Team:Greatbay SCIE/Attributions
Attribution
Our team and start of IGEM
We learned the iGEM competition from one of our clubs in school, the iGEM, whose members attend iGEM every year and had accomplished great prizes in 2018. Inspired by the previous teams, we, fourteen energetic high-school students who are interested in synthetic biology, formed Greatbay_SCIE at the end of December 2018.
Project
With the instructions of Jin Yin and our instructor Xuanyu Zhao, we researched a great range of fields of study in order to find an intriguing idea. Among the several ideas, we chose the underwater adhesives one as it is linked to our team’s location; living near the coastline of southeast China, the unique location helps us understand and investigate the marine organisms who live on the coastal area. Our advisor Xuanyu Zhao introduced us to several professors of related fields of study, which has helped us integrate our project much deeper. Professor Yu Zhang gave us information about the marine organisms and useful suggestions about the feasibility of the project when we were initially focused on the anti-fouling, helping us move to the research of adhesive proteins. Cherie Hu, Uranium Chen, and Jerry Xie did researches about more marine organisms other than mussels who have adhesive proteins, providing new possibilities such as barnacles and sandcastle worms. Diana Tan, Ginny Fan, Winnie He, Adonie Dong, and others research on the combinations derived from the study of CsgA-MFPs of professor Chao Zhong.
Lab
Molecular Cloning:
Design: Diana, Uranium, Cherie
Execution: Diana, Uranium, Cherie, Adonie, Ginny Amy,
Protein Expression:
Design: Wendy, Diana, Jerry
Purification: Wendy, Diana, Jerry, Emma, Darcy, Ginny, Winnie, Aislinn, Merry, Amy
experimental demonstration:
sfGFP related constructs characterization: Uranium. (Thanks to Prof. Liping Li from Southern University of Science and Technology for providing us the THERMO varioskan flash microplate reader)
DOPA qualitative analysis: Diana, Aislinn, Ginny, Cherie
Surface coating analysis: Diana
Other adhesion tests: Uranium, Diana
Protein production in Pichia pastoris: Merry, Aislinn, Diana
Xuanyu Zhao help us through the project design and develop our experimental skills.
Wiki
Pictures and texts are provided by all members of the team. Most constructions are done by Joseph Zhao.
Human Practices
meetups:
Diana, Cherie, Emma, Winnie, Adonie, and Ginny went to the iGEM Southern China Regional Meeting hosted by team SZU.
Diana, Wendy,…… attend the 6th Conference of China iGEMer Community.
integrated human practices:
Interview with Professor Chao Zhong from ShanghaiTech University: Wendy, Merry, Cherie, Uranium, Darcy, and Diana.
Interview with Doctor Huang from the Peking University of Shenzhen Hospital: Darcy and Wendy. It helped us develop the ways to interview.
Interview with Dr. Chen from Centre for Translational Medicine Research and Development: Darcy, Wendy, and Emma.
Model
Diana researched for models and equations, Wrote the ODE functions. Yeqing Zong from Bluepha suggested us to base on Michaelis-Menten kinetics; Weitong Guo from Bluepha provided us with useful information and methodology of modeling.
Art and Design
Cherie Hu designed the logo, wiki page layout, team uniform, posters, banner, and all the illustrations used in our materials. Darcy Zheng designed the team uniform.
Pre-IGEM training and project starts
Bluepha Lab offers synthetic biology training in the forms of winter camps and summer camps. The course syllabus and materials are not freely available online. In February 2018, majority members of GreatBay_SCIE took part in the ‘Cell Factory’ winter camp held in Bluepha Lab, which lasted for five days and was taught by Boxiang Wang. It was during the winter camp that we first started brainstorming. The project started in March and the lab began in June.
Acknowledgement
We are indebted to Chao Zhong for inspiring and supporting our ideas of the projects by suggesting several critical points to improve; to Doctor Huang from the Peking University of Shenzhen Hospital for giving us advice on our future applications; to Weitong Guo from Bluepha Lab for giving advice to our modeling part; to Xuanyu Zhao also from Bluepha Lab for being our dearest instructor and helping all the way through our journey of investigation; to Boxiang Wang from Bluepha Lab for introducing us to the world of synthetic biology; to Harry Jiang for being our senior who brings all of us together; to Alexis Zeng for giving us plenty of useful information from her previous experiences of being an iGEMer; to Dr. Chen for suggesting several possible applications for our project; to Yu Zhang who pointed out problems we’ve never noticed before which helped us to improve largely; last but not least, to Bluepha Lab who giving us opportunity and space to carry out the experiment.
