Team:Oxford/MedalFulfilment

Bronze Medal Requirements:

• Team registration.
  Team is registered!
• Team Wiki.
  Our wiki is up! While designing and building our wiki from scratch, we kept in mind ways to facilitate future iGEM teams' web development. This page layout is therefore easily replicable, while allowing for lots of functionality - take a look at our source code and see for yourself!
• Present a poster and a talk at the iGEM Jamboree.
  Poster ready to go!
• The description of each project must clearly attribute work done by the students and distinguish it from work done by others, including host labs, advisors, instructors, sponsors, professional website designers, artists, and commercial services.
  See our attributions here!
• Document at least one new standard BioBrick Part or Device used in your project/central to your project and submit this part to the iGEM Registry.
  See our parts here!

Silver Medal Requirements: In addition to the Bronze Medal requirements,

• Experimentally validate that at least one new BioBrick Part or Device of your own design and construction works as expected.
  See our Parts page and Lab book .pdf!
• Document the characterization of this part in the “Main Page” section of that Part’s/Device’s Registry entry.
  See our parts here!
• Submit this new part to the iGEM Parts Registry (submissions must adhere to the iGEM Registry guidelines).
  See our parts here!
• iGEM projects involve important questions beyond the bench, for example relating to (but not limited to) ethics, sustainability, social justice, safety, security, or intellectual property rights. Articulate at least one question encountered by your team, and describe how your team considered the(se) question(s) within your project. Include attributions to all experts and stakeholders consulted.
  The primary question researched by our team was very broad; How can an iGEM project change the real world? This allowed us to explore a huge range of different areas, from safety to intellectual property right to public opinion, all of which contribute to the success of a synthetic biology project outside of the lab. Our team considered these by consulting with parties affected by these issues, including the Environment Agency, iGEM start-up companies, and members of the public (including full attributions to all experts and stake-holders who assisted us) to gain an insight into the problems which might hold back syn bio solutions from implementation in society. We used this information together with our own experiences to think about how these potential road blocks can be successfully navigated, by the syn bio community and by society as a whole.

Gold Medal Requirements: In addition to the Bronze and Silver Medal requirements,

• Improve the function OR characterization of an existing BioBrick Part or Device (created by another team or your own institution in a previous year), enter this information in the Registry.
  Poster ready to go!
• Help any registered iGEM team from another school or institution by, for example, characterizing a part, debugging a construct, or modeling or simulating their system.
  We have collaborated with several iGEM teams, most notably Melbourne iGEM team. We worked with them extensively to consider an alternative approach to our bioremediation system using their star peptide instead of the micro-compartments that we'd previously considered.
  
  Our engineers extensively modelled their system using stochastic simlation with the intention of investigating how reaction rates are improved using the star peptide. More information is available here:
  
  Collaboration with the Melbourne iGEM team.
• iGEM projects involve important questions beyond the bench, for example relating to (but not limited to) ethics, sustainability, social justice, safety, security, or intellectual property rights. Describe an approach that your team used to address at least one of these questions. Evaluate your approach, including whether it allowed you to answer your question(s), how it influenced the team’s scientific project, and how it might be adapted for others to use (within and beyond iGEM).
  Our team researched how factors beyond the bench can impact the potential of an iGEM project and more broadly synthetic biology to make a positive real world impact. After realising that bioremediation of chlorinated solvents had potential not just as an iGEM project but as a solution to the pollution faced by the Environment Agency, we decided to investigate: How can an iGEM Project change the real world? Our broad approach allowed us to explore many areas as facets of this question, including intellectual property, practicality (including safety), and public participation. The result was a far-reaching Policy and Practices project which impacted on almost all aspects of the scientific project and addressed a question of interest central interest to our scientists and hopefully to other iGEM teams! Our research into Intellectual Property policy strongly influenced our decision to encourage other iGEM teams to use our novel ‘BioBead’ containment system; our research into safety drove the design of the DCMation prototype; our research into the environmental problems posed by chlorinated solvents has constantly guided all aspects of the scientific project. We hope our approach will encourage others to consider the non-scientific factors which impact the success of their project, to take these seriously, and to realise just how much good an iGEM project really can do!
  See our Policy and Practices page for details on our approach, evaluation and its influence on our project.