Learn about the various ways our team went beyond the lab!
This summer our team engaged in many conversations about our work to discuss its impacts with a broad range of audiences. Our primary goal was both to communicate the basic principles of our project to a broader audience to introduce them to the field of synthetic biology and to hear from a diverse group of audiences ways in which our project could be altered to best suit their needs.
Our project began early when we participated in Princeton Research Day on May 11, 2023. Even though we hadn't started experimental work at that point, we were eager to explain our project's background. The result? We won the Orange and Black prize, given to presentations that score the highest in the combined video + Showcase presentation category among all submissions. Many people we interacted with were enthusiastic about our project and intrigued by the idea of enabling communication between bacteria and mammalian cells. At this stage of our project, we had a general direction about what we wanted to accomplish (InterKingdom Communication) but were uncertain about its practical applications. Questions from the general audience about specific application uses prompted us to delve deeper into potential applications for our project.
These questions became a central focus of our interest grant application. We began looking into ways in which our technology had potential to make a difference and quickly found our gap in the field of bacteria immunotherapy.
In the middle of our summer, we had an opportunity to meet with a member of the UPenn 2022 Team. During this meeting, we discussed how she and some new team members were advancing the PhotoCrete project. We also took the opportunity to explain the current stage of our project and the potential applications we envisioned for it. Feedback from a graduate mentor on their team, David Gonzalez-Martinez as was UPenn PI Lukasz Bugaj prompted us to think more critically about our project's applications. Instead of being seen as an alternative to CAR-T therapy, as we mentioned in our Impact Grant Application, he suggested that it could complement CAR-T therapy, potentially leading to more effective treatments.
We presented our work in progress to members of the Toettcher Lab at Princeton University. Lab members provided feedback on experimental protocols, particularly for the secretion team, and offered suggestions for data visualization and experimental design.
We showcased a portion of our experimental results at Princeton's Summer Research poster presentation, which was hosted as part of the newly established BioEngineering Initiative. As members of the inaugural BioEngineering Cohort, our presentation played a pivotal role in broadening the reach of Synthetic Biology within the Princeton campus community. Our presentation not only served as a platform to share our project's findings but also contributed to the growth and recognition of the emerging field of BioEngineering at Princeton.
To engage with other iGEM Teams, we conducted a virtual version of our biosecurity simulation where we invited other teams to participate.
