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Revision as of 11:02, 23 October 2020
Intro
Early on in our iGEM journey we discovered that Aalto-helsinki was working on a biosensor project, just as us. Initial conversations lead to the discovery of shared goals between our teams -mainly our wish to develop comprehensive ODE modelling and incorporate ethical considerations in our project work. Our dry-lab collaboration soon proved beneficial for our teams, and this lead to a partnership throughout the season eventually extending to human practice collaborations as well.The professional (and social) exchange has not only provided us with directly useful ideas and trouble-shooting, but inspired us throughout our whole process to be open minded and think critically about our models and assumptions. It has help us understand how to communicate our project in various levels of details and convey our ideas successfully. We are extremely happy to have had the pleasure of working with Aalto-Helsinki!
Dry lab timeline
1st meeting
On 14th May we talked with Aalto-Helsinki for the first time (it was during a coffee hour organized by us via zoom). We thought there might be some space for collaboration in the future and so we agreed on staying in touch.
2nd meeting
In June we decided it was time to see how the projects were going and we initiated electronic correspondence concerning viability of dry-lab collaboration. Aalto was positive and we informed each other about modeling prospects.This led to a first meeting on June 16th, focused solely on the dry lab. We discussed our projects, designs, modeling ambitions. Aalto told us about their intentions with Rosetta which positively influenced our own project development. We agreed that maintaining mutual collaboration and planning more meetings makes sense for both teams.
3rd meeting
As agreed, both teams shared their current models in July and played around with the models of the other team. To talk more in depth, we scheduled another meeting on 4th August. This was a nice, dense meeting where both parties exchanged lots of great suggestions, tips and tricks. Major areas to improve included descriptions, comments and graphs, but also addressing shortcomings of current models.
4th meeting
During August, both teams implemented feedback they had gotten, and another meeting was scheduled for 14th September. This meeting went through in a good pace as all presented models improved greatly in quality, so that there was less trivialities to discuss. We were glad that Aalto-Helsinki discovered a bug in our code which we promptly fixed. We agreed the collaboration had been very beneficial for both teams so far. We agreed the next step will be reviewing each other’s modeling wikis. Check out both teams' final models here!
Aalto-Helsinki model
Our model
Aalto-Helsinki model
Our model
Human Practice Timeline
We knew early on that we wanted to troubleshoot the ethical aspects of our project with another iGEM team. We had already identified aspects of our project where ethical work would need to be done. However, in order to ensure that we did not have any major blindspots we contacted our dry-lab partners Aalto iGEM team in order to get an outside perspective. Aalto shared our interest in doing ethical work. After our first meeting we decided to organize a workshop focusing on ethics. In order to make the workshop as inclusive and comprehensive as possible, we decided to reach out to other iGEM teams from the nordic countries. We found out that several teams in the nordic countries was working on biosensors, so it made sense to make a workshop focusing specifically on issues pertaining to that.
The workshop was held in collaboration with iGEM teams from Aalto, Stockholm and Trondheim. The guiding questions were:
How to dispose of biosensors?
What are the risks of using GMOs?
How do we formulate guidelines for end-users using our biosensors?
Who will benefit and who might be opposed to the projects?
How do we ensure sustainable production of the biosensors?
How do we tackle the public perception of GMO?
The Workshop itself was very educational. The teams took turns troubleshooting the other projects.
We then had a second meeting with Aalto-Helsinki to reflect upon the workshop. In this meeting we went in depth with some prepared comments of each others projects. We had decided to mainly focus on the ethics regarding the possible environmental impact of Aalto-Helsinkis project, should they start to manufacture it. We created a framework for estimating carboon footprint and went through the estimation with calculations reflecting possible assumptions for their project.
Aalto had chosen to focus on ethics regarding our products use on humans. They had prepared many questions concerning the usability of our product and the skin-yeast interactions. This helped us improve our project presentation and collect unanswered questions.
We then had a second meeting with Aalto-Helsinki to reflect upon the workshop. In this meeting we went in depth with some prepared comments of each others projects. We had decided to mainly focus on the ethics regarding the possible environmental impact of Aalto-Helsinkis project, should they start to manufacture it. We created a framework for estimating carboon footprint and went through the estimation with calculations reflecting possible assumptions for their project.
Aalto had chosen to focus on ethics regarding our products use on humans. They had prepared many questions concerning the usability of our product and the skin-yeast interactions. This helped us improve our project presentation and collect unanswered questions.