Team:Brno Czech Republic/Medals and Awards

Medals and Awards

During our iGEM journey, we have learned and achieved many things. We became better at every aspect of science - research, design of experiments, lab management, wet lab work, presentation of our results and science popularization. We also learned how to work as a part of a scientific team composed of people from very different areas of expertise. And last but not least, we became a part of a great community of people interested in synthetic biology.

For us, iGEM was not only a competition, but a lifestyle - for a year, we put aside our other hobbies and sacrificed every minute of our free time for a common goal. And we are glad we could do it. As the iGEM 2020 draws to an end, we look back at everything we have accomplished and we are enormously proud. From two students with an idea, to a team of 15 people with more than 20 supporters; from a desire to make the world a better place, to a complex design of a water cleaning system; from a willingness to help and educate, to a broad collection of science-popularization content.

On this page, we list everything we accomplished not only to win the iGEM Medals and Awards, but also to fulfill our ambitions, wishes and dreams.

Medal criteria

Gold

  1. At the beginning of our iGEM journey, we researched four ideas on what our project could be about and presented them to seven leading researchers at our university. They helped us to decide on the topic of our project. Some of them even decided to become our PIs! After talking with the experts on cyanobacteria and Bacillus subtilis, we implemented some of their ideas to CYANOTRAP. We changed the design of our synthetic sequences because Dr. Krásný told us he can provide us with integration plasmids for two chromosomal loci - we modified the sequences so that they can be connected into two operons. We used different RBSs in front of genes that will be expressed from one promotor to optimize their translation rate. We also take into account the advice from Mr. Rodan, who told us that the best place to implement CYANOTRAP will be a small, natural body of water. And finally, we asked the general public about their opinion on CYANOTRAPs outer design and when we get to build the prototype, we will make it according to the ideas of our respondents. For more information, visit Human Practices.
  2. We prepared an in silico model that will help us calculate important values that will be useful in making CYANOTRAP as effective as possible. Find out more on the page dedicated to Modeling.
  3. We created a broad collection of science-popularization and educational content concerning synthetic biology, as well as many more biology and science-related topics. We invite you to read more about our work in this field on the Education page of our Wiki.
  4. We do not want iGEM to be our only connection with the world of synthetic biology. In a country where this field of study still waits for its bloom, we created a non-profit organization called Generation Mendel which sets out to show the many opportunities that synthetic biology has to offer not only to young people who consider studying natural sciences, but also to the general public. During this process we learnt valuable lessons about legal entities' operation in general as well as preparing us for the possible establishment of a biotechnological company. Read more about Our NPO on the dedicated page and find out how we established it, how we created its visual identity and what are our plans for the future.

Silver

  1. We were successful in our cultivation, cloning and chromosome integration experiments which prove that our wet lab work was well designed and prepared and that the experiments worked as expected. We invite you to read the whole Engineering success page to find out more about our accomplishments.
  2. We talked with many students from all over the world, discussed our projects and general issues we encountered during our iGEM experience and shared our knowledge with other teams to help each other out. Find out more about our Collaboration efforts at the dedicated page.
  3. We asked experts as well as the general public about their opinions on our project and implemented their ideas and advice into our work. Visit Human Practices to find out who we have talked to and what we have learned from them.
  4. From the very beginning of our iGEM journey, we planned for CYANOTRAP to be a real product, useful in real life. You can read about our ideas and everything that concerns the use of CYANOTRAP outside of the lab in Future Implementation.

Bronze

  1. We have completed all Competition deliverables. You are presently viewing our Wiki. You can find the basics about our project in the Project promotion video. If you are interested in more detailed information on CYANOTRAP, you can see the summary of our project on our Poster or watch our Presentation video. And for the Judges, here is the Judging form, that includes links to the most important pages on our Wiki.
  2. We summarized the work of all team members and all supporters of our efforts in Attributions. We are very thankful to everyone who helped us during our journey!
  3. We described the ideas we had that led us to the topic of our project and we explained our proposed solution and the design of CYANOTRAP. You can find all this and more in the Project description.
  4. We gave back to the iGEM community in at least two ways. Take a look at our Handbook: How to handle Bacillus subtilis and the updated Team Seeker, or read about them in Contribution.

Awards

The judges were suprised and delighted by our project they praised not only our organization skills but also the amount of work which we made taking in a consideration we participated iGEM for the first time.

Judges were also very pleased about our impact in Education. We convinced them that our activites would enable more people to shape, contribute to and participate in synthetic biology.

For example the another sucessful criteria was poster. They found it very engaging and well-designed.

To aquire gold medal we had to go far beyond synthetic biology and sometimes beyond science itself. We got together as a team and worked hard on all the tasks that stood in our way.

The icing on the cake was the nomination for one of the 5 best environmental projects.