Team:Athens/Future

• 
• Project
  Description Implementation Contribution Engineering Success
• Wet Lab
  Design Biobricks Safety
• Dry Lab
  Background Timeline Model
• Human Practices
  Human Practices Partnership Science Communication Collaborations
• People
  Team Attributions
• Judging
  Form
• Achievements
  Medal Criteria
• Future
  Goals

FUTURE

Through 2020, our team and project have evolved in so many ways. From careful selection of our basic design process to the expansion of the team roster, this year was undoubtedly filled with crucial decisions. One of those decisions was to participate in the proposed two-year version of the competition, that iGEM created due to the drastic changes the world has faced over the past months. Having this in mind, we set some goals for the second part of the competition, that will expand upon new key features of our project and will optimize the existing ones. Below you can see some of our basic goals and aspirations for the new year.

Execute Wet Lab experiments

Having the mandatory resources to our disposal, we will execute the designed experiments described on the Engineering Success tab. We will also quantify the properties of our biomaterial and explore new ways to customize its abilities.

Evaluate & Optimize our Dry Lab outcomes

Using data from our experiments, we will optimize our models and re-evaluate the outcome.

Scaling Up Process

Knowing the potential of commercial use of our structurally coloured biomaterial, we aspire to build a sufficient scaling-up process of its production.

Hardware

Some of our experiments will require the use of lab tools that were not at our disposal. For that reason, we already started building a DIY Nanodrop and an Electropen and we plan to complete and test them in 2021. Assuming that our builds will be successful, we plan to create simple guides and budget details that will allow other iGEM teams and the research community in general, to recreate them, in an attempt to make science more accessible. Our inspirations came from [1,2] and you can see an overview of our parts below:

Human Practices

Having partly explored the sustainable side of our project, we would like to further evaluate it at different stages of its development, conducting a Sustainability Assessment based on quantitative data.

Greek 3D BioArt community

We would like to further develop our collaboration with Ioannis Melanitis and PhD candidate Angeliki Frangou to expand our original idea. This will be done by assisting in the creation of pieces of BioArt which will be exhibited at both the Athens School of Fine Arts and a virtual 3D museum! In addition, we aim to educate even more people on the matter of BioArt by holding seminars and utilizing our social media and include a fair share of Artists and Scientists of all backgrounds and specialities into our community.

iGEM BioArt Hub

Inspired by the newly-established Greek 3D BioArt community at the Athens School of Fine Arts, we aim to create a cooperative iGEM art exhibition in collaboration with iGEM Nantes. There, all pieces of art submitted to the Art Exhibition held by iGEM Nantes will be presented at a virtual 3D museum, which will be hosted by us!

iGEM was an unprecedented but enthusiastic experience for us. It helped us cultivate new ideas, imagine innovative solutions, and provided us with a medium to create and express ourselves. But most importantly, iGEM was the beginning of creating special friendships that will continue as we complete our goals in 2021.

REFERENCES

[1] Byagathvalli, G., Sinha, S., Zhang, Y., Styczynski, M., Standeven, J., & Bhamla, M. (2020, January 10). ElectroPen: An ultra-low-cost, electricity-free, portable electroporator. Retrieved October 27, 2020
[2] Hackteria's DIY Nanodrop

igemathens2020@gmail.com