University training site, High school participation and the JAMBORÉ

Synthetic Biology Trainee

This year, members of the 2013 iGEM team did molecular biology and genetic engineering training for new members of iGEM 2014 during two weeks. The goal was not only to teach techniques of genetic engineering but also make synthetic biology and explores how it is in the iGEM competition. Utilizing the idea of integrating synthetic biology and explain this new science, during lessons, examples of other teams projects were presented to show how the experimental part was made and for what purpose. But wasn’t a common training class…other students, technicians ad professors took part on that making the UFAM-Brazil and the iGEM known in the Genetics department, that was a hack of experience!

Short Term Course

We did give some lectures that preceded the short term course in order to make the new members more familiar with the subject, and then, be able to interpret results and try to biologically explain their doubts during the experimental part. The classes were based on the main stages of the project design by exploring some techniques such as bacterial transformation, plasmidial expression, enzymatic digestion, purification, vectors ligation, PCR, preparation of solutions and culture media, electrophoretic profile analysis and preparation of competent cells.

Community integration

We also conducted, as part of human practice, the integration of our team with the school community. Some members of our team traveled to a country town called Iranduba, where most of the citizens are riverside communities, the ones who more directly lead with contaminated waters. We gave presentations about our project MercuryBacter, and we could explain about the mercury contamination problems and also the benefits of our project. Consequently, we discussed about basic concepts facing synthetic biology area as well as synthetic biology innovations in other to arouse interest in the students in an integrated, intuitive and playful way.

Manaus-Iranduba Bridge

"Jamboré", a "brazificated" Jamboree

This year we had the most expressive Brazil’s participation in iGEM. Four teams representing three distinct Brazilian regions. Two teams from southeast, one from northeast and our from north (Amazon). We all had a perception we couldn’t miss the opportunity here! People from Brazil-SP team repeated this year what was a pilot last year, the "Jamboré", a "brazificated" Jamboree. We got together and we were in iGEM’s Jamboree mood hight there in São Paulo. For us was more than 2 thousand miles to go there, but we did it and enjoyed it!

The whole buzz took place in August 1^st 2014, Brazilian teams participating in IGEM competition decided to hold a meeting to introduce their projects, discuss new ideas and strategies, assist in the development of projects and clarify general doubts regarding competition.

The meeting was so constructive! All projects were very interesting, it was very nice to see that all teams have the same day-by-day difficulties in lab, and in other to overcome these barriers, we exchanged tips and protocols. Another really cool part was hearing from different teams brilliant opinions on each project and see that each team had a little to add on other projects, making the small failures easier to be resolved. Anyway the meeting was super relaxing and constructive just like IGEM way of being! And to finish with a flourish, we played many games, accompanied by beer and fries. :)

There are some records from this great meeting! Check it here