Medals Criteria
Bronze medal
| Criterium | Description |
|---|---|
| Competition deliverables |
We successfully succeeded in submitting all the required deliverables: Wiki, Project promotion video, Project presentation video, Judging form.
We will gladly and eagerly participate in the Judging session during the Grand Jamboree. Click to see:
|
| Project attributions |
On the attribution page of our Wiki, we have included a detailed
description of the roles and tasks carried out by all the members
of our team during this project. Throughout our project, we received
lots of support from our instructors, PI, and external collaborators.
In this section, we show our appreciation for their contribution to our project.
Click to see Team Attribution |
| Project description |
In this section, we described the problematic issue that we decided to tackle
and that drove us to realize this project. We've explained how we came up with the
main ideas for our project. Reading this part will help you understand the important
principles that form the basis of our project, such as how we intend to engineer the biofilm
by adding components that specifically bind different plastic polymers, and why it is important
to act on the issue of microplastics pollution.
Click to see Project Description |
| Contribution |
As a contribution to future generations of iGEM Teams, we have made available the strain in which we
have removed the Csg operon from the genome. This contribution could make it possible, for those interested,
to carry out projects completely controlling the production of Curli fibers using plasmids and without having
to worry about the possible influence of the genomic Csg normally present in E. coli. In addition to this, we
have also made the protocol and primers available for those who wish to repeat the gene deletion on their
bacterial strain.
Click to see Project Contribution |
Silver medal
| Criterium | Description |
|---|---|
| Engineering success |
During our months in the lab, we went through several cycles of design, build, test and learn.
These cycles include, for example, the following projects; the insertion of the rubber binding
domain and the cloning of different plastic peptides. During these cycles, we were able to exercise
our troubleshooting skills to solve the problems that presented themselves and look for alternative
ways to achieve satisfactory results.
Click to see Engineering |
| Human practices |
We conducted several interviews with various contributors who are directly involved in preserving
the waters of Lake Geneva, such as ASL (Association pour la Sauvegarde du Léman) and Oceaneye.
These interviews allowed us to better understand the seriousness of the microplastic situation in
our region and helped to shape our project towards microplastics capturing as well as inspired our project
implementation. We also undertook a journey in search of possible real-life applications of our project
with the help of the wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) in Morges and the company DePoly.
Click to see: |
Gold medal
| Criterium | Description |
|---|---|
| Measurement |
During our project, we developed an assay to measure the capacity of biofilm to capture microplastics.
We wrote a detailed protocol that explains step by step how to obtain biofilms in the laboratory,
and how to measure the amount of biofilm that has grown and that could ideally capture microplastics.
In addition to this, we performed an assessment of the amount of microplastics that can be trapped within
a biofilm and our results clearly showed that a bacteria that can generate a biofilm is able to capture
significantly more particles than a bacteria that cannot form a biofilm.
Click to see: |
| Education |
We decided to raise awareness and educate more age groups of the population about the problem of microplastics.
For this reason, we have developed activities and educational material for children, teenagers and adults such as
a board game, an awareness day in a secondary school and a poster exhibition in the Lausanne aquarium.
Click to see our work for Education |
| Integrated Human Practices |
We were very inspired by our interviews with Bernd Nowack, the WWTP of Morges and Oceaneye.
We received positive and constructive feedback that allowed us to better tailor our project
to suit real-life challenges in microplastic pollution. Following these interviews, we decided
to expand our project by adding peptides to improve the capture of the most frequent plastic
polymers and the Rubber-binding domain to trap tire particles.
Click here to see our work for Integrated human practices |