Having deep cooperation with Southwest Union(iGEM meet-up in southwest China) last year, we viewed the meet-up an important role in our early-stage, thus, as soon as our project got mostly shaped, we discussed with SCU-WestChina about holding the Southwest Union meet-up of 2017. Together with the SCU-WestChina, SCU-China , UESTC-China and SICAU-China, we have an overall assessment of the safety and feasibility of our project and the latest trend of iGEM competition including the newly added judging terms, etc. What matters most was that all teams exchanged information and built a deeper relationship.

As the competition approaches, the Central China iGEM Consortium (CCiC) conference was hosted by Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University (FAFU-China), in order to simulate the iGEM Giant jamboree and enhance further communication among different teams. This was a great opportunity to present our work and learn from the other 48 teams. It was nice to see that we did a good job in presentation and the audience was attracted by our project. The most important thing to us was that we harvested much useful advice from the judges, mentors and students. We made the best of the Panel Session and poster exhibition to establish collaborations with other teams. Interestingly, we were lucky to have deep conversations with Igem headquarter King L. CHOW and former iGEMer Zhang Haoqian, who encouraged us to go deeper in research and promote iGEM and synthetic biology research in our university. From the CCiC, we were aware of our current disadvantages in quantitative measurement and the overall logic, which laid a foundation for the later adjustments and improvements. More importantly, we made great acquaintance with many students and establish deep collaborations with teams with same interest, including ShanghaiTech University and Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University.

Scientific research is not always a dull work. It can also be an interesting experience which everyone can share and enjoy. With the intention of spreading the fun and attractiveness of the synthetic biology, we designed some letter cards. In this way, synthetic biology drew more attentions by showing its fun, following the idea of combining science and art.In the 2016 sports meeting in our university, our team organized a vivid propogation for synthetic biology to students, teachers and many doctors in our subordinary hospitals. We sent letter cards to them and encouraged them to synthesize their own works of art. Delightful, many people were willing to join us to make up a sentence with letter cards. To our suprise, there were two little girls showing great interest in it. With their imagination, they gave us much courage and inspiration.

We are inspired by the term 'Bio-brick'. Assuming that every letter card is a 'Bio-brick', we synthesize the letter cards into a sentence like constructing a plasmid from several 'Bio-bricks'. With limited letters, we can create unlimited sentences just like with limited 'Bio-bricks', we can create unlimited plasmids and realize unlimited kinds of functions. Constructing itself is funny and thought-provoking. And in the process of constructing, we presented our work and popularized iGEM. Hopefully, these letter cards will be the carrier of the idea of synthetic biology and our wish to realize all the possibilities with 'Bio-bricks'.

Nowadays many Chinese don't know what is transgenic technology, and some rumors from the Internet convince them that transgenosis is extremely harmful to human. As many Chinese don't have an objective understanding about transgenic technology, we think it's our duty to publicize correct concepts about it. It's also a good chance to popularize the definition of synthetic biology and gather resource from West China. Coming up with this idea when communicating with SCU_WestChina that hold a scientific exhibition, iGEM team SCU_WestChina contacted other teams involving SCU-China and UESTC_China to make an exhibition together about transgenic technology. We aimed to make the visitors understand what is transgenic technology and get some advice about our project from the visitors.

Eventually, SCU_WestChina got in touch with Chengdu Library successfully. Chengdu Library is a leading city center library in west China, receiving 1,010 million readers in 2016. After several conferences with other three teams, we chose "genetic modification and health" as the theme of the exhibition. And then we discussed the content of this exhibition and designed the posters together. The exhibition was composed of four parts: disease treatment, biopharmaceuticals, disease detection, and environmental management. Each team was responsible for one part. And teams from Sichuan University and team from the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China completed forewords and conclusion respectively. We printed the posters a week ahead of the exhibition, and laid them out in Chengdu Library one day in advance. The exhibition lasted for 7 days. On the first day, the four teams went to the library early to distribute leaflets and small gifts to the public in the rest areas and outside the library. We introduced our theme to those readers, answered their questions, had discussions with them on genetic modification, and collected suggestions from them. The audience was very absorbed, and many said they had a more objective and comprehensive understanding about genetic modification, which makes us feel very rewarding. The four teams worked on the maintenance, publicity and explanation of the exhibition for the following days, and removed the posters and cleared the exhibition hall together on the last day.

In the preliminary development of the Staphylococcus aureus QS system, we contacted the teachers of the Department of Infection of Southwest Hospital and the department of microbiology, consulting with Staphylococcus aureus pathogenicity and biosafety level, which, doctor Li from the Department of Infection introduced to us within recent years, the hospital’s infection situation. The hospital’s acquired infection is always an unavoidable problem, at the same time, professor Wang systematically introduced us with the Staphylococcus aureus biosafety level and experimental operation of the standard process, with provide an basic understanding of Staphylococcus aureus in the initiation of the project.