Team:Austin UTexas/Collaborations
Collaborations
To fulfill the silver medal requirement, the UT Austin team collaborated with the Texas Tech and Rice iGEM teams. The UT Austin team reached out to discuss ways in which all parties involved could cooperate and assist each other in order to enhance each team project.
In the spirit of collaboration, the UT Austin team reached out to both Rice and Texas Tech to formally invite both teams to participate in the University of Texas 2017 Fall Research Undergraduate Symposium. Upon this invitation, each team began electronically communicating with one another in order to brainstorm ways in which collaboration could benefit and improve each of the team projects.
Prior to the meetup, multiple ideas were brainstormed on determining how exactly each team could assist the other and vice-versa. On Saturday, September 23, 2017, iGEM teams from Texas Tech University, Rice University, and the University of Texas met at the Undergraduate Research Symposium in Austin, Texas. It was here that each team formally presented their projects to an audience and panel of judges as part of the program. After the symposium presentations concluded, all teams met to discuss specific collaboration details and provide feedback to one another. As a relatively new team, Texas Tech received extensive constructive criticism from team UT Austin, who overall has more experience in participating in the iGEM competition and completing the requirements. Texas Tech presented a draft of the initial PowerPoint presentation they were planning to showcase at the iGEM Jamboree. Darron Tharp, newcomer to the Texas Tech team and iGEM, was the main presenter of this presentation. First, Tharp presented their research slides in their entirety. After doing so, team UT Austin had Texas Tech go through every individual slide and gave them feedback on the content, formatting, and presentation technique utilized. In the process of this, Texas Tech asked various questions that UT Austin answered and clarified. This series of feedback with the presentation was repeated with team Rice. After both teams had their presentations assessed and critiqued by team UT Austin, the joint effort was continued by discussing a more direct means of collaborating.
At the meetup, a GroupMe chat was created with the student leaders from all teams. This was the main source of communication throughout the weeks ahead. Through this group chat the UT Austin team reached out to Rice to discuss and collaborate with them on modeling. Eve Sharpee, from the UT Austin team, discussed various ways to improve the modelling mechanisms on their presentation with Jack Terrell, head team leader for modeling from Rice. In the coming weeks ahead, Rice answered any questions from UT Austin and made sure to provide guidance in creating the graphics that would essentially be used for modeling in the iGEM Jamboree presentation and wiki page. Texas Tech also provided assistance in the form of transforming Lactobacillus. using a variation of the protocol used by team UT Austin, as a way to troubleshoot in order to identify issues encountered when initially transforming with this organism. Texas Tech confirmed that the protocol first used by team UT Austin was not efficient and did not function as expected, leading team UT Austin to adapt the procedure eventually producing a successful transformation of Lactobacillus. Through this process, via the protocol provided by team UT Austin, Texas Tech acquired more experience with electroporation as they were mostly familiar with chemical transformations.
Collaboration efforts by the Rice University iGEM team can be found here: Team:Rice/Collaborations
Collaboration efforts by the Texas Tech University iGEM team can be found here:
