Team:Shanghaitech/Collaborations

Collaborations

Biosafety education video in Chinese

Biosafety is one of the most important issues everyone should be aware of before starting any biology related experiments. However, the biosafety education in China is far behind the fast development of modern biological research. In some places, students are not trained properly because of the outdated education material or the language barrier that prevent them from reading biosafety guidelines written in English.

We’ve participated in an intercollegiate collaborating project to produce a series of biosafety education movies, all in Chinese. This video collection has been uploaded online and is freely available at our homepage on YouTube and Bilibili, a popular Chinese video-sharing website.

Teams participated the production:

Reagent share to USTC

iGEM team USTC is working on the CdS based bio-film. They want to know whether CdS nanoparticles can increase the cathode-current as expected. A key component for one of their experiments requires CdS quantum dots, which they cannot generate by themselves.

We provided them the CdS quantum dots sample. They added our sample into the culture to assist bio-film formation onto the surface of a graphite electrode. Theoretically, CdS quantum dots would be attached to the surface of the bacteria as the bio-film was formed.

Model mentoring to Fudan_China

iGEM team Fudan_China

Library construction

We collect part from other team to help with our project

Library

Measurement for UCAS

等巴方来补

Collaboration with USTC-China

iGEM team USTC-China is working on the CdS based bio-film. They want to know whether CdS nanoparticle scan increase the cathode-current as expected. A key component for one of their experiments requires CdS quantum dots, which they cannot make(or obtain?or generate?)by themselves.

We kindly provided them the CdS quantum dots sample. They added our sample into the culture to assist bio-film formation onto the surface of a graphite electrode.Theoretically, CdS quantum dots would be attached to the surface of the bacteria as the bio-film was formed.

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Figure 6. Preparation for the bio-film. (need more figure legends here if you want to show this pic. It’s not clear what are in the picture for people who do not work on bio-film)

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Figure 7. The hardware that controls the exposing light during bio-film formation.

Then, we put the cathode running and monitored the current. As you can see in figure 8, the strain pMC, which were co-expressing Mtr CAB and Ccm A-H, had a stronger cathode current than the WT strain before the light was given, which perfectly repeated the result we have done in the conduction system section. After the current was stable, we began to give light to the system. The light’s wave length is 455 nm and the source is a LED light bought from an online shop. The strain pMC with CdS quantum dots on it responded to the light stimulate. It had a stronger current than it was before the light was given. However, those strains without CdS quantum dots onit did NOT respond to light stimulate. Especially, for the pMC group without CdS quantum dots on it, it did NOT have any current change after we give light to the system, which exclude the possibility that the current change was resulted from the Mtr CAB proteins or the Ccm A-H protein. Moreover, after we stopped the light, the current got back to the level it was before we gave the light.

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Figure 8. CdS canincrease cathode current.

CdS quantum dots can speed up the electrons transfer process, pumping more electrons from the electrode to the bacteria in the same time utilizing light energy. This may results from the CdS quantum dots’ property as a semi-conductor.

In summary, CdS quantum dots we provided can increase the cathode current with its semi-conductor property in team XX’s experiments. Thus, this collaboration is fruitful with a new photosynthesis system developed, where they can further increase the speed of the electron transfer process that leads to the improvement of bio-film synthesis.

Reference:

[1] Chu, L., Ebersole, J. L., Kurzban, G. P., & Holt, S.C. (1997). Cystalysin, a 46-kilodalton cysteine desulfhydrase from Treponemadenticola, with hemolytic and hemoxidative activities. Infection and immunity,65(8), 3231-3238.

[2] Wang, C., Lum, A., Ozuna, S., Clark, D., & Keasling,J. (2001). Aerobic sulfide production and cadmium precipitation by Escherichiacoli expressing the Treponema denticola cysteine desulfhydrase gene. Appliedmicrobiology and biotechnology, 56(3-4), 425-430. [3] Sakimoto, K. K., Wong, A.B., & Yang, P. (2016). Self-photosensitization of nonphotosyntheticbacteria for solar-to-chemical production. Science, 351(6268), 74-77.

Collaboration with UCAS

UCAS provides three promoter parts which they constructed this year for Our, helping to build up their parts library of input and output biobricks. We have connected our signal generator and their nitrogen so that we could detect nitrogen using these parts and pass signal downstream. On the other hand, We also helped them with the measurement of their parts about nitrogen sensor

Collaboration with Fudan-China

We have meet up with Fudan-China and discussed the problem about the approximate process in their integrase model, which cause difficulty in their infinitesimal method

We submitted our parts to the part library built by the team Shanghaitech. There is an approximate process in the origin integrase model, the rapid equilibrium, which causes the difficulties in infinitesimal method for simulation. We discussed the problem with team Shanghaitech and they helped us figure out an available algorithm in August. And we talked about the possibilities of dividing our circuit into smaller parts that can be delivered by their multilayer signal processing system, so that the load in each cells may be decreased.

Biosafety Videos collaboration

Biosafety is one of the most important issues everyone should be aware of before starting any biology related experiments. However, the biosafety education in China is far behind the fast development of modern biological research. In some places, students are not trained properly because of the outdated education material or the language barrier that prevent them from reading biosafety guidelines written in English.

We’ve participated in an intercollegiate collaborating project to produce a series of biosafety education movies, all in Chinese. This video collection has been uploaded online and is freely available at our homepage on YouTube and Bilibili, a popular Chinese video-sharing website.

Teams participated the production:

The following link is the promotion video we made for the education of Biosafety about the disposal of pollutants

in biological laboratories.

Library

The link below is the title video we made for the promotion video of Biosafety collaboratively made by the xx universities in China.

Library2

This year, we have constructed several sensors and reporters as our inputs and executors to provide users more options when using the MagicBlock system. These blocks include lacI-lasI, which generates signals upon induction; pcons+GFP, which constitutively generates signals; lasR-GFP and lasR-mRFP, which present different fluorescence and lasR-amilCP, which gives bacteria resistance to chloramphenicol. Meanwhile, we also collected parts that can be reformed for our MagicBlock from other teams. For example, we have collected promoters that can sense nitrogen from UCAS, an auto-inducer quorum-sensing generator from SiCAU-China, a toolbox of recombinase from Fudan-China, cellulase and pectinase from LanZhou iGEM team, and Bt toxin protein from FAFU-China. In addition to part collection, we also reconstructed some MagicBlocks from previous characterized parts so that they can be integrated into our project. Thus our library was and will be continuously improved by users to increase the versatility.

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For more details, refer to our collaboration pages