MSP Muggle Journal
iGEM Team Waterloo
was a close partner of us for exchanging helpful information and ideas, especially concerning the
drylab. During our icebreaker meeting, the large intersection of our projects and of our plans for
modelling became apparent: we both wanted to explore and improve the binding of a protein to metal ions
with the help of bioinformatics tools.
In the following meetings, we proceeded to give updates on our respective progress and discussed
problems that appeared. For instance, we learned about which tools work best for which tasks and a new
way to model inorganic atoms, while we could share a workflow for finding possible positions to mutate
in a protein. After exchanging our experiences and results in molecular dynamics simulation, we were
informed about the possibility of the usage of quantum mechanical force fields for this cause. We are
very thankful for this input which influenced our path strongly.
We collaborated with iGEM
Team Stuttgart which came to be a great fit because of our shared interest in the topic of water
pollution. Our aim was to raise awareness on the topic. With two different views on the same topic, we
figured that a collaboration could be very fruitful. Team Stuttgart created an effective filter system
named lac-man to free water from drug residues. In contrast, we want to tackle heavy metal pollution.
For the implementation of either project, the support of the public is crucial. That's why we commenced
with diverse outreach projects, raising awareness for water pollution. Outreach and science
communication are, politically and ethically, amongst the most important steps to raise awareness of an
issue which will affect everyone. Moreover, science relies on the acceptance of the public and the
political sentiment around certain issues. It is thus of great importance to get people's attention and
understanding for a problem in order to get the support you urgently need for those big environmental
issues. With our campaign on social media, we aimed to get people's attention to a topic that has
unforeseen effects on the world and is, in our opinion, under-presented when looking at the precarious
situations threatening our world, safety and health. After all, life in water and clean water resources
are also recognized as important challenges in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN
SDGs).
For more information have a look in human practices.
For more information have a look in human practices.
As a two-years project,
Team Peru aims to design a dipstick with which they are able to detect cadmium contaminated fish.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and customs related delivery issues, they were not able to enter the
laboratory in the 2020 iGEM year. Nevertheless, iGEM Peru used their time wisely to design and plan a
two-year project. As their dipstick idea included many unknown variables, one of our team members, who
has experience in point-of-care dipstick diagnostic tests, met with Team Peru to discuss their project,
putative pitfalls and improvements. After various meetings both teams have benefited from ideas and
information exchange. Furthermore, since it is a two-years project, our team will remain in contact to
stretch this collaboration over two years.
iGEM Team Edinburgh,
who were developing a biosensor as well, had the great idea of writing a manual to summarize the
knowledge gained about working with biosensors. We were asked to contribute by adding our own
experiences for an even more comprehensive manual. As we see the importance in documenting new
discoveries and experiences for advances in research and to help future (iGEM) teams with their work
concerning biosensors, we happily agreed. At the same time, it was very interesting for us to see what
other iGEM teams learned in our area of research, which helped us to gain a new point of view on our own
project. Fortunately, it's never too late to learn new things and apply them to our work. This
collaboration will not only help future teams, it is already helping existing ones. Since this Manual
would have been a great kick start for us as well, we found ourselves in a position knowing the urges
for all the upcoming teams with the same questions very well! We hope to have contributed to further
success for all the upcoming teams in the future. Thank you so much for this opportunity.
The 2020 iGEM project of Team IISER Pune addresses the increasing threat of
resistance to Artemisinin
Combination Therapies (ACT) for Malaria. Their solution is the design of a novel class of orally
administered drugs targeting host-pathogen interactions. Albeit not having similar projects, we decided
to support them either way but facilitating the contact to Prof. TP Velavan, a group leader at the
Institute for Tropical Medicine in Tübingen. Prof. Velavan is a leading researcher in Molecular Genetics
of Infectious Diseases who also focuses on Malaria treatment resistance. We are happy that he was able
to support Team IISER Pune, demonstrating that collaboration also entails sharing each others’ networks.
