Oxford iGEM

An iGEM team from Oxford generously offered us help in mathematical modeling of our experiments. We appreciated their operative and precise work a lot. We have agreed on the collaboration over a couple of Skype calls and continued to manage the deal by the emails over a period of two months. The description of the modeling Oxford team performed can be found here.

What is more, we did not only collaborate on the dry lab, but also on the Human Practices side. Since we found out that our projects looked quite similar and were based on the creation of probiotics, we have launched a survey on probiotics delivery method and compared the results between two countries. The results of the survey are described here.

WashU iGEM

We are very grateful to WashU StLouis iGEM team from Washington, USA, who agreed to collaborate and asked to confirm their results of a biobrick characterization. They have chosen to characterize a part from this year’s distribution kit – a HSP promoter. We have organized the collaboration over a friendly online conversation. The details of a biobrick characterization can be found here.

Virginia iGEM

We were happy to help Virginia iGEM team by responding to their survey about the awareness and use of biocontainment in iGEM projects. We hope that our answers were helpful for creating a pamphlet for future iGEM teams to disseminate information about biocontainment and provide tools for teams to select and implement methods more easily.

Bulgaria iGEM

We were very happy that a new team Bulgaria iGEM provided our team member Sofija with a warm welcome. We have exchanged our project ideas, shared experience, and gave some insights on how to manage the project. Bulgaria iGEM team members kindly showed Sofija the laboratory they are working in and also showed her around the city. We are very happy that iGEM competition creates possibilities of international communication.

Peshawar iGEM

We had pleasure to talk with iGEM Peshawar. We mostly talked about our projects, but still had time to chat informally. Our team got some advice and reactions on our proof of concept and development of the final product.

Lasa-TX iGEM

We were interested how other teams were performing. The main reason was to find how we could improve our own performance. We talked on skype with iGEM 2016 team Austin_UTexas_LASA. We discussed our projects, shared experience and even told funny iGEM stories. We found how both teams could collaborate. We asked if Austin_UTexas_LASA could complete our “Successful iGEM team survey“ and our team agreed to cooperate with them in the future in a similar way.

Tel-Hai iGEM

We also organised a skype call with a team from Israel – iGEM Tel Hai 2016 . Our colleagues are also working with a genetic disease. Our team thought we could share our experience on relevant topics, for instance, probiotics. Unfortunately, we did not establish any ground for the collaboration, because both teams were using completely different strategies. However, we still had a pleasant talk.

XMU_China iGEM

A team from Xiamen University, XMU-China , launched an annual information exchange platform named Newsletter – an electronic journal containing information about the majority of iGEM teams. We were very glad that we were invited to be a part of it. We provided XMU with the thorough information about our team and our project and we hope to continue making this contribution in the future. The 8th edition of the Newsletter can be found hereand here.