Collaboration is a fundamental pillar within iGEM's ethos; as such, it holds immense significance for us to integrate it into our project. Our team actively collaborated by forging connections with other teams pursuing complementary projects. We also actively sought insight from teams holding diverse perspectives on our subject matter. In some instances, we even indulged in more lighthearted and creative forms of collaboration. These interactions consistently enriched our team's experience and underscored the essence of iGEM - a shared journey of knowledge exchange and cooperation.

Mascots Collab

The "class photo" above is a collaboration we organized with various iGEM teams. Like Cass and Oxa, many teams have little creatures who follow their projects closely and accompany them in their communication. This allows them to create an identity and make their mark. Here are a few of them, gathered to discuss their projects!

Special thank to :

iGEM Nantes
Pimento

Queen’s iGEM
Eugene

iGEM uniLausanne
E. coli

ABOA iGEM
sp. PCC 6803

iGEM Dusseldorf
Carl

This also led to an instagram post :

Meeting with iGEM Goethe Uni

Our team had the chance to meet the iGEM team from Goethe Uni of Frankfurt on Friday, September 15th. Their project, BLISS, Beta-Lactam Intelligent Sensing System, is closely related to ours, making them an excellent team to exchange with. As our project is about fighting gene resistance and protein of a resistant bacteria, their project is suitable for detecting the presence of antibiotic resistance in the environment.

We both firmly believe we can change the game together regarding antibiotic resistance. We had an enjoyable time discovering their innovative project and realizing together the beauty of iGEM : how synthetic biology projects can impact global problems. During the online meeting, we both presented our project, asked questions, and gave some feedback. This was also helpful for our presentation to see what points were essential for comprehending our project.

They also helped us envision our tool's actual application if coupled with theirs ! This collaboration was a real benefit for both teams. They also have a little mascot, Inspector Bubbles, but unfortunately, they missed the mascot collab. However, he needs some friends, so he is meeting with Oxa and Cass !

Antibiotic Resistance Collab

In June, we contacted numerous iGEM teams for a collab about antibiotic resistance. We wanted to ask them a few questions about antibiotic resistance, whether they knew what it was, why it is happening, and how to prevent it, fight it, ... For us, it was an excellent opportunity to disseminate our project and inform the teams about the scourge of antibiotic resistance, if this wasn't already the case. To our great surprise, the teams who responded to our collaboration proved to be almost experts on the subject, giving us different points of view, sometimes even ones we hadn't yet considered. We also hope this has enabled them to conduct further research into antibiotic resistance and thus help us in our prevention efforts.

Some of the questions we asked to the other teams :

Briefly introduce your team and your project.
Generally speaking, what do you know about antibiotic resistance? Do you know what it can cause?
Do you use antibiotics regularly? For which reasons?
What are the best ways to deal with antibiotics? What about fighting antibiotic resistance?
Do you think our current consumption habits have an impact on antibiotic consumption and the development of antibiotic resistance?
Do you think that new scientific tools need to be developed to fight this phenomenon?
Are you afraid of antibiotics? Do you trust them? Please develop.
Do you think antibiotics can be replaced? What are the alternatives? What do you see as their future?
Do you think patients are aware of the phenomenon of antibiotic resistance? Is it necessary to develop the social aspects and act on consumption to fight against the subject?
We let teams choose the format they wanted to answer, if they wanted to answer each question like an interview, or if they were more into answering some questions straight away. We asked them to film a short video, no more than 6/7 min of them talking about everything they wanted about antibioc resistance, questions were here only to helped them but some took another direction and told us things that we had not even considered, which was a real benefit for this collab ! We ended up with this mashup of all the videos. It’s a shame that we couldn’t include everything everyone said, because of a matter of time, but we still wanted the whole set of videos being accessible. That’s why we created this folder where you can watch complete videos of all teams and see how complete and complementary they all were. Thanks to this project, we managed to spot the essence of the cause and consequences of antibiotic resistance, and how the problem is seen in our society !

You can find bellow the 10 min mashup video of this incredible collab !

We would like to thank all the teams who participated for their incredible responses: iGEM Bulgaria, iGEM aix Marseille, iGEM Thrace, iGEM FCB-UANL, iGEM USP-EEL Brazil, iGEM Bochum, iGEM iisc, iGEM Gdansk, iGEM McGill and iGEM Erlangen !

The postcard project - iGEM Dusseldorf

In August, the Dusseldorf iGEM team contacted us, proposing the postcard project. What was the goal of this collab ? Each participating team had to design a cool visual in front of the postcard. It can be a drawing about iGEM, synthetic biology, or a team photo. For us, the answer was clear : we had to do something with Oxa and Cass ! We suggested this cute design of our two bacteria working together in the lab, experimenting and doing bioinformatics. We also wrote a short description of our project at the back and tried to make it as close as possible to a real postcard. We printed it out and sent it to iGEM Dusseldorf !

We unfortunatly did not recieve poscards from other teams, we hope that we will get them at the grand jamboree to learn more about their project !

The French Meet-Up - iGEM Toulouse & iGEM Nantes

On June 22nd and 23rd, we had the opportunity to participate in the French team meet-up organized by iGEM Nantes and iGEM Toulouse. We visited the INSA Toulouse campus, met all these wonderful teams for the first time, and talked about our projects !
Here is a little summary of the French Meet Up in Toulouse :

We started our afternoon by attending a conference proposed by the "Ecole Universitaire de Recherche BioEco."
Following that, we discussed about our project and discovered the other teams’ projects during a forum. We were able to see for ourselves the diversity, innovation and creativity of french projects. It was a great experience !
The next day, we competed in the mini Jamboree and presented our project in front of an audience for the first time. It was a great training, and a good experience to see the kind of question we could be asked and how to improve the clarity of our project.
Then, what better way to end this Meet-Up than a meal with the other teams ! We had a lot of fun !

In short, this meet-up was a great initiative to learn more about some innovative projects, to inspire us, and also was a good training for the Grand Jamboree. We look forward to November in Paris and seeing how far all those projects went !

Thanks again to the IGEM team of Nantes and Toulouse for organizing this fantastic event! And thanks to the other participating teams for this pleasant moment. And a big thanks for choosing us for the "People's Favorite" award !

South Leagues

The last collaboration we did was linked to the Education page. To gather diverse perspectives, we asked questions to individuals from Africa, South America, and Asia through iGEM Leagues and Slack. Answers from Mexico and China showed the importance of educating people worldwide about the problems associated with antibiotic resistance.

Other Collaborations

DNA Day - Patras med iGEM

DNA day is an annual celebration of the discovery of DNA on April the 25th. In this honor, the Patras med team did a little video to share what iGEM teams know about DNA and learn more about it.

We thank them for this cool opportunity !

Meeting iGEM Gdansk

Meeting iGEM Tsinghua

In february, we had the opportunity to meet the iGEM team Tsinghua from China. They came at our university to discuss with us about our project, and to meet former iGEMers from our previous team to get some advices. It was a pleasure to meet them and we were delighted to show them our university and our city.

They also thank us with a little gift from china !