This year our team is made up of 7 biological scientists, 4 bioinformaticians and 1 chemist, all of whom are new to iGEM. We started our project design in January this year and finally decided our project —— Grenadier Guards on May 1st after four months of intense and independent brainstorming process. We have been putting ceaseless effort such as conducting wet experiments and mathematical modeling since the middle of June. During this long time battle, we are trying our best to understand our individual roles and responsibilities, as well as devoting all our time and energy to this project. Although our project is not mature enough and we are not that experienced, we really appreciated this special iGEM experience from which we have gained some precious qualities like perseverance and diligence, as well as establishing strong and sincere friendship with each other.

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Self-supporting

Management:

Both Tianjun Wang and Yijing Gong were student team leaders. Tianjun Wang put lots of efforts into designing and managing the wet experiment, as well as communicating with several biological reagent suppliers. Yijing Gong focused more on dry experiments, human practices, collaborations and later wet experiment designs.

Overall idea:

Huiting Li and Ziying Jin first came up with the idea about using anti-microbial peptides to fight against Staphylococcus aureus. Huiting has done lots of jobs in searching information to support our idea at the early stages. Yijing Gong and Haohui Fang helped to design the initial biological circuit. Later, Yijing Gong, Tianjun Wang, Zixin Rong and Yiyou Song communicated and modified the circuit further.

Wet experiments:

The majority of our members participated in wet experiments. The main members in each group are listed below:

1. Testing on the efficiency of DRGN-1: Tianjun Wang, Haohui Fang
2. Testing on the efficiency of LL-37, GF-17 and Grammistin on killing bacteria and destroying their biofilm: Zinxin Rong, Yiyou Song, Xidan Zhang
3. Quorum sensing testing: Ziyin Jin, Xidan Zhang, Yijing Gong
4. Peptide gene synthesis in single copy: Sijie Feng, Haohui Fang, Yiyou Song
5. Peptide gene synthesis in tandems repeats: Zinxin Rong, Haohui Fang
6. Autolysin AcmA testing: Tianjun Wang, Haohui Fang, Yiyou Song, Yijing Gong
7. Interlab: Tianjun Wang, Yiyou Song, Ziyin Jin
8. NAU-CHINA’s vector construction: Yijing Gong, Zixin Rong

Mathematical Modeling:

We made a collaboration with Nanjing-Agriculture University this year. Yijing Gong communicated and helped them to understand our project, as well as search and collect parameters for NAU-CHINA to build modeling.

Wiki:

Webpage design and coding: Wenlan Pan, Zhiyun Gong
Cartoon design: Yijing Gong
Writing: Yijing Gong, Yuqi Hang, Huiting Li, Tianjun Wang, Yiyou Song, Zixin Rong, Sijie Feng

Human Practice:

1. Information collection by Questionnaire

Designers: Yijing Gong, Yuqi Hang

2. Public speech on campus

Host: Yuqi Hang
Speakers: Tianjun Wang, Huiting Li, Yijing Gong
Invited guests: Dr. Boris Tefsen, Dr. Jia Meng, Mr. Zhiming Mao
Poster and roll-up banner design: Zhiyun Gong
Arrangement: Xidan Zhang, Wenlan Pan, Zhiyun Gong


3. Visit to Nanjing General Hospital

Interviewers: Yijing Gong, Sijie Feng, Xidan Zhang
Guest: Ms. Hui Shi
Photographers: Tianjun Wang, Haohui Fang


4. 2017 International STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) festival

Speaker: Yuqi Hang
Poster and roll-up banner design and arrangement: Xidan Zhang, Wenlan Pan, Zhiyun Gong
Exhibition Stand helpers: Xidan Zhang, Ziyin Jin, Yijing Gong, Yiyou Song, Zinxin Rong, Sijie Feng

5. Visit to Changhai Hospital

Interviewer: Huiting Li, Yijing Gong
Guest: Dr. Can Xu

6. Presentation on CCiC (Conference of China iGEMer Community)

Tainjun Wang, Zixin Rong

Collaborations:

1. Collaboration with NAU-CHINA

Yijing Gong and Zixin Rong helped to construct two vectors using pSB1C3 plasmids. Zixin Rong designed the primers, and Yijing Gong finished the whole experiments.

2. Collaboration with TMMU-CHINA

We helped them design and synthesize the quorum sensing part.

Finance and Accessory:

Haohui Fang

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The back-up supporting

Sincere and special thanks to

Dr. Guoxia Han supported us at every step of iGEM. He gave us alerting suggestion on scientific research and made his best to ensure us go ahead bravely. He would also accompany us to the giant jamboree and take care of us in the U.S.

Dr. David Chiu spent long hours supervising us and gave his valuable help throughout the whole project. He also prepared extra classes to help us understand more about synthetic biology techniques and lab safety.

Prof. Dechang Xu supported us by listening to all our concerns and encouraging us to find solutions. He also advised us on our modelling strategies and helped us to get connection with many of our sponsors and collaborators.

Mr. Yunpeng Zhong is quite talented at synthetic biology and helped us a lot when we got stuck at the difficult time.

Mr. Zhongkai Huang and Ms. Sijing Meng supervised us in the lab all along.