Downloads

Wheel of fortune

To get peoples' attention, test their knowledge, and help them to learn something about Synthetic Biology we also built a small wheel of fortune combined with a quiz. Via this playful approach we introduced the sensitive topic of burn wounds and our project reSkin, which as a consequence drew a lot of interest. At the summer festival even the university's president visited our stall for some time and showed himself impressed.
Download questions

Wheel of fortune

We brought our project poster and talked a lot to university employees as well as other interested people about the possibilities of synthetic biology and our project reSkin.
Download poster

Aims and Learnings

One aim was to collect donations to buy the lab material our project required, but we mainly took the opportunity to present reSkin to professors and the university staff, a broad range of students, and all other kinds of interested persons. On the one hand we intended to broaden their knowledge on our particular topic, on the other hand these conversations taught us where to lay our focus when explaining reSkin to a non-expert audience.

Poster presentation & talks

During the general poster session, we also got the possibility to present the very first ideas of reSkin and to represent the iGEM competition at the University of Hamburg. Many students were really interested in our project and all the different aspects of iGEM. So maybe we will see some of them next year as the iGEM Team Hamburg 2025!
We were placed in one room together with the representatives of various companies giving us the perfect opportunity to network in between the poster sessions. They were all impressed by our works and we exchanged contacts.

Bouncing Bubbles

We represented the CSSB (Centre for Structural Systems Biology) and presented our team project and ourselves as Team iGEM Hamburg. We had a set-up where children of a young age could make their own non-bursting soap bubbles. With the help of water, soap and glycerine they were able to blow soap bubbles through a pipette. Furthermore, we produced a flyer to recreate the experiment at home where glycerine was replaced with sugar.

Learnings for Visitors

The children learned that the soap bubbles don't burst so quickly and that they can even touch them when wearing a cotton glove. Like this, they could bounce the bubbles on their hands.

Learnings for Team Hamburg

We learned to improvise with the ingredients for our bouncing bubbles and to explain scientific facts to children in a way they can understand.

The Crazy Hydrogel

We reinvented the family game "The Crazy Labyrinth" and thus introduced children, youths and adults to our research project in a playful way. The board of the game represented our hydrogel on which the players had to collect the correct items for their team.

Game instructions

There are 4 teams in total collecting components for their respective experiments: resilin, hyaluronic acid, active ingredients, and testing. Each team gets an explanation card in the beginning: The experiment components are the objects that have to be collected on the board. The card tells each team which ones they have to collect and gives further information on each component. After the teams have found every item, they can collect a crosslink for extra points.
On the board there are fixed parts and mobile parts: The teams try to reach their items following open paths with their gaming piece and also take it in turn to move the mobile board part (which keeps changing the paths of the game). The first one to collect every item ends the game; the winner is the team with most points.

Learnings for Visitors

The players gained information about the four playing teams based on our project: quality tests, active ingredients, hyaluronic acid and resilin. By playing the game, they became familiar with our project and learned what each item is for and how it is being used for reSkin.

Learnings for Team Hamburg

Presenting our version of the game and our project at the Science City Day allowed us not only to have fun, but also to carry out scientific experiments in a child-friendly way and to answer questions of experts as well as non-experts about our work. Both our stations turned out a success, so our participation on Science City Day as iGEM Team Hamburg and reSkin will stay in people’s mind.

Organization of the BFH European Meetup

Unite. Innovate. Inspire.
This was the motto of the first ever BFH European Meetup. BFH - the collaboration of iGEM Bielefeld, Frankfurt and Hamburg has its origin in 2023. After bonding over several meetups and ultimately in Paris, some team members of the respective teams decided to establish an event set to be in the name of collaboration and communication. So beyond being advisors and instructors of the new iGEM teams of the 2024 competition, we gathered to host an European Meetup in Bielefeld. And this was just the beginning of a fruitful collaboration having the potential to become a long tradition of meetups. Here, I invite you to read about the BFH collaboration, its origin, its mission and the first meetup hosted in Bielefeld in May of 2024.

The BFH committee of 2024

How does it come that iGEMers who just finished their own iGEM competition not even half a year prior come together and organize a whole meetup?
Several members of the 2023 iGEM teams of Bielefeld, Frankfurt and Hamburg met last year at the European Meetup in Münster. After knowing each other for only three days, they made close connections with each other and already made jokes about organizing their own event.
Time flew by and the jokes became reality. The Grand Jamboree passed, everybody bonded even more and it held true what they always say: “Once an iGEMer, always an iGEMer”. All members of the friend group became part of new iGEM teams at their universities and stayed in close contact. In the beginning of 2024, the strong friendship that formed, mixed with being workaholics and always wanting to do more, lead to representatives of all three teams sitting together and starting to establish the BFH collaboration.
So who are we?
The BFH committee is lead by one representatives of each team:

1. Sinan Zimmermann - former team lead of iGEM Bielefeld 2023 and Instructor of iGEM Bielefeld 2024. Being part of the hosting team, he was the head of the BFH committee.
2. Olivia Mozolewska - former team lead of iGEM Frankfurt 2023 and advisor of iGEM Frankfurt 2024.
3. Lisa Siemers - former team lead of iGEM Hamburg 2023 and advisor of iGEM Hamburg 2024.

The BFH committee together with special guest Nemanja Stijepovic. (left to right: Nemanja Stijepovic, Olivia Mozolewska, Lisa Siemers, Sinan Zimmermann)

• Lennert Weber (advisor of iGEM Hamburg 2024), Andrea Köthe (advisor of iGEM Hamburg 2024), Malcolm Rose (advisor of iGEM Hamburg 2024), Christian Kolland (advisor of iGEM Frankfurt 2024) and of course the whole iGEM Bielefeld team of 2024 who exceeded all of our expectations for planning this amazing event!

BFH mission

Meetups are an essential part of forming the iGEM community and offer a platform of exchanging ideas and enthusiasm.
As the BFH committee, we quickly decided on hosting a meetup early in the iGEM season. At the time the meetup would happen, most of the projects would just have been settled and slowly getting started to work on. So barely any team already started working in the lab.
But why should a meetup be held so early if no team can show any results?
Because this is the perfect time to get feedback and advice from other students and professionals to avoid major mistakes and running into dead ends from the get go. Even before starting to actually work in the lab is the right moment to get valuable thoughts on the project and how it could be shaped to better fit into the context of iGEM and Synthetic Biology.
Besides that, teams were able to get first practice in presenting their work with posters and presentations. In workshops they have the chance to learn basic concepts that still could be applied throughout the whole project and are important in the context of the iGEM competition.
Thus, an early meetup, being rare in iGEM, is the perfect complementary addition to all the nicely organized meetups late in the season where teams then can show how they developed and what results they got. This also presents a good starting point you can compare to later and see what you achieved.

Vision for BFH

The BFH collaboration had its initial start in 2024 but this will only be the start of a long lived tradition. The vision is to have a BFH European Meetup every year early in the season with the location alternating between Bielefeld (hosts of 2024), Frankfurt (hosts of 2025) and Hamburg (hosts of 2026) and then start over again. The BFH committee will be composed of members of all three teams for all of the upcoming meetups.

The 2024 BFH European Meetup in Bielefeld

We aimed to combine several aspects of iGEM with our program that are essential in the early phases of the projects. Reaching from presentations, live talks and panel discussions to attending workshops and socializing.

1. Scientific talks.
   A fundamental part of every meetup or conference in general are scientific talks. We invited experienced scientists and stakeholders to present recent advances in the field of Synthetic Biology.
2. Socializing activities.
   Forming a strong community is the heart of iGEM. Thus, we were very determined to create an atmosphere to connect with each other beyond science. We provided dinner combined with sport activities and self crafted beer for the first night and hosted a party in a privately booked location on the second night.
   We also fully planned the so-called “Lab-Olympics” for the attendees to compete with each other, but unfortunately did not get to actually do them due to time constraints that day.
3. Workshops.
   We had several workshop opportunities in our program including an introduction to coding the Wiki, learning more about biosafety, understanding how to represent yourself through multi media, pitching a project, how to do science communication and how to use the platform Kernel by Asimov. In these workshops participants gained important knowledge to use throughout their project.
4. Presentations.
   It is impossible to count how often iGEM teams have to present themselves and their project throughout the year. In Human Practices and Education activities, for sponsoring purposes or at big events, especially at the Grand Jamboree: teams have to give presentations every time they want to introduce themselves and display their project from the best side. Thus, we wanted to give the opportunity to practice doing so early in the season. The team members learned what parts of the project they should focus on when presenting their work and gained first experience to do so in iGEM.
   Every team held a ten minute long presentation about their project idea followed by five minutes dedicated to question from the audience.
5. Poster Session.
   The five minutes of discussion often weren't enough to truly discuss the project ideas. With the following poster session on the same day, we opened the room to dive in deeper into the topic. We also invited stakeholders of the Life Science industry to have a booth during the poster session. Thus, the iGEM teams had the possibility to learn about products that could help their lab work and to connect with potential new sponsors.
6. Judging.
   Presenting an idea is most effective when getting valuable feedback afterwards. We wanted to create the opportunity to not only get the feedback of other iGEMers but also from experienced iGEMers, academics and industry representatives. We invited a panel of judges to give detailed feedback on the presentations, the posters and the project idea. The feedback was forwarded to the teams afterwards to allow them to implement the feedback into their project.
7. Panel Discussion.
   At the Grand Jamboree, many panel discussions will take place all day. Sadly, we noticed that not many people attended these last year. To introduce the new iGEMers to the concept of these discussions and how fruitful they can be, we held a panel discussion with people who are deeply connected to the iGEM competition like Nemanja Stijepovic, CEO of iGEM HQ Paris.

Group picture with all attendees of the BFH European Meetup 2024 in Bielefeld.

Thanks again to all of our sponsors that allowed us to have such a nice event.
Thanks to everyone participated in the planning and realization of the meetup!
And thanks to everyone attending our first trial of planning such an event. It was a pleasure to meet y'all!

Challenge working with young children

We set up five different stations, and the children were given a stamp card. After completing each station, the children received a stamp. The stations meant that the learning group was smaller, and we could respond more to the needs of the individual children. It was important that the children did the stations voluntarily, as they have different learning capacities depending on their age. It was, therefore, up to the children to decide which stations they wanted to complete and whether they completed all of them. The social education worker and kindergarten manager, Maike Bärmann, checked all learning content for suitability beforehand, and her feedback was implemented. After the puppet show, we all had breakfast together so the children would lose their shyness and dare to approach us at the stations and ask us their questions. The children quickly gathered the courage to talk to us at breakfast and were very excited about what would happen next. We were also really looking forward to spending the morning with the children, and it was great that the children were so pleased that we were there to teach them new things.

Puppet show

As an introduction, we started the research day with a concept the children would inspire: a puppet theater. Our self-written puppet show with the princess and the crocodile was chosen as an age-appropriate method of conveying learning content excitingly and understandably. The take-home message of the show was that bacteria are part of our everyday lives, both the "good" and the "bad" ones. Playfully, the children learned what skills bacteria can have and how important hygiene is. The children were really enthusiastic about the story and laughed a lot, but they were also super quiet because they didn't want to miss anything and were curious to see how the story continued. Also, the kindergarten employees were enthusiastic about the puppet show and would recommend it to future iGEM teams. You are welcome to download the script of our self-written puppet show in German and English.

Kneading Hydrogels

To illustrate the principle and structure of our reSkin hydrogel to the children, we taught them to knead their own hydrogels alone or in groups. This helped the children understand that a hydrogel is a three-dimensional network of various long components linked together and that smaller components can fit into the gaps in the network and even move freely. The kids had a lot of fun kneading their own hydrogel and were incredibly creative with their crosslinks.

Microscopy

At the self-crafted, children friendly microscopy station, the children discovered three different strains of bacteria in a safe way: *Escherichia coli*, Lactobacillus and Streptococcus. They were very curious and wanted to find out what the bacteria do and whether they are good or bad. This is an easily adaptable way of showing children all the microscopic things they cannot see with their bare eyes. We experienced that it is an excellent method to show that there is more to discover for them.

Enzyme Puzzle

To help the children understand the abstract principle of how enzymes work, we chose the four salivary enzymes: amylase, lipase, peroxidase, and lysozyme. The children assigned the substrates to the enzymes and puzzled them together. They learned about the functions of the individual enzymes and why they are essential for us.

Showing the enzyme-substrate mechanism as a puzzle turns out to be a great idea because the kids could try themselves if the different substrates can fit in the active center of the several enzymes. So, the kids rapidly understood the principle, and the older children were so thrilled that they wanted to puzzle more enzymes and substrates together than the four ones we prepared. The kids loved that they have these enzymes in their saliva, helping them with digestion or as protection against viruses and bacteria. They were excited to learn more about enzymes and to see if there are other enzymes in our bodies.

Painting Bacteria

The children could choose from various coloring pictures we had created and color them in. The pictures had different difficulty levels, allowing the children to be creative while learning about the different shapes of bacteria. This was an ideal station for the calmer kids because they could take their time and be artistically active.

Bouncing Bubbles

To provide some balance to the theoretical input, we also wanted to have a more active station. Therefore, we decided to offer the bouncing bubbles station again because the kids at Science City Day loved it so much. Bouncing bubbles are soap bubbles that can bounce on your hand if you wear cotton gloves without bursting. With the bouncing bubbles, the children could playfully learn and experience what surface tension means and how strong but also sensitive it is.

Feedback

All but two children visited all the stations, and some children were even so enthusiastic that they did the stations twice and wanted to show us what they had learned. Some children enjoyed it so much that they want to become scientists too. The children particularly liked the hydrogel kneading and the bouncing bubbles station. The painting station and the enzyme puzzle station were also very popular with the children. The children also enjoyed the microscopy station, but in comparison, they liked the other stations even better because they could actively do something there.

Conclusion

With our Kindergarten Science Day, we successfully demonstrated that even very young children can understand our project idea. We encouraged the children's curiosity for science and showed them at an early age that science is definitely something for women and girls, regardless of gender. The children learned that science is great fun and that teamwork is essential. This day was an excellent highlight for everyone involved: the children, the kindergarten employees, and us Education Team members. It was an exceptional day we will all remember for a long time.

Schedule

Getting to know each other

A total of 12 students from the ages of 12 to 16 took part in the Science Day. The day started with an ice-breaker game for the students to get to know each other and us, in order to create a relaxed atmosphere in which they felt comfortable asking questions. The children had different levels of knowledge, so later in the day we made sure to give the younger students extra guidance and explain complex topics in a simplified manner. Meanwhile, the older students were provided with some extra information.

Introduction: What is DNA?

In order to find out the exact level of the students' knowledge, the introduction was structured interactively. Together we worked out the structure of a cell before moving on to the dogma of biochemistry. It was important that the students understood the concept of DNA as the carrier of our genetic information. The function and structure of DNA, its division into genes and its condensation in the nucleus were discussed. The processes of transcription and translation in protein biosynthesis were then explained to the students and the various functions of proteins were worked out with them. The students participated enthusiastically, asking questions whenever they were unsure about something or wanted to find out more about a topic they were particularly interested in.

Preparatory discussion for the experiment: Extraction of Genomic DNA From Tomato Pulp

Before working in the lab, the students were given a safety briefing on how to behave in the lab and how to handle hazardous situations and chemicals. They were also introduced to the first experiment, which involved extracting genomic DNA from tomato pulp. This experiment was very effective for explaining the concept of DNA, as the DNA, which is not normally visible to us, could be rolled up with a toothpick after being precipitated. Each step of the experiment was discussed with the students so that they could get straight into the lab and any uncertainties were eliminated.

Experiment 1: Extraction of Genomic DNA From the Tomato Pulp

Equipped with lab coats, the students entered the laboratory. For most of them it was their first experience in a research lab, while some were familiar with the lab environment from other activities offered by the Student Research Centre. For all of them, however, working with a mechanical pipette was new. After a short introduction on how to use the pipettes, the students had to carry out pipetting exercises where they had to pipette different volumes into tubes.
The students were divided into two groups for the experiment, ensuring that the students had a similar level of knowledge to allow for good supervision. Each step was carried out together and we looked over the students' shoulders as they worked. Throughout the experiment, the students were focused and eager to learn, so the isolation of DNA was successful for all of them.

After a break, a short debriefing session was held to clarify any remaining questions and to summarise the results. Questions were asked about the process of DNA precipitation, the use of certain chemicals and other ways of isolating DNA without having to precipitate it.

Introduction: Genetic Engineering and Transformation Techniques

Having taught students about plant cells and the genomic DNA they contain, this lecture focused on plasmids. Students were taught about how plasmids can be used as vectors for insertion of a gene of interest. Students were then told that these plasmids can be transferred into bacteria through a process called transformation, so that the gene of interest can then be expressed as a protein. Finally, the students learned about genetically modified organisms in terms of transient and stable expression.

Preparatory discussion for the experiment: Agroinfiltration of tobacco plants

The students were then instructed to carry out one of the transformation methods presented. For this experiment, we chose agroinfiltration, which is a transformation method for introducing your gene of interest, placed in a Ti plasmid, into plant cells with the Agrobacterium thumefaciens. Before the experiment was carried out, there was another preliminary discussion on the principle of agroinfiltration. The experiment was well suited to illustrate how a survival process of agrobacteria in nature can be used for experiments in the laboratory. Since working with agrobacteria (S2) was not possible in the laboratories of the Student Research Center for safety reasons and the students were still too young, the agrobacteria were replaced by water.

Experiment 2: Agroinfiltration of tobacco plants

As working with S2 bacteria is considered to be hazardous, it was not carried out in the laboratory. Equipped with a syringe, water and a tobacco plant, the students simulated the agroinfiltration instead. They eagerly injected water into the underside of the leaves of the tobacco plants and curiously watched as the liquid spread through the leaves.

After the experiment, a short debriefing session was held to summarize the experiment. It was discussed what can be introduced into plant cells by agroinfiltration. Additionally, images taken with a confocal microscope were used to illustrate the principle of GFP fusion proteins, and how the fluorescence of GFP enables localisation studies of proteins within cells.

Q&A session

After the theoretical input and practical application in the lab, the students had time to review the day and ask us questions. Questions about the lectures and experiments, as well as questions about other areas of science that the students were interested in, were answered and discussed. The iGEM team members present on the day are currently studying Biology or Molecular Life Sciences at Bachelor's or Master's level, so we gave the students the opportunity to ask us about our university courses. The students, especially those in the senior classes, were very interested in how we decided on our degree program, how it is structured and how difficult the exams are compared to exams in school.

Feedback

At the end of the Science Day, students wrote their feedback anonymously on post-it notes and assigned their feedback to the categories 'I liked it/ I learnt something new', 'It was ok. I didn't learn anything new' and 'I didn't like it'. According to the evaluations, almost all students were very satisfied with the Science Day. For some of the older students, the theoretical part was more of a refresher of what they already knew, which is why they particularly enjoyed the laboratory experiments. All in all, our aim to give students a basic understanding of Synthetic Biology and enrich their laboratory experience was therefore successful.

Conclusion

We were very happy with the positive feedback from the students and have gained a wide range of insights for possible future workshops with teenagers. To ensure that the students will not be overwhelmed or bored, it is important that all the students are at a similar level of knowledge, so an entrance test would be a great a way of checking how much they already know about each topic. The age range of 12-17 years and the associated differences in subject knowledge has made it more challenging for us to respond to the needs of the students and to support them. Nevertheless, the day went off without any difficulties. The students had a great time and everyone gained new knowledge and new experiences in the laboratory. We were very pleased with the outcome of the day and our contribution to getting students excited about science.

Collaboration

We collaborated with the Schülerforschungszentrum in Hamburg again as they have new facilities varying from a laboratory to a wood workshop. We share the same goal as they give young students a place to develop new ideas and projects and support their curiosity.

Activities

With our different stations we wanted to let the children explore the fun of science while playfully explaining different scientific aspects and possibilities.

Bouncing Bubbles: Children were able to make bubbles that do not burst when touched with a cotton glove, showing that science is fun and can be easily made at home (you can find the recipe and description here). We explained the phenomenon of surface tension depending on the age.

Natural crafting: By tinkering colourful dragonflies out of natural materials we wanted to show what’s possible to create with compounds from mother nature. From just a crafts project to a whole science project that could improve the treatment methods for burn wounds.

Microscopy: For the smallest ones we reused the microscopes out of cardboard. They could explore different pictures of bacteria and see what our micro-world looks like.

The crazy hydrogel: With our reSkin board game also smaller children were encouraged to learn something about our project by collecting the different icons needed for our project step-by-step with a child-friendly explanation. (Click here for download)

Exploring the laboratories: The Schülerforschungszentrum showed the families around in their facilities so they can get an insight into work environment of scientists.

Our project: We brought our project poster and talked a lot to the parents and older teens about the possibilities of synthetic biology and our project reSkin. (Click here for download)

Take-aways and feedback

It was a lot of fun interacting with all the different age groups. For each one we tried to explain it as fitting as possible and most of them were really curious. Especially the parents were really interested in our project and very thrilled to see what is possible with Synthetic Biology. We spread knowledge to the parents how dangerous burn wounds are and brought attention to the children about burning.
The children had a lot of fun making beautiful and colourful dragonflies from natural materials. They learned that they could use different things from nature to make a new, more complex one. We used this to explain that we do the same in our project. We take one natural protein and build a new complex structure. This way even the smallest children understood the concept of Synthetic Biology and our project.
The families had a lot of fun and with our different stations as everyone was actively learning something about science in general and our project. When some children left, they said “I also want to be a scientist someday!”.

The Magazine

BIOspektrum is a German magazine covering various topics in the field of Life Sciences: current news about advances and awards and gives market overviews and has a broad audience from different Life Science fields and stakeholders. It constitutes an excellent means for any individual with an interest in science to remain informed and to acquire new knowledge.
Here, we as iGEM Team Hamburg 2024, among several other German iGEM teams, have written an article about our respective iGEM project. The individual short articles were listed under the section 'Careers, Minds & Concepts'. Read the German version here.

Benefits for us

The BIOspektrum article allowed us to present our research to the general, science enthusiastic public. We were not only able to present our project and highlight the associated problems, but also familiarise people with the iGEM competition. It was emphasised that iGEM (international Genetically Engineered Machines) is the world's largest competition in the field of Synthetic Biology and that the individual teams are looking for different topics and solutions to the world's problems with which they will compete at the Grand Jamboree in Paris at the end of October. Of course, it has its advantages - it serves as advertising on the one hand and as education and information for many people on the other.

Aims and learnings - we are more than just scientists

Science is so much more than just standing in a laboratory. I think we students all realised that after taking part in the iGEM competition. We have not only learned to collect creative ideas, conduct scientific research and carry out experiments, we have also exchanged knowledge with many experts, shown public commitment and tried to make our topic more accessible to people and explain it in a simplified way. The word science communication is an important factor here. Besides that, writing the article was not only a good exercise for our wiki website, but also practised general academic writing.

Our motivation

To gain participants and support, iGEM needs to be visible. By giving an interview for the newsroom of the University of Hamburg, we hope to reach attention of students and especially university staff. As our university so generously supported us this year, we hope that we created a strong foundation for further cooperations.

Feedback

Our article will be online before the Grand Jamboree, and we will do another interview and article about the Jamboree. We hope to inspire students to think outside the box and challenge themselves.