Team:UESTC-China/achievement
This year we meet all the requirements of medals standards, and we also expect to get four iGEM awards: best education and public engagement, best integrated human practice, best modeling and best plant synthetic biology. In this section, we clearly show each entries up to the standards. Please judge.
Bronze Medal
☑ Register and attend
We have registered for iGEM as UESTC-China on March 3rd, 2017 and been accepted on May 5th, 2017. We had a great summer and half of semester for our project. We have registered Giant Jamboree and planned for the travel.
☑ Team Wiki, Poster and Presentation
We have made Team Wiki, poster and prepared a wonderful presentation.
☑ Attributions
We have created a page on the team wiki with clear Attribution of each aspect of the project.Click here for attributions.
☑ Register Part Pages
We have created and documented Part Pages on the Registry for the parts we made.
☑ Parts
We have improved the characterization of two existing BioBrick Parts: BBa_K1199043 and BBa_K2013002 and Documented the characterization of these parts on the Main Page of that Part's Registry entry. Click here for parts.
☑ Interlab Measurement Study
We have participated in the Fourth International InterLaboratory Measurement Study. Also we have uploaded relevant documents of experiment results. Click here for more details about our InterLab.
☑ Judging Form and Safety Form
We have accomplished and submitted the Judging Form and Safety Form on time.
Silver Medal
☑ Validated Part
We have successfully validated that three new BioBrick Parts (BBa_K2286002 , BBa_K2286003 , and BBa_K2286005 ) worked as expected through experiment. And We have submitted 12 samples of new Parts to the Registry and Documented the experimental characterization of these parts on the Main Page of that Part's Registry entry. Click here for parts.
☑ Collaboration
We have mentored a new registered team, the SiCAU-China, detected the inhibitory effect of Trichoderma on the process of Phytophthora making inroads into tobacco for the team ZJU-China. Please read the details on the Collaboration.
☑ Human Practices
We have thought carefully and creatively about whether your work is safe, responsible and good for the world. And we accomplish this through engaging with your local, national and/or international communities or other approaches. Click here for more details about our human practice.
Gold Medal
☑ Integrated Human practices
More than engagement, we integrated supporting research in our human practice. To know common pesticide contamination and public biosecurity awareness, we sent three kinds of customized questionnaires to different people. The questionnaires made us know the TCP， which is harmful. Subsequently, we learned about the presence of a large number of TCP by detecting soil from soil survey. We know that we cannot solve the problems well which related to human development only by research. With the help of experts’ power, we can make it more professional and more in-depth. Therefore, we have built a ‘Global League of Professors’ to guide our projects. So we contacted with experts from several countries and universities all over the world about plants or environment by emails, videos and face to face interview, More importantly, our project has been widely concerned in the academic community with the help of their contacts and resources.Click here for more details about our human practice.
☑ Improve a previous part or project
We have constructed two BBa_K2286006 and BBa_K2286008 parts as the improvement of BBa_K1199044. And we have improved the BBa_K1199044 to degrade 2,3-DCP more efficiently.
☑ Modeling
We have built a mathematical model and found an optimal strategy to improve project conversion efficiency. Modeling and one-pot multienzyme experiments provided detailed insights into pathway dynamics, enabled the selection of a suitable engineered enzyme, and optimal ratios of enzymes. Click here for details.
☑ Demonstrate your work
Our team produced a Super Tobacco which could degrade 1,2,3-TCP into glycerol this year. We introduced three key enzymes, DhaA31, HheC-W249P, EchA into tobacco by Agrobacterium mediated transformation with the application of synthetic biology of plants.
Special Awards
☑ Best Education and Public Engagement
We have built an iGEM ecosphere, which includes universities, experts, iGEMers and teenagers. To achieve our iGEM ecosphere, we went to several schools first. We exchanged little handmade plant printing bags with pupils, made micro landscapes of domestic waste with middle school students, and held a brainstorming about synthetic biology in middle school. We guided young people to understand synthetic biology, so that they would become the industry's reserve talent. Meanwhile, we organized an exhibition with Southwest Union and mobilized college students to help us dig up soil samples. Even more, we helped SiCAU build their team. Under our influence, more and more students have joined iGEM. We communicated with many professionals who are in our ecosphere. They referred to a common problem, laboratory safety, which lacks a uniform safety standard in basic biology labs in China. So we made China's first iGEM laboratory safety video and comics. We hope the ecosphere can develop with a medium. Even if the competition is over, it will continue to output influence, and continue to promote synthetic biology. So we designed an easy-to-understand turn-based board game based on synthetic biology, Gene Card. It becomes popular in China during a short time and turn it into a lot of people's biological enlightenment game teaching aid.
☑ Best Integrated Human Practices
More than engagement, we integrated supporting research in our human practice. To know common pesticide contamination and public biosecurity awareness, we sent three kinds of customized questionnaires to different people. The questionnaires made us know the TCP， which is harmful. Subsequently, we learned about the presence of a large number of TCP by detecting soil from soil survey. We know that we cannot solve the problems well which related to human development only by research. With the help of experts’ power, we can make it more professional and more in-depth. Therefore, we have built a ‘Global League of Professors’ to guide our projects. So we contacted with experts from several countries and universities all over the world about plants or environment by emails, videos and face to face interview, More importantly, our project has been widely concerned in the academic community with the help of their contacts and resources.Click here for more details about our human practice.
☑ Best Modeling
Our project is a three-enzyme system catalyzing a five-step chemical conversion, we hope that these three enzymes (DhaA31, HheC, EchA) will be used to degrade TCP into glycerol. The efficiency of multi-enzyme processes can be enhanced by optimization of the stoichiometry of the biocatalysts. Dynamics research has been a hot topic，however the dynamics of the multi-enzyme system is complex. We built a mathematical model, and the enzyme stoichiometry of each pathway was optimized. Mathematical modeling and one-pot multienzyme experiments provided detailed insights into pathway dynamics, enabled the selection of a suitable engineered enzyme, and optimal ratios of enzymes. According to the modeling results, and combining the character of plants, we constructed different plasmids. Then some parameters were adjusted for the best fitting with our experimental data. The validated model was used to quantitatively describe the kinetic limitations of currently available enzyme variants and predict improvements required for further pathway optimization. We used the model to guide the design, and found an optimal strategy to improve project conversion efficiency.Click here for modeling.
☑ Best Plant Synthetic Biology
Our team produced a Super Tobacco which could degrade 1,2,3-TCP into glycerol this year. We introduced three key enzymes, DhaA31, HheC-W249P, EchA into tobacco by Agrobacterium mediated transformation with the application of synthetic biology of plants. In order to obtain better degradation efficiency of TCP by enriching these three enzymes at the root of tobacco, we also used a plant root specific expression promoter YK10 to replace the constitutive promoter CaMV35s. At the same time, a gene encoding the expression of cytokinin, CKX3, which could improve the biomass of roots as well as a plant cell wall localization signal peptide AO-S were also introduced into tobacco. All the genes we used have been codon-optimized for dicotyledonous plants and were submitted as BioBricks to iGEM Registry. Our results provided a potential approach for degrading 1,2,3-TCP by plants and we hoped that our Biobricks could be helpful to other iGEMers who worked with synthetic biology of plants in the future!Click here for plant.
