Team:Uppsala Universitet/Collaborations
“Individually, we are one drop. Together, we are an ocean.”
– Ryunosuke Satoro
iGEM Stockholm Team 2019
Our collaboration with Stockholm consisted of two parts: A social event and a BioEntrepreneurship conference.
BioEntrepreneurship Conference
On the 18th of September, the Uppsala and Stockholm iGEM teams jointly arranged a BioEntrepreneurship conference at the Karolinska Institute. During the conference, guest speakers from the private company OrganoFuel Sweden as well as from the innovation center at the Karolinska Institute gave presentations about science entrepreneurship, a highly relevant topic for both iGEM and non-iGEM participants alike. The main focus of the presentations was how to turn a scientific idea or discovery into a business-plan. The grand finale of the conference was a workshop in “Design Thinking and Prototyping”. Here participants worked on a prototype for one of the two iGEM projects, working together to develop and eventually present our ideas.
In order to make the conference a reality, the two teams divided the work that had to be done. Together we made a plan and specified who was responsible for contacting companies, ordering fika (Swedish version of coffee and pastries), marketing the event and securing a location for it. Together we made the conference a reality!
Crayfish Party
In Sweden there is a long and storied tradition of holding a crayfish party every August. It originates from the celebration of autumn arriving, giving an opportunity for farmers and the common people to enjoy the fruits of their summer labor. Crayfish was one of the things harvested, an occasion marked by a huge feast with crayfish as the main course. Naturally the iGEM teams of Uppsala and Stockholm wanted to partake in this joyous event! Our crayfish party took place at the end of August and both teams enjoyed a chance to relax outside of the lab together and learn about Swedish culture.
Help in a Time of Need
During an intense lab week, a biobrick from our registry was misplaced. We reached out to the Stockholm team who kindly gave us the asPink part that we needed for our project.
We are very grateful for all of our collaborations with the Stockholm iGEM team of 2019 .
iGEM DTU Team 2019
The project of the 2019 iGEM team from Technical University of Denmark (DTU) was to create a promoter library for filamentous fungi. Since we decided to express our ligninolytic enzymes in the yeast Pichia pastoris, the focus on fungi was a clear overlap between the two projects. This provided a great opportunity for a lab based collaboration between both teams. After several discussions about the scope of the collaboration, we sent our P. pastoris codon optimized constructs of AAO (aryl-alcohol oxidase) and HRP (horseradish peroxidase) to be tested in their expression system.
In early June, our team was trying out different methods for transformation of P. pastoris. The initial testing rounds of chemical transformations were not successful. At that time the DTU iGEM team did not hesitate to share with us an alternative protocol for chemical transformation of P. pastoris. However, we did not end up using this protocol, since soon after receiving the protocol we achieved high efficiency using electroporation. Despite that we are thankful to the iGEM DTU team 2019 for their help!
iGEM SCU China Team 2019
In the middle of the wet lab phase of our project, we shared a lab corridor with students who were taking the “Synthetic Biology” summer course at Uppsala University. Some of these students were team members from the Chinese SCU iGEM team, and both teams thought organizing a meet up would be a good opportunity to exchange ideas and knowledge. Holding such a session in the beginning of August was the perfect time to discuss practical problems and receive advice that we could directly apply to our remaining summer lab work. Moreover, the experience of presenting our projects to fellow students with a synthetic biology background was a great first practice run for our final Boston presentation!
Briefing on the presentation session
We presented our respective teams to one another, as well as the project concept and design;
We gave details about laboratory methods we were using and gave an update on our respective progress;
Finally, we gave each other feedback.
Input from SCU:
Use a T7 promoter instead of the lac promoter for initial 3A assembly of MnP, Glox, LiP into E. coli.
Our answer:
We used E. coli only for cloning purposes and it was not our expression system, so the choice of promoter was not a critical problem. We simply used what we had.
Questions to SCU:
During the presentation, we did not understand why they used cns3 in one of the designs and a combination of cns1 and cns2 in the second design for delayed expression.
SCU’s answer:
Cns3 can catalyze the production of PTN that can inhibit adenosine deaminase. Cns1 and Cns2 are responsible for COR production. We want to accumulate enough PTN to protect COR from deamination, so we constructed cns3 downstream a constitutive promoter, and used cns1-2 in the delay system downstream an inducible promoter. Delay system can also make cells ease the burden of protein expression and metabolite production before growth plateau.
Afterwards
After the presentations, we had an informal chat. A variety of topics were discussed, including the differences between how Chinese teams learn about and compete in iGEM versus in Uppsala, mistakes that we had made throughout the process and how were we going to overcome them!
We would like to thank the SCU China iGEM Team of 2019 for helping make our project even better!