IGEM - Choosing the project: From ideas to experiments lyrics

It is important to build a good and well thought out project. To do so, first you need to ask yourself: what is a good project? A good project is one that you enjoy and that produces reliable results and data. You need to keep the requirements and judging criteria in mind: you will need to create biobricks, conduct a Human practices study, but you also have a lot of freedom with your project. You should try to take best advantage of the facilities you have and the advisors you may contact for extra help. For example, if you are working on water filtration, you may contact nearby water cleaning stations and talk about your idea with them. Make sure your idea is feasible and realistic in the given time . You should be able to accomplish most parts of the project. It is also good to have far reaching vision of the project, as well as a story you can tell with your idea and results. What would you do if you had a year, 2 or 10 years? How would the world change with your idea? Also, try to build on previous iGEM projects and constructed devices. Maybe some team had a similar idea? Or a different idea but you can use some of their work for your purpose. For example, in iGEM Paris Bettencourt 2014 we introduced our gene of interest, agaA, responsible for the human body odor, in a standard vector already existing in the registry of standard parts. You learned about ethics in the previous videos. This is an important point in your project evaluation: do you take safe lab practices and precautions in order to fulfill biosafety standards? For instance, in a project where you use bacteria to filter drinking water, you may conduct surveys to ask people if they would drink this filtered water, and what kind of information they would expect you to provide with your product. You will probably also need to look into the legislation policy. Will your machine be allowed to be used in the current state of the law? For more information on this, look into the ethics part of the MOOC. At the end, try to combine the best parts of all projects. Make small subprojects. Keep in mind that you want to present all your results; even in the case that not everything went as you planned, you should be able to present and interpret your work.