Team:Botchan Lab Tokyo/Collaborations
Botchan Lab. Tokyo
Collaborations
It is really meaningful to interact with other iGEM teams around the world. This year, we got in touch and collaborated with various iGEM teams. Each collaboration not only provides us chance to have relationships with iGEM teams from different countries, but also develops our understanding of synthetic biology. We believe our collaborations will contribute to society in various ways. Thank you all for having collaborated and shared the idea with us!!!
Gifu meet up
On December 8th, we had a meeting with Gifu University, Kyoto University, Kyoto Sangyo University, Tokyo Institute of Technology, and Gunma University. Each team made a presentation on the progress of the team project this year, the organization chart of the organization, and the management method. We asked questions and gave feedback on these.
In addition, we were able to obtain new knowledge by discussing how to determine the project, ideas for the project, and HP activities. Through this meetup, we were able to incorporate the good points of each team.
iGEM Japan Summer Meetup
On August 16, our team took part in iGEM Japan Summer Meetup at Tokyo Institute of Technology. We gave a presentation and discussed the project with team TokyoTech, Gunma, GIFU_TOKAI, Kyoto, and ASIJ_Tokyo. Our team got so much advice from Koichi Mikami an assistant professor of Keio University, ex-members of Japanese iGEM teams, and other members of different iGEM teams. It was an precious opportunity to think about application of our project from a new point of view. Also, two new teams, UT-Tokyo and Waseda, which will participate in iGEM next year came there, and we had fun talking and explaining them about iGEM.
Mentoring the iGEM team Gunma
We participated in iGEM Jamboree last two years and got bronze and silver medals. Through our experience, we learned what should we need to do for participating in the Jamboree, or how to cope with a difficult situation. We want to make use of this experience, so we mentored the newly founded iGEM team Gunma.
We firstly met them at Gifu meet up and since then, we regularly contacted via LINE or Skype, and shared documents to know what each other dealed with. We gave some advice such as how to manage team since we have more than three times as many members as them. Also we told how to build wiki, or integrate human practice into the project, and advised about the experiment. Additionally, we made opportunity to have online meeting and talked about the projects. We shared the difficulties, and discussed how to solve it. We struggled with insufficient funds, so got some advice about funding the money from them. Not just giving advice to them, we could boost our morale through this collaboration, and this interaction made a substantial contribution to advance a project. Thank you Gunma for your cooperation!
Translating the story book for the public ”UMAY’S ADVENTURES IN SYNTHETIC BIOLOGY”
In July, we were offered to collaborate with team Bilket-UNAMBG. They wrote a little story book about synthetic biology for children, and asked us to translate it into Japanese. We can empathize with their opinion that we want children all over the world to develop an understanding of synthetic biology, so we’re honored to contribute to this project. We’ll conduct experiment class in winter, so we’ll introduce it to young children. We think spreading the knowledge of synthetic biology is important, and this interaction will become the reason to gain a further understanding of synthetic biology to wide variety of people. You can see the book from here. Thank you team Bilket-UNAMBG for the opportunity to be a part of such an amazing experience!
Translating script of workshop for young children
In September, team Washington offered us to translate the booklet into Japanese. Team Washington wants to increase the accessibility across language barriers for their outreach booklet, and we helped to translate it with team NYU_Shanghai. The booklet includes the fundamentals of biology, programming manual and so on. We think the booklet is really interesting and effective method to convey the pleasures of science. We’ll make good use of it through further outreach. Thank you team Washington for this opportunity!
Exchange of Opinions with team Sao_Carlos-Brazil
In September, we are seeking for the possibility of our project, so we got in touch with team Sao_Carlos-Brazil, and got technical input from them. This year, they are planning to engineer a fermenting yeast that is able to amass melanin on its surface to become resistant to ultraviolet radiation. Synthesizing the radioresistant bacteria is our common purpose of the projects, so our discussion was beneficial. We got advice that we need to concentrate on improving E.coli’s repair mechanism, and we introduced the paper which explain how oxidative stress damage yeast cells during fermentation process. Thank you team Sao_Carlos-Brasil for your cooperation!
Online meeting and further discussion with team NCTU_Fornosa
On August 2, we did online meeting with NCTU_Formasa (https://2019.igem.org/Team:NCTU_Formosa), and we introduced and discussed the project. Both of our project. is related to mutation, so this meeting was a huge help for our project. Since then we keep in touch with them, and exchange information about the progress of each other’s project. When we had difficulty with modeling, they were willing to help us and it was really helpful to review our modeling plan. Thank you for your kindness!