Team Tsinghua-A believes that collaborations between teams can be a powerful drive to motivate all teams to actively participate in project preparation while at the same time, it also plays a vital role in realization of resources and information interconnection. Through the whole summer, members of Team Tsinghua-A have traveled through the country to meet up with other teams, hosted seminars at home for team communication in corporation with Team Tsinghua and reached mutual technical collaboration with several others.

    Team Fudan in Shanghai, who previously shared literature resource with us, came to know that we had the parts they needed during the conference meet-up. After they contacted us, we responded quickly with plasmids that contain the parts they need. The parts with five types of plasmids are listed as follow:

Parts:

rtTA; FF5; LacI; miR-FF4; pCAGop; FF4; phEF1α； Gal4VP16; Krab; promoter UAS*5;

Plasmids:

pZ262, pTRE-LacI-2A-Cerulean-FF5x4-miR-FF4,
LR041,pUASx5-T14+T14*3-IntC:dCas9C(714-1368):Krab-2A-TALER9-4xTarget^FF5(shRNA)
pCH055,pExp_Seq1_CAG-Gal4VP16-P2A-TagBFP-T2A-Bla_Seq2,
pB016, pZD_Seq2-Hef1a-rtTA-FF5-Seq3,
pB065, pZD_Seq2-CAGop-mKate-T21x2-FF4-Seq3

    SdiA is a homolog of LuxR that is able to partially activate AHL promoters in E. coli. LuxR and some types of AHL promoters are used in our project. LacI is used in our project, too. Therefore, to eliminate these the influence of these two intrinsic genes on experiments, we need to knock out sdiA and lacI in MG1655, which is used to do test in experiments. However, we do not know how to knock them out. Therefore, we turned to Team NPU-China for help and they succeed to knock them out. MG1655 they provide performed very well during our experiments.

    Back in Tsinghua, we formed a tight relationship with our brother team, Team Tsinghua, based on members’ friendship and productive team-team interaction, which results in the two teams’ frequently doing things together.
    First, we think together. At the brainstorming stage, we shared our inspiration and sparks and mutually received thought-provoking advice from the other. We discussed a wide range of problems including the project’s applicability, molecular tools in gene editing, plans of human practice and so on.
    Second, we act together. Several teams outside Tsinghua (BNU-China, SZU-China, XMU-China) have expressed their willingness to pay a visit to our university and teams. We thus held several seminars together with Team Tsinghua under the efficient coordination of Han Jianing from Tsinghua and Wang Chenghao from Tsinghua-A. During the open talk other teams’ creative thought struck us from time to time. Some of them even kindly pointed out our team’s flaw which we later payed heavy attention to (the problem of applicability and its limit in human practice). Here we want to deliver our sincere appreciation to Team Tsinghua and all those team involved. It is your wisdom, openness and passion that makes the seminar successfully achieved what was far beyond our expectation.
    Thirdly, we fight together. University’s Biotechnology Building has seen the two teams spend entire summer vacation in the lab for their project and force their ways out towards light and truth together. A day usually started with two teams’ early morning greetings at the building hall and ended up with “good bye” in the evening. The way back to dorm listened the bitter and sweet they shared with each other. What a great scene we created. What a goal we have been always chasing after.

    In Nanjing, we shared our project ideas with several teams coming from different parts of China at the BUDS conference and got some really awesome feedback, and each of the attendees is highly experienced at and dedicated to iGEM. In addition to us, the representatives from the iGEM teams of SJTU, NJU, SYSU and TJU etc. attended this meeting.

    During the two-day-long discussion, we thoroughly exchanged our perspectives on almost every aspects on preparation for iGEM. We shared the ideas of our projects this year first. We then had a share in the experience of team construction, project design, human practice, cultivating new teammates and source obtainment. We gained a lot of practical advice on overcoming the difficulties of these terms, which we had met and we would meet. Team Fudan provided us with literature concerning cell sensing and response behavior they came across before, which they thought might help us. Also, we were inspired to visit a video game company, for example, to ask the professional for advice, which did motivate us to adjust our game to be more fascinating.