On the 21st of September, two members of our team attended an interview to discuss the protein predictive modelling aspect of our project. Hiraka Kentaro and Miyazaki Masahiro, along Dr Ikebukuro, were kind enough to listen and offer help to our team. Through discussing our team’s intention to make amino acid modifications to the 0.19 Wheat Albumin (α-amylase inhibitor), Hiraka and Miyazaki explained how to fully utilise PyMol, a protein modelling program we had been previously using.
Dr Ikebukuro
On July 29, a member of our team was given the great opportunity to interview Tokyo University of Agriculture Technology’s Dr Kazunori Ikebukuro. After explaining to him our ultimate goal for our project, he began explaining how a single amino acid would be the best route to improve the strength at which the inhibitor binds to α-amylase. This greatly impacted our project by providing the fundamental ideas
East Japan Meetup Teams
Several teams around Japan met up at Tokyo Institute of Technology and illuminated a predicament for all iGEM teams around the world, Mathematical Modelling.
ASIJ Faculty
Ms. Crissy
Our project would not have been possible without our principal investigator and teacher, Ms Crissy. The nature of synthetic biology requires self-discipline and diligence, and Ms. Crissy was instrumental in instilling these qualities in us as students and researchers.
Mr. Nelson
As always, Mr. Nelson helped us with using HTML for coding our website, and the printing of our poster.
Chiba Institute of Technology
Advice from Professor Yamamoto
On October 5th, Professor Yamamoto gave us the opportunity to present the basics of synthetic biology along with our project to professors, college students, and high school students from the Chiba Institute of Technology. After the 30-minute presentation, we answered questions, went into further detail about any point of uncertainty, and asked for advice on sections that needed further explanation. Specifically, they mentioned that the 0.19-amylase complex gets degraded by the low pH level in the stomach, which leads to starch being broken down to sugars in the small intestine and subsequently causing a blood sugar spike. We understood that this was a limitation to our project which we did not have enough time to solve; we were originally thinking to make another modification of 0.19 compatible with pancreatic amylase and use liposomes to protect it from stomach acid and eventually open up in the small intestine through exocytosis. Then, Professor Yamamoto pointed out that the 0.19-amylase complex is maybe just stable enough pass through the stomach without denaturation, however, more tests need to be conducted to be confirmed. In conclusion, our visit to the Chiba Institute of Technology was a success; we were able to teach them the basics of synthetic biology accompanied by getting advice on our project from various perspectives.
Mr. Nakamura
Mr. Nakamura from Biomodeling Research Co.kindly offered us to make 4 free 3D printed protein models for our project! We will be using these in our presentation to visualize the effect of our modification on the alpha-amylase inhibitor.
