SynBIC

09/03/2021

Hello everyone,

We will be holding our Annual General Meeting on the 15th of March 2021 at 6 pm. The meeting will be held virtually on our usual zoom meeting room:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/3325864835

Instructions for Nominees:

During the AGM, you will be allowed to give a 3 minute presentation/speech on why you would be the right candidate for the role you have been nominated for. The presentation is to be strictly no more than 3 minutes long, and will be followed by a more lenient time limit of 4 minutes for questions. Slides are permitted, but they are by no means a requirement. If you wish, you may pre-record your presentations (no longer than 3 minutes) and have them sent to this e-mail address by 14 March 11.59 pm. You will also be permitted to pre-record your speeches if you are unable to attend the AGM. However, in this case you will lose the opportunity to answer voter questions.

Instructions for Members:

The AGM will be an opportunity for you to get to know candidates prior to elections. The society is highly dependent on its committee in its day-to-day function as well as in running events, and the elections are one way you as society members can help shape the society. Candidate manifestos will be published on the union eVoting platform tomorrow, so make sure you read them in addition to listening to candidates' presentations prior to voting. Note that voting will take place separately from the AGM, and you will be permitted to vote from 9 am 15 March to 2 pm 18 March through the union eVoting platform. The election results will then be made available on 19 March. Elections are only open to members of the society, as our nominees will not appear on the voting platform if you are not a member.

Here is the link to the Union eVoting platform:
https://vote.union.ic.ac.uk/

In addition to elections, we will also dedicate a part of the AGM to discussing any feedback you as members may have for the society. This will be an excellent opportunity for you to have your voices heard on any issues related to the running or structure of the society.

We hope this is clear. Please let us know if you have any questions. We hope to see you all during our AGMs!

Kind regards,
SynBIC Committee

01/03/2021

Hello everyone,

We are excited to announce that nominations for committee positions for the academic year 2021-2022 are open. The committee is the backbone of the society, and its members are responsible for organising events and projects that the society runs. In addition to helping shape the society, participating in the committee is a great way of further engaging with the wider synthetic biology community.

The list of open positions, as well as a short description of their responsibilities, are as follows:

Chair (President): General Society Leadership

Vice President: Assists the Chair in running the society

Treasurer: Handles society finances

Secretary: Handles e-mails as well as general society administration

Events Officer: Contacts speakers for weekly seminars and other events

Promotion Officer: Maintains social media pages and develops publicity material

Industrial and Academic External Relations Officer: Points of contact for industrial and academic bodies respectively

Social Secretary: Organises social events for the society

Postgraduate and Undergraduate Liaison Officer: Build engagement for undergraduate and postgraduate members respectively

Historically, there has been a lot of flexibility in these roles. Notably, if you have a specific idea for a project or event you would like the society to pursue, you will have the opportunity to engage in its development regardless of your formal position within the committee.

In keeping with the union’s spring elections timetable, all nominations will have to be submitted by the 5th of March 17.00. However, at this stage you will only need to inform us of your intention to run for a position. The separate deadline for the submission of the manifesto will be on the 9th of March 14.00.

Instructions for Nominees:

To nominate yourself, go on the union eVoting platform:

https://vote.union.ic.ac.uk/elections.php

Click on the link ‘Leadership Elections 2021 (CSP)’. If the positions for Synthetic Biology do not appear, make sure you have bought SynBIC membership on the union store:

https://www.imperialcollegeunion.org/shop/csp/synthetic-biology/synthetic-biology-membership-20-21

Navigate to the store, click 'More > Club, Society and Project Products' and search 'Synthetic Biology' in the search bar.

Once you have submitted your nomination, you will have the opportunity to edit your manifesto through the ‘manage manifestos' button on the union eVoting platform. Remember, nominations must be submitted by the 5th of March 17.00, while manifestos are due on the 9th of March 14.00.

Elections will take place on the 15th of March 2021 through the union's eVoting platform. More details on this to follow. If you have any questions regarding specific roles or the nomination process, feel free to e-mail us or message us on Facebook.

We hope to see plenty of nominees!

Kind regards,
SynBIC Committee

The ICU electronic voting system has detected a navigational or authorisation error. The most likely cause is that you have used the browser back or forward buttons, refreshed a page or have edited the address at the URL bar directly. Whilst on this site you must only use the buttons on the pages pr...

09/02/2021

Hi all,

For those of you interested in iDEC (International Directed Evolution Competition), we have some updates from the organisers with more concrete dates and key objectives. See the timeline and a comprehensive downloadable PDF below.

Timeline:

Formal registration: 1st of March - 1st of May

1st of March - 31st of June: Preliminary Work
1. Seek sponsorship opportunities, including a mandatory £500 for registration.
2. Identify a suitable lab space.
3. Devise an idea for a project, fitting in one of the four themes laid out by the iDEC (below).
4. Identify a supervisor, and potentially further mentors or advisors for the project.
5. Complete necessary preliminary documentation requested by the iDEC.

As a society, we will assist you in any way we can, such as by contacting specific people or companies as well as offering suggestions for supervisors.

1st July - 14th of October: Action
1. Do the wet lab work necessary to drive the project.
2. Complete other deliverables for the project, including a wiki, a report, a poster and a presentation.

16th of October: iDEC Festival in Edinburgh!
Teams will present work to other teams as well as a panel of judges. If this cannot be held physically, it will be held online.

There are 4 different tracks which each project can fall into:

1. Molecular directed evolution: Encompasses projects that involve directed evolution of molecules, such as enzymes or protein/nucleic acid binders.

2. Pathway directed evolution: Projects where the main components to be evolved are metabolic pathways or synthetic circuits. The aim, for example, could be to improve their robustness, performance or orthogonality to the host through improved kinetics/ control mechanisms. This may or may not involve directed evolution of specific genetic components.

3. Genome directed evolution: Involves the directed evolution of entire genomes of organisms (such as using SCRaMbLE). Generally, specific genes will not be targeted.

4. Challenge: The iDEC advisory groups may propose a specific challenge which the projects may address.

We strongly recommend you have a read through the website and iDEC introductory package at the download button below!

iDEC website: https://idec.io/
iDEC introductory pack: https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/1osQ8XiBaraL2xjMBs8JgbhvLUtiXaaLA

We know many of you have been asking for more information on iDEC that was not available until now, so for new sign-ups we are pushing back the deadline to the 21st of February until further notice - you can sign up via this form if you're interested!

Imperial sign up form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeuzmJJy-0tm9RahjUI0RtG1E6OtPfdJyvPCmwGR7wPSeQ5Hg/viewform?usp=sf_link

For those who have already signed up - we have had some more problems with our Google form and may need you sign up again. We do have your responses, so if you wrote something heartfelt you want to reuse, reach out to us so we can match up your previous response with your name / email. We truly apologise about the inconvenience. You can contact us on our email [email protected] or over our page.

Feel absolutely free to contact us at any point and we'll do our best to answer your questions!

A sign-up sheet for Imperial students wishing to join the International Directed Evolution Competition

06/12/2020

Hey guys, we have an incredible talk lined up for you guys with the amazing Professor Boyden from MIT Titled: Tools for Analyzing and Controlling Complex Biological Systems

Check out the abstract in the Facebook post!
https://fb.me/e/3PIqEw1G3

Some of the exciting new technologies that will be covered in the seminar will be:

Expansion microscopy
Swelling biological samples to magnify polymer networks and de-clutter samples under the microscope:
https://bmcbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12915-017-0393-3

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expansion_microscopy #:~:text=Expansion%20microscopy%20(ExM)%20is%20a,them%20using%20a%20polymer%20system.

Microbial opsins and optogenetic tools to control the BRAIN:
https://www.worldscientific.com/doi/10.1142/S2529732519400133

Signalling reporter islands (SiRIs) developed through directed evolution and dispersed randomly in samples to be both imaged and biologically relevant:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092867420313994

This is a very exciting talk and definitely one of the highlights of the year so make sure you don't miss it!

In order to analyze how a signal transduction network converts cellular inputs into cellular outputs, ideally one would measure the dynamics of many s…

23/11/2020

Hello Everyone! We're looking forwards to our talk tonight with Dr. Greiss titled: "Genetic Code Expansion in C. elegans and its applications for precise spatiotemporal control of proteins with light". Unfortunately it will NOT be recorded due to unpublished work being discussed. For further insight we recommend viewing his previous papers on asymmetrical neuron splitting, and the his publication on the incorporation of unnatural amminoacids in C. Elegans.
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.02.072363v1.abstract
https://link.springer.com/protocol/10.1007/978-1-4939-7574-7_24
(Note that unfortunately if you are not from Imperial or another University you may not have access.)

Site-specific incorporation of unnatural amino acids (UAAs) has greatly expanded the toolkit available to study biological phenomena in single cells. However, to address questions involving complex...

12/11/2020

Hello everyone!
We are looking forwards to seeing you this afternoon at 6pm with Professor Andrew Ellington! Pizza and beverages unfortunately didn't make it through the mail but the synthetic biology certainly did! The talk is titled: Synthetic Neurobiology, please check out the abstract Professor Ellington kindly provided for the talk on the email we sent out or on the event on Facebook.
Feel free to have a look at this interesting review by Professor Ellington to learn more about this amazing field:

The mammalian brain is among the most complex organs known in biology. Historically, neuroscience techniques have consisted primarily of low-throughpu…

20/10/2020

Hello everyone,

We regret to inform you that today's talk by LabGenius cannot proceed as planned as the speaker for the event has fallen ill. We wish him a speedy recovery, and we hope to be able to reschedule the event for a later date.

We apologize for any inconvenience caused.

Yours,
SynBIC Committee

16/10/2020

We hope you've been having a good start to term. Just two quick updates from us this week:

SynbiTECH2020

SynbiCITE has generously given us tickets for the SynbiTECH2020 conference. This has been made possible as SynBICITE is a sponsor this year. The conference would be a great opportunity to listen to presentations by academics and industrial experts, to network or even to present your own work.

If you are interested in attending the event, please fill in your details here:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSf_gTH4Cfs0VT7b0bHQ_zzPuxDkfxfyJ1X-1jzicF-kOahSdA/viewform?usp=sf_link

We will forward your details to the event organizers who will then send you a ticket. Note that we will be sending these details on October 23rd, 12 pm, so make sure to fill in your details before then!

Note that for current imperial students, we are only opening sign-ups to members. If you have not signed up for SynBIC membership, please sign up on our union page:

https://www.imperialcollegeunion.org/activities/a-to-z/synthetic-biology

SynBIC alumni are also allowed to sign up, but please indicate this in the sign up form. There is no limit on the number of sign-ups, but SynbiCITE has specifically requested that all ticket-holders must proceed to attend the event for either one or both days (i.e. please do not get a ticket and not attend the conference at all!).

Along with your ticket comes the opportunity to display and (video) present posters in their Poster Hall. For these, send your name, organization (SynBIC if applying through us) and e-mail to Laura McKay at [email protected] (please use the same details as in the sign up form), along with a pdf of a poster (max size 10mB), and a video link (YouTube or Vimeo are ideal) if you have a recorded presentation. Please send these by October 23rd!

If you’re a start-up looking for funding you can add your pitch deck and a video pitch in the Poster Hall, and If you’ve internships, studentships or jobs on offer you can send details of these in the Poster Hall. For these, again send your name, organization and e-mail to Laura McKay, with the relevant details.

The platform for SynbiTECH2020 will be active and accessible for networking, adding posters, virtual meetings and further free registrations for 6 months from the online event.

We look forward to seeing you there!

LabGenius Seminar

We are hosting a joint seminar with the computational biology society. The speaker will be Harry Rickerby from LabGenius.

Harry Rickerby
"How LabGenius combines synthetic biology, computational biology and data science"
Tuesday, 20th of October at 6pm

Click here for the eventbrite page for the seminar:

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/how-labgenius-combines-synthetic-biology-and-computational-biology-tickets-125392214489

A link to access the Microsoft teams meeting will be provided on the day of the talk for anyone who has registered.

Talk abstract
LabGenius is a startup that lives at the interface between synthetic biology, computational biology and data science. In this talk, I will give you an insight into the problems we are solving in protein engineering and drug discovery, and how we’re going about solving them.