At SkinBait, we believe that iGEM is not just about the project you develop in the lab; it’s about the impact your work has on society. It’s about using your ideas to improve lives and demonstrating how a small group of committed individuals, driven by a clear vision, can initiate positive changes that lead to meaningful benefits for their community. Guided by these values and dedicated to our project, we aimed to make a positive impact in as many areas as possible. We understand that teams like ours often face a variety of challenges throughout their projects, and we hope that our contributions can serve as valuable resources to support and inspire others to further advance their ideas.
This is why we have created diverse resources targeting multiple areas, aiming to offer something unique to the competition. Our contributions include guidance on entrepreneurship and navigating patents, an efficient approach to organizing and tracking the progress of an iGEM team using Notion, the development of optimized Cry toxins tailored for the novel chassis Cutibacterium acnes, a visual guide for identifying C. acnes and detecting Staphylococcus contamination on plates, downloadable educational materials for children that teach science in a fun and engaging way, and a set of infectious disease models that can help gain insight on real-world impact.
A core focus of our project was the creation of new genetic parts that could be combined to develop innovative treatments for skin-related infectious diseases. To this end, we performed codon optimization specifically for Cutibacterium acnes and designed 21 new parts, including promoters, coding sequences, and other elements to enable the production of a therapeutic lotion containing toxins targeting these infectious agents. Additionally, we incorporated regulatory components to ensure precise control over treatment administration.
Detailed descriptions of these parts—including their sequence lengths, composition, and links to their corresponding entries in the registry—can be found in the Project Parts section.
After working through all these months with C. acnes we encountered many difficulties regarding plate contamination with Staphylococcus, which cost us nearly 2 months of transformations because of it. These months of hard work and obstacle findings were the precursors of planning a methodology that could help us as a team while also being useful to other IGEM Teams with the same objectives.
Guided by this motivation we designed and created a poster with some guidance for those Teams like us who may find struggling into differentiating Staphylococcus and C. acnes. This poster contains shape, size, texture and more guidance to help differentiate between these two types of cultures. Despite that we also highly recommend using some other alternative to classify the colonies and we designed this poster to have some kind of reference when working with this peculiar chassis.
To effectively manage tasks and track progress, we used the SCRUM method, an agile project management framework that breaks work into short, focused cycles called sprints. Each sprint lasts 1–4 weeks, with specific goals, and ends with a review to assess progress and identify improvements. Daily stand-up meetings ensure team communication, and tasks are prioritized based on the sprint’s objectives.
For iGEM, SCRUM helped us organize our project across different sub-teams (wet lab, dry lab, human practices, etc.) by setting clear goals, monitoring progress, and adapting quickly to challenges. We created sprint backlogs to assign and track tasks and held regular reviews to improve team efficiency.
To implement SCRUM, we designed a Notion template that organizes sprints, tasks, and progress tracking. It includes sprint planning boards, task progress trackers, team calendars, and centralized documentation.
We share this template as a resource for future iGEM teams to easily adopt SCRUM, enhance teamwork, and stay organized throughout their project.
This is the question we asked ourselves at the very beginning when we already had a clear idea of what our project was going to be. Since it was an original idea, there was a possibility of patenting it, so we decided to learn about patents both for practical reasons and out of curiosity. We enter into the world of intellectual property.
During our training on the subject, we decided to attend the conference organized by Pompeu Fabra University on the occasion of Intellectual Property Day, where, in addition to making various contacts who are experts in the field and have extensive experience in the world of patents, we had the opportunity to conduct several interviews.
Meeting with speaker Cinta Díez, PhD, Investment Analys of Invivo Partners, offered guidance on market strategy, funding, and improving our sales pitch, while she encouraged us to enhance our project's innovation. On the other hand, our meeting with Sergi Bonilla, from Tech Transfer UPF, helped us understand the essentials of patenting, funding opportunities, and managing IP confidentiality. These experiences informed our iGEM project strategies, improving IP integration and stakeholder engagement.
Although we ultimately decided not to proceed with patenting our idea, we believe it is useful to outline the steps with a guide that future iGEM teams should follow if they wish to patent their project. At the beginning of the project, we felt uncertainty and a lack of knowledge about the field of intellectual property; since we believe that other teams may have the same question.
The SkinBAIT team is deeply committed to promoting science education and creating engaging ways to make synthetic biology accessible to everyone. With a strong focus on breaking down the stigma surrounding skin-related infectious diseases, we have developed a series of educational tools designed to captivate and inform. These resources include a coloring book, a storybook, and a card game—all tailored to provide a fun and approachable introduction to science for diverse audiences.
These resources have been tailored for different audiences and are part of our comprehensive educational plan. Any iGEM team interested in using these materials can find them as downloadable PDFs on the Education page within the Human Impact block.
We also contribute with our own infectious disease models to help other teams gain insights into the dynamics of diseases and evaluate potential solutions. With infectious diseases being a key focus in this year's iGEM Village, our models simulate how diseases spread and how interventions, like our synthetic biology solution, can combat them. These models not only help assess the effectiveness of treatments but also guide the experimental pipeline by identifying how potent a solution needs to be to control or eradicate an infection, providing valuable direction for future work. Check out our models page.