The iGEM team Düsseldorf is participating in iGEM for the first time this year. This newly formed team consists of highly motivated mostly undergraduate students. Their big challenge is to overcome all issues of the first participation in iGEM. They had to establish iGEM at the Heinrich Heine-University Düsseldorf https://www.uni-duesseldorf.de/home/startseite.html. Due to the Bielefelder experience in iGEM, they asked us about advice during the beginning of the season. Because the Bielefeld-CeBitec teams participated in iGEM since 2010, we have already a lot of experience with the competition. There are many former participants we can ask for help on things like: “How to write the wiki efficiently and well?” or “How do we register?”. Therefore, we gladly agreed on helping the iGEM team Düsseldorf getting started. They visited us on 10.02.2016 in Bielefeld for a tutorial about Gibson assembly.

Another topic of this discussion was the assembly of BioBricks, especially we talked about what has to be considered in combining different parts with different properties, advantages and disadvantages. Furthermore, we answered several general questions about iGEM. Especially an introduction to the acquisition of sponsors was very helpful for the iGEM team Düsseldorf. Therefore, we shared experiences about how to approach companies and how to motivate them to become a sponsor. In addition, we discussed different legal issues associated with sponsoring in Germany. Due to some legal restrictions, it is essential for us to have contracts between our sponsors and our university. We gave them our sponsoring material as an example they could refer to while creating their own. After the visit we stayed in touch and continued our exchange for example on how to get started with the wiki. We met again in person at the German iGEM meet up in Marburg, where we had great discussions and many new ideas. We identified the lack of public awareness about synthetic biology as a major challenge. Initiated by the iGEM team Düsseldorf we joined the idea to create a postcard about synthetic biology. The goal was to spread knowledge and awareness about synthetic biology across Germany.

Another topic of this discussion was the assembly of BioBricks, especially we talked about what has to be considered in combining different parts with different properties, advantages and disadvantages. Furthermore, we answered several general questions about iGEM. Especially an introduction to the acquisition of sponsors was very helpful for the iGEM team Düsseldorf. Therefore, we shared experiences about how to approach companies and how to motivate them to become a sponsor. In addition, we discussed different legal issues associated with sponsoring in Germany. Due to some legal restrictions, it is essential for us to have contracts between our sponsors and our university. We gave them our sponsoring material as an example they could refer to while creating their own. After the visit we stayed in touch and continued our exchange for example on how to get started with the wiki. We met again in person at the German iGEM meet up in Marburg, where we had great discussions and many new ideas. We identified the lack of public awareness about synthetic biology as a major challenge. Initiated by the iGEM team Düsseldorf we joined the idea to create a postcard about synthetic biology. The goal was to spread knowledge and awareness about synthetic biology across Germany. To the public this topic is still rather unknown and might sometimes even be considered scary. To clear up common misunderstandings each participating team, including us, designed a postcard on a topic of synthetic biology. The card includes an eye catching picture on the front to spark interest in the topic and an explanatory text on the back. This text explains the connection between the picture and synthetic biology. Of course you could not only learn something about synthetic biology but also share it by sending it to a friend! But sending each other post cards was not enough so on 28.08 the iGEM team Düsseldorf invited us to join them on the “NRW-Tag” (NRW-day) in Düsseldorf. We took the opportunity to present our project together with team Aachen https://2016.igem.org/Team:Aachen and team Bonn http://2016.igembonn.com to the public.

Our presentation on the NRW- day

The “NRW-Tag” celebrated the 70th birthday of the state of North Rhine Westphalia and many people were there to visit and look at the different stalls and presentations. We had the privilege to present in the “Haus der Universität” (house of the university) in Düsseldorf with a stage not only to present our project to the public but also to discuss it with the audience.

We faced the challenge of simplifying our rather complex project so that everyone could understand. Between the presentations we had a stall where we had the opportunity to talk to the people and get their feedback on our project. Afterwards, we had a meeting with team Düsseldorf where we talked about our projects, ideas and difficulties with which we were confronted. Furthermore, we exchanged advices, tricks and new ideas on how to improve each other’s project.