Team:Uppsala/Collaborations


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Introduction

From the beginning, we were determined to use the iGEM platform to our best capability. We recognized the competition as a unique opportunity for us to engage in as many collaborations, exchanges and conversations across teams as possible. This is extremely important for all iGEM teams and a unique opportunity to connect with like-minded students globally that share the common goal of bringing their synthetic biology project to life. We highly appreciate our collaborations, which made the journey of our project even more enjoyable.
This included:

  • Creating a joint Farmer survey
  • Collaborating on hosting joint workshops
  • Inviting three Dutch iGEM teams to present their projects during our Webinar program for iGEM teams.
  • iGEM NAWI Graz Podcast guest appearance
  • Participation in postcard exchange challenge
  • Multiple calls with different iGEM teams for advice and support
  • Attending other iGEM events and socialize with other teams
    .. and much more!

Professional Collaborations

iGEM Maastricht Collaboration

Collaboration highlights:

  • The two teams created a joint Farmer survey to understand farmers’ perspectives on the usage of synthetic biology for the future of farming
  • iGEM Maastricht supported and actively participated during our Future Farming webinar

We have been intrigued with our collaboration with iGEM Maastricht (MSP) from the start. Not only did our two projects overlap, but the first lab-grown burger was created by Dr. Mark Post of Maastricht University in 2013. Maastricht’s background, motivation, and drive to improve the food system therefore piqued our interest in this valuable collaboration.

Both our projects aim to improve the agricultural system in one way or another. iGEM MSP plans to reduce the methane output from cows by using a genetically modified food additive. Therefore, we decided to collaborate for a better understanding of farmers perspectives on some of the new advancements in agriculture using synthetic biology.

First, we sent out a joint survey to farmers to better understand their perspective on new technologies that may affect their trade. Farmers are one of our largest stakeholders, so the initiative was important to both teams, and helped us see the problems and challenges farmers face from a new perspective. Internally in our teams, we managed to translate the survey to seven different languages in order to approach more farmers.

iGEM MSP shared their insights when we were in the first stages of brainstorming for our iGEM Uppsala Future Farming webinar. Their enthusiasm to attend our conference motivated us to make the line up as comprehensive and diverse as possible. For example, due to their involvement, we invited a local researcher working to reduce methane emission to our webinar, which turned out to be extremely interesting.

During the Future Farming webinar, the active participation of iGEM MSP in the Q&A session sparked an interesting discussion we highly appreciate. Furthermore, their connection with Maastricht University turned out to be extremely useful to our team, as it made it possible for us to invite the so-called “father of cultivated meat”, the aforementioned Dr. Mark Post, as a speaker at our Future Farming webinar.

This collaboration helped us put an even greater emphasis on the agricultural aspect of our project and our frequent cross-team meetings kept us on track of achieving our goals. They also shared some cow footage with us for our promotional video.
iGEM MSP shared with us afterwards that the webinar enabled them to explore new possible directions for future scientific engagement. They thought that further socialization in the Sophya virtual world turned out to be an enriching experience, as ideas could be exchanged and experiences shared. They even got some helpful feedback for their project from one of our team’s supervisors. Finally, we want to give a very special thanks to Tim Davalan for bringing so much personal interest and energy into the collaboration.

iGEM Stockholm

Collaboration highlights:

  • We hosted DRIVHUSET workshop in Uppsala
  • Our team attended the SynthEthics workshop in Stockholm
  • Visits to each other’s laboratories
  • They attended our Future Farming webinar
  • We attended their Entrepreneurial event

We were thrilled to connect with our neighbours in Stockholm. Early in the spring, iGEM Stockholm invited us to their Entrepreneurial virtual event. The event sparked a conversation and we discovered that both teams were interested in the entrepreneurial aspect of our projects. Thus, we decided to combine forces and host each other for two different workshops to explore and reinforce the societal areas in our projects further.

First, we wanted to better understand how to approach stakeholders with different backgrounds and values. Therefore, we got in contact with our collaborators at DRIVHUSET that had been assisting our Human Practice and Sponsoring groups with pitching and presenting our project. We hosted iGEM Stockholm for our stakeholder workshop.

Second, iGEM Stockholm contacted SynthEthics for implementing ethics into our synthetic biology projects.

Moreover, we supported each other in various ways that turned out to be important for both projects. We filled each other's surveys, and provided general project-related support throughout the summer. Not to mention, we had a lot of fun together. Our collective goal to make the most out of our projects resulted in this amazing collaboration and at least three physical meetups with full teams, both in Uppsala and Stockholm.

Please see more about our collaborative DRIVHUSET Stakeholder workshop and SynthEthics workshop here.

iGEM NOVA LxPortugal

Our team was able to help team NOVA LxPortugal by sending them four cryovials which contained E. coli DH5alpha cells. These cells possessed pBS1C and pBS2E, two Bacillus subtilis integration plasmids which were essential for their project since they used B. subtilis as their chassis.

We proposed some potential Swedish speakers for their webinar and their team suggested some potential Portuguese speakers to feature on our Future Farming webinar.

iGEM NAWI Graz - Podcast Appearance

We made a guest appearance in the podcast show hosted by iGEM NAWI Graz. We talked about our iGEM project and the issues we aim to solve in the larger context. You can listen to the interview here:

Dutch appearances in the Future Farming webinar

Starting our project, we knew the Netherlands were revolutionary in food tech and agricultural innovations. They are internationally recognized as an agricultural powerhouse. The country’s goal is to “produce twice as much food using half as many resources”. Already inspired by our collaboration so far with iGEM MSP, we decided to elaborate further on our Dutch relations and invited more teams from the Netherlands, iGEM Wageningen and iGEM Groningen, to present their projects during our Future Farming webinar. Their iGEM teams also provided visibility to our webinar by sharing information about the event on their social media. This was an exceptionally enjoyable way of incorporating more Dutch influence into our event.
You can see the Future Farming webinar program for the participating iGEM teams here:

iGEM Design League team Ararinhas UFF - Brazil

Louise Castro had been on the iGEM Uppsala 2020 team and started a new iGEM Design League team in Brazil. We translated our Farmer survey to Portuguese so they could share it with their local Brazilian contacts and offered them biweekly mentoring and support on Wiki/Modelling/Graphical Design in exchange. With this, we hoped to provide support for a new rising iGEM team.

Social Activities and Meet-ups

iGEM BBQ Uppsala/Stockholm

Before our collaboration with iGEM Stockholm, we invited them for a social BBQ to get to know each other first. Just like with our project, the connection sparked from the love of food. The teams shared insights into each other's projects, and we realized how differently each team had structured their organization and roles. We also realized most of us were vegetarians.

Düsseldorf Postcard Exchange

We were happy to participate in the iGEM Düsseldorfs postcard project. We produced postcards in collaboration with Crimson where we used graphical illustrations to explain our project, supported by a small verbal description on the back of the postcard. Those postcards were sent to other iGEM teams around the world by iGEM Düsseldorf to share our ideas and bring connection and inspiration.

iGEM MIT_MAHE - exploring overlaps

We met with iGEM MIT_MAHE to discuss our projects which both relate to food security and the future of synthetic biology in agriculture. We wanted to explore whether this overlap could spiral into some kind of collaboration in any way. We discovered that both teams were hosting separate webinars, so we shared some insights and invited each other to our events.

iGEM Thrace - exploring involvement in youth program

We met with iGEM Thrace to discuss the possibility of joining the ERASMUS + youth program that took place in July. Unfortunately, we could not commit to attending, but wish them best of luck in their project and setting up this amazing initiative!