Team:NAU-CHINA/Collaborations
iGEMer- we met, exchanged, shared, and learned from each other. As an iGEM team we’ve collaborated with other teams on several occasions.
During brainstorming，we invited Dr. Zhang Haoqian to give a speech and other iGEM teams to exchange the ideas. Dr. Zhang Haoqian shared his experience and give us some advice. We discussed how we brainstormed our topic, how we recruit members, and what difficulties have we experienced so far.
We get to catch a glimpse of the progress and concoct of other teams through experience workshops.
Taiwan- 5th Asia-Pacific
iGEM Conference
The iGEM team NCTU_Formosa hosted us together with the other iGEMs' teams at a wonderful event, the "Mini Jamboree", simulating the iGEM competition itself, with judges, presentations, speeches and more.
Through various breakout sessions and discussion, we learn different projects from individual teams across Asia, ranging from detection and degradation of EDCs(Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals) in farmland to water cleanliness for aquaculture. We cluster around posters asking questions that pop in our minds.
Online NCTU_Formosa
NTHU_Taiwan
We contacted NCTU_Formosa iGEM team in August and had a phone call meeting(wechat):
NCTU_Formosa aims to use database to find effective and also harmless anti-fungal peptides，with IoT forecast system to save fungus-infected plants. They was creating an E.coli expression system for their project and we were doing our own research for a yeast factory. Even though the two designs were going to be very different, they gave us some very useful tips and feedback on how to choose the final peptides. We brainstormed ways to progress and discussed the difficulties we had encountered and the solutions we had tried to find thus far.
Two Skype calls with NTHU_Taiwan：
NTHU_Taiwan’s goal is to deal with EDCs (Endocrine isrupting Chemicals) in farmland. For detection ,they modified E .coli to express estrogen receptor ,ERα on the surface of E .coli. In our project, we choose a yeast-based biosensor. We manipulate the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae to express estrogen receptor. During this process, we learned a lot about their projects and helped each other out with experiments and ideas. Every team has its own unique way of designing circuits and perceptions to deal with current situations.
CCIC Conference of China
iGEMer Community
This was a very educational and unique day that helped us direct our preparations for the contest and practice speaking in front of a large crowd.
Through the oral presentation and poster session, we found that students from different universities have different ideas for our project. And we also think of their insight to be a valuable opportunity to learn or conceive questions we have not thought of. What is notable is that a team Fudan invented a game relevant to synthetic biology and their project.
We received positive feedback regarding the applied design of our research. They helped us make an effective treatment to detect the mycotoxins.
Modelling Collaboration
Our collaboration with XJTLU-CHINA began in early summer. Our members in the modeling group had done many jobs to have a deep understanding of XJTLU-CHINA’s project, and used Matlab to model their system, dealing with a synbio problem.
XJTLU-CHINA constructed two BioBricks for us .
We shared our project design and gained some feedbacks which might promote us.
Meeting with Anhui University of
Technology
We conducted meetings with AHUT_China iGEM team to discuss our projects so far, and to share any advice and learning experiences that we’ve had.
Furthermore, we shot episodes to promote and discuss “Biosafety”. The episodes then converge into one film. Also, in the film, it integrates multicultural topics. The diversity of cultures is what we want to present in the film. The teams are ShanghaiTech University、University of Chinese Academy of Sciences、Beijing Normal University、 Wuhan University、Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University、Anhui University of Technology、Huazhong Agricultural University、University of Electronic Science and Technology of China、Tianjin University of Science&Technology、TianjinUniversity.
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:
- ShanghaiTech University
- University of Chinese Academy of Science
- Tianjin University
- Tianjin University of Science & Technology
- University of Electronic Science and Technology of China
- Beijing Normal University
- Wuhan University
- Huazhong Agricultural University
- Anhui University of Technology
- Nanjing Agricultural University
- Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University
Material sharing
We provided pFA6a-GFP(S65T)-kanMX6 plasmid to team OUC-China
We sent a basic engineering plasmid PRS416 and engineering bacteria to ZJU-China, for helping them push through the project topics on Saccharomyces cerevisiae.
We had a great response from the iGEM community about our survey! Every team we talked to was more than happy to answer our survey and to distribute it amongst their friends and contacts!
