Team:ICT-Mumbai/Collaborations
The objective of our project is to eliminate ammonia from public places. To determine concentration of ammonia in public places around us, we decided to sample air from sources that are potentially rich in ammonia. We sampled air in washrooms and chemical laboratories in our Institute, and analyzed them for ammonia using the indophenol blue assay (the protocol we used can be found here). We wished to understand whether other countries and regions face similar issues when it comes to the state of their public washrooms, and therefore, decided to collaborate with other teams to measure concentrations of ammonia present in their washrooms.
We are fortunate to have formed friendships that transcend geographical distances.
Team UCAS China
Team UCAS China is trying to address the issue of excessive ammonia present in aquaculture. Given that both our teams are trying to eliminate ammonia, determination of ammonia levels from environment samples is of relevance to both teams. We have shared our protocol for quantification of ammonia with Team UCAS. Team UCAS has carried out measurements of ammonia in air samples for us and will be sharing their results with us.
On our part, we have collected water samples from a nearby lake, Bandra talao, and measured ammonia in it using our protocol. We have shared our results with them.
Bandra talao
Team Heidelberg
Team Heidelberg 2013 had worked on indigoidine synthesis, which forms an integral part of our project. Ever since our Skype session with the current team, Team Heidelberg has been extensively involved in helping us out with indigoidine synthesis. They shipped us two plasmids, pRB1 and pRB5, which contain genes for production of indigoidine. They also sent out relevant plasmid maps which helped us carry out successful transformation of E. coli cells with these plasmids.
All-India iGEM teams meet-up at IISER Pune
We participated in the All-India iGEM teams meet-up hosted by Team IISER Pune. It was indeed an enriching experience, presenting our project to an intelligent audience as well as listening to innovative projects of other teams. Our presentation was followed by an interactive question and answer session wherein many interesting points about our project came up, which helped us in chalking out our future plan.
