Introduction

This year our team was lucky to communicate with numerous iGEM teams from all over the world. Some of the interactions were initiated by us and some - by other teams. Our list of collaborations is in an especially broad spectrum of topics: integrated human practices on amebiasis, education, and communication.

Gaining insights on amebiasis with the IISER Tirupati team

We got in touch with the IISER-Tirupati India team regarding their request for collaboration. We had already chosen target regions, of which one was India. We asked for contacts of professionals that are working with the disease in a laboratory or clinical setting. As a result, IISER Tirupati kindly sent us a full excel sheet with various contacts we used later on.

Gaining insights on amebiasis with the IISER Berhampur team

IISER Berhampur and our team both analyzed human infectious diseases that are more common in developing regions. Thus, we organized a call to get to know each other better and decided on further collaborations. Afterward, we exchanged contact information of specialists from relevant areas in our countries.

We also have participated in the IISER Berhampur podcast series "SynVERSE" and shared our perspectives on synthetic biology, "AmeBye", and our team. Lastly, the IISER Berhampur team offered help on our educational poster about amebiasis, proofread its contents and translated to three native languages.

Gaining insights on amebiasis with the FCB-UANL team

One of the countries our project targets is Mexico. Therefore, we contacted iGEM team from there - FCB-UANL. We were very pleased that they were interested and agreed on a call. At first, we got to know each other better, gained new insight into our human practices activities, and agreed on collaboration. The team connected us with Dr. María del Socorro Flores González, Professor at Instituto de Biotecnología, Facultad de Ciencias Biológicas, UANL. We gained invaluable insights on the wet lab processes, that can be found on Integrated Human Practices page.

Moreover, FCB-UANL has kindly proofread and translated our educational poster on amebiasis into their native language. They also shared it on their social media and added to the broader spread of the message.

Gaining insights on amebiasis with the AFCM Egypt

While planning our project, we wanted to gain insights into the experiences regarding amebiasis in African regions. Luckily, team AFCM Egypt agreed on collaborating with us. They kindly offered to organize a meeting with the team itself and prof. Azza El-Adawy, who is a professor of Medical Parasitology in a Parasitology department of the Faculty of Medicine at Cairo University. Professor shared some useful insights on amebiasis, that are discussed in Integrated Human Practices page. The team has also stressed the importance of raising awareness on amebiasis and kindly proofread, translated our educational poster, and presented it at the SynFair conference. Moreover, our team reviewed AFCM Egypt surveys on vaccines and synthetic biology, suggested several alterations, and participated in them.

The postcard project with Düsseldorf

We collaborated with team Düsseldorf in their iGEM postcard project. Our team sent out a package of postcards along with 6th SynBio Sense markers that were spread with teams all around the world. This activity was a way to present our project to other teams and build stronger connections in the iGEM community. The postcards we received helped us to learn more about other projects that are being created this year.

TU Darmstadt airplane video

Our team took part in TU Darmstadt's airplane video project showing our support for the iGEM community. This activity was a fun way to show how widespread synthetic biology is.

Take a look at the video here .

iGEM Guelph interview

We participated in an iGEM Guelph team interview project focused on presenting iGEM projects from around the world. Our team shared this year's topic and specifics of Lab, IT, and HP processes. This collaboration allowed to spread the idea of “AmeBye” internationally.

TAU Israel

We participated in the ASYV (Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village) initiative organized by TAU Israel team. For this purpose, we conducted an online lesson for school students in Uganda about probiotics. We also shared more information on our project as we were constructing genetically modified probiotics for the “Amebye” project.

6th SynBio Sense development

Continuing the augmented reality project “6th synbio sense”, we wanted it to reach an international audience, so we offered the iGEM community to help with the spread of the project. The IISER TVM , Bonn-Rheinbach , Stony_Brook , and Stanford teams responded to our invitation to participate in the project. We shared the sticker files with them, which they printed and pasted in their cities for everyone to use.

Moreover, we participated in the postcard project organized by iGEM Düsseldorf and added several QR stickers to share the project with 90 teams from all over the world.

Stockholm 2021 workshop “From iGEM to Entrepreneur”

We took part in the workshop “From iGEM to Entrepreneur,” organized by the Stockholm 2021 team, where we learned about the principles of business planning. This collaboration was a great help as the Vilnius-Lithuania team was preparing a business plan for the first time. We gained invaluable insights into businesses in the biotechnology field and built a solid knowledge for further activities in the business field.