Meetups

Conference of China iGEMer Community (CCiC)

We attended Conference of China iGEMer Community held by Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences during this summer vacation. So excited to meet hundreds of Synbio Punks( who are crazy about synthetic biology and are creative) this time! There are more than 50 iGEM teams from China attended the conference. Participants includes students, professors and experts from variety fields.

Each team presented their project on stage and brought their poster to display. During the poster session, there were so many people who are interested about our project came to our poster to learn more about it. Our project received a lot of praise, especially our device design. We also received many practical suggestions, Some of them have directed our project since the conference. There we met HZAU-China for the first time. We practiced presentation together in a conference room, their PI, Prof. Jin He gave us a lots of suggestion on our presentation.

iGEM Meetup of Central China Area

We attended iGEM Meetup of Central China Area hosted by HUST-China in September. Team HZAU-China, HUST-China, HUBU-Wuhan, WHU-China also attended the meetup. Each team presented their project so that we acknowledged each other's project progress then we can learn from each other's strengths and collaborate to make the project better. After the presentation session, we had a discussion with HZAU-China, HUST-China, HUBU-Wuhan, WHU-China about parts characterization and parts improvement of medal criteria. Team leader from HZAU-China gave us lots of suggestions and inspirations. Besides, it’s so nice to meet our old friends from HZAU-China again, we learned that they have planned to make a device, so we tended to offer help of device design and printing work. We also discussed about model and were glad to know that they would like to help us with our modelling.

Collaboration with HZAU-China

Advice seeking

We made an appointment with their PI, Prof. Binguang Ma in September. We discussed about how to accomplish the project perfectly since we are not sure about some of the requirements of medal criteria. He told us that we are supposed to finish the characterization as long as possible. He also suggested us how to conduct and document validated experimental characterization of new parts which is vital to win the silver medal.

Model instruct

We are glad to collaborate with HZAU-China. We have met in two meetups, both of us were well acknowledged and interested in each other’s project. HZAU-China intend to help us with our modeling work.

This year we use S. cerevisiae as the chassis organism to remove nickel ions from effluent which we assumed to be nicke-resistant at some degree. Apparently, the cytotoxicity of nickel ions to S. cerevisiae cannot be ignored. We found that the TgMTP1t2 protein can transfer nickel ions from cytoplasm into yeast’s vacuole. HZAU-China helped us establish a model to predict the alleviation degree with the express of TgMTP1t2 gene. Below are three growth curves. The first one is in the absence of nickel ions. The second and third curves are respectively in the absence and presence of the TgMTP1t2 while the concentration of nickel ions is 7.5mg/L to see how TgMTP1t2 works. Through the growth curves we can find that the TgMTP1t2 is able to solve the cytotoxicity of nickel ions. More details can be found on our Model.

Collaboration with HUST-China

We attended iGEM Meetup of Central China Area hosted by HUST-China in September. On the meeting we learned that HUST-China were confident with and good in modeling work of iGEM project which we are relatively weak. So they decided to mentor us with modeling. They first obtained a basic model of the gene expression. Then using the result of it, thoroughly predicted the absorption of Ni²⁺ in a three-dimensional homogenous space occupied by Ni²⁺. More details can be found on our Model.

Collaboration with OUC-China

Brochure sharing

We brought the notebook “SPACESHIP E.coli” brochure on synthetic biology designed by OUC-China to the children in the village. Our partners explained the contents of the comics to the children and helped them to better understand synthetic biology. More details can be found on our Human Practices page.

Model instruct

We met with each other in CCiC. They are interested in our project and was willing to help us make a excellent model. OUC-China helped us make a molecular dynamic simulation of the process that nickel ion entering the cell through the NixA transporter protein. They first used a transporter protein as a template to obtain a well-predict model structure of NixA.

Then, in order to know where Ni²⁺ connects to the NixA and how to go through it, they use the NiCl2 which is very common in the acidic waste water to dock. Docking proves to be very difficult, but they got the parameters. Finally, they made a 8s video to display the process of Ni²⁺ going through the membrane. More details can be found on our Model.