentation on the basics of iGEM by iGEM Judge and Veteran Dimitrios Michailidis, who gave us the honor of hosting him, our PI, Vizirianakis Ioannis on a presentation about microRNAs and their utility, the innovative aspect they present and at last both of our teams’ projects. At the end , we covered all the questions from the participants and we had the ability to inform some students who want to take part into the next iGEM teams !

|Starting Date: 30-09-2021
|Ending Date: 30-09-2021