All members of the team have registered as an undergraduate team in iGEM 2019.
Competition deliverables.
According to the Deliverables page on iGEM’s website:
We have created a wiki page, which includes an Attributions page.
A wiki page is also dedicated to the Safety part of our project.
We have designed a poster for display at the Giant Jamboree.
We have prepared for the team presentation during the Jamboree.
We have submitted the Judging form and safety forms before the deadline.
Attributions
We have received lots of help from professors and other people during the development of our project. As such, we have an Attributions page for whom that has helped us along our iGEM journey.
Project Inspiration and Description
Our project aims to develop a synthetic biology method to reduce p-Cresol and the health complications caused by its accumulation. To learn more, do look at our project inspiration and description which are listed on the Description page.
Characterization/ Contribution
To reduce the amount of p-Cresol, we devised a method to divert tyrosine metabolism by using an existing iGEM part. For more info, please refer to our Parts page which we have completed before the deadline.
Silver
Validated Part/ Validated Contribution
We have proven that the functions of each constructed parts work as expected.
Collaboration
For our collaboration, we were honored to mentor the 2019 iGEM Korea_HS Team as this is their first time participating in this competition. We provided them some tips on how to compete in this competition and how to meet the medal criteria.
We were also mentored by the 2019 iGEM UNSW Team on how to create a business plan. They provided us with their global business scaffold and advised us on how to sell our products by first setting up a business model. We also discussed the pharmaceutical industry in both Taiwan and Australia as well as the laws and regulations regarding the sales and usage of medication.
Human Practices
Human practices play a big role in how we spread our ideas beyond the laboratory. To put synthetic biology in layman terms, we concluded that learning through games will achieve the greatest effect. Hence, we developed our own snake game to raise awareness of the public towards uremic toxins. Besides that, the highlight of our human practices is the Oh My Gut Escape Room, where we hosted a number of student teams from NCKU and taught them about the dangers of p-Cresol while having fun while escaping each level. For more information, please visit our Human Practices and Public Engagement page.
Gold
Integrated Human Practice
We have worked closely with professionals and reached out to the general public to understand their opinions and tailor our project to meet their demands. We reached out to the TFDA (Taiwan Food and Drugs Administration), healthcare professionals and engineering professors, wherewith their suggestions, developed and optimized the design of our CreSolve living therapeutic drug as well as our CreSense sensing device. We also visited several therapeutic companies where they helped us further develop our plans for marketing and start-up to make our products closer to reality.
Improve a Previous Part/Project
Tyrosine ammonia-lyase (TAL) is an enzyme responsible for the conversion of tyrosine to p-Coumaric acid. To increase the expression of TAL, we decided to place the J23100 promoter and B0034 RBS upstream of the TAL coding gene. As such, the improvement
aligns with our aim to further reduce the level of p-Cresol via diverting the tyrosine metabolism pathway.
Modeling
To predict the efficiency of E. coli in reducing p-Cresol production by competing for tyrosine with Clostridium bacteria, we built a co-culture model. Additionally, to explore bacteriocin’s impact on our project, we have also created a bacteriocin model.
Demonstration of Our Work
As a supplement to our therapeutic project and help raise awareness of the dangers of uremic toxins, our Dry Team has built a device that can detect the presence of p-Cresol and quantify it in the blood as an affordable, quick and accurate alternative.
