Outside the Toolkit

Sant Jordi is a traditional Catalan festivity where literature is commemorated, there is a well-known legend with knights, princesses and dragons. We created a story about Ribbit, a ribofrog (ribosome) that accomplishes the unbelievable: building a protein that no other ribofrog has ever built before with the help of SECIS and Oscar (SCR). It teaches the basics of our project in a fun, engaging and easily understandable way, while being an analogy to the legend of this local celebration.

The Catalunya Summit is a free event designed for young entrepreneurs and innovators aged 17 to 25. Its goal is to inspire, empower, and connect emerging ideas in a collaborative environment. The 4th edition took place on Saturday, May 10, 2025, at the Espai Jove La Nau in Vilafranca del Penedès. The iGEM UB team had the opportunity to take part in the Catalunya Summit 2025 in Vilafranca del Penedès. Having the opportunity to be surrounded by so many young entrepreneurs and innovators was both exciting and inspiring. This gave us the perfect space to share our ideas, goals and meet new contacts that were interested in our project.

The Festa de la Ciència at the University of Barcelona (UB) is an event designed to bring science closer to society in an interactive and dynamic way. This event takes place every year in the Historic Building of the UB and includes a variety of workshops carried out by UB researchers from different fields, covering biomedicine, biology, chemistry... This activity is divided into two days, depending on the type of public coming to each one: one day dedicated to school groups, which requires prior registration, and another day open to the general public, where anyone can participate freely. The goal of this initiative is to help students and kids discover science in a more practical, engaging, and accessible format. Our team took part in this year’s edition, introducing children to transcription and translation through a bracelet-making activity that served as a hands-on way for them to grasp the concepts. As a team, we were present for two days, helping to set up the stand, explaining the theoretical foundations to the children, and assisting all participants as they carried out the activity. Overall, it was an outstanding experience beyond the toolkit, which enabled us to teach all attendees about the fundamentals of synthetic biology and the key processes within the central dogma of molecular biology.

CosmoXarxa is an initiative that emerged from the CosmoCaixa Explainers Community in Barcelona. Explainers are young science communicators at CosmoCaixa, typically university students or recent graduates in scientific disciplines. This community was established from a shared dream among former Explainers to remain connected with one another and to continue disseminating scientific knowledge beyond their tenure at the museum. In one of their meetings we had the opportunity to share our iGEM project: we explained what it meant to participate in the world’s largest SynBio competition, as well as a brief introduction to Skippit.

Before the University Entrance exams in Catalonia (Selectivitat), we decided to start a TikTok account where we explained biology concepts for the exam in an engaging way, using a humorous and exaggerated 'brainrot' style. We thought it would be interesting to explore social media as an educational tool, and approaching it as an experiment turned out to be a very enriching experience both for us and for the students. We informed ourselves about the most common mistakes in the exams with the help of high school teachers, and over time we accumulated videos with more than 45K views. This allowed us to explain complex concepts and, ultimately, help students review in a comfortable and almost unconscious way.

European Researcher’s Night is a big science festival that takes place every year across Europe in September. In Catalonia, researchers, schools, and universities team up to run workshops, experiments, and fun activities that bring science closer to everyone. It’s all about making research exciting and accessible, especially for students and families. In this year’s edition, our iGEM UB team has been selected to deliver a virtual short talk that will be spread around the territory, and to do the art workshop which is part of the toolkit.