Collaborations

We have collaborated with US_AFRL_CarrollHS, QHFZ-China, ASTWS-China, Worldshaper-XSHS,ZJU-China, HZNFHS_Hangzhou, and XHD-WS-Wuhan-B. We collaborated with them through wiki part, meetup, and the publicity, and so on.

WIKI Part helped by US_AFRL_CarrollHS

Our team meet the huge problems when we first begin our wiki programming, which means that when we are copying the code from the model page we have finished, the code changed a lot and cannot show the correct pages on our team page. We suffered from the problems for a while and then we con-nected with US_AFRL_CarrollHS team by Instagram. Their team sent us a video made by them in the YouTube, which focused on “How to IGEM WIKI?”, the series of instruction taught us a lot and we successfully make our homepage, which is a breakpoint to our team in the beginning.

After a while, we find a more serious problem, which is that the menu bar failed to show us the sub-menu when we move the mouse on it. We talked about the problem to US_AFRL_CarrollHS team again, magically, they helped us solve the problems, and our wiki comes nice without an error. After that, from uploading of pictures to setting the jump out of the picture, US_AFRL_CarrollHS team by all means helped us a lot and we really appreciate for their help.

Meet up in Hangzhou

Participate in the first iGEM X high school in Hangzhou , which is hosted by ASTWS-China, Worldshaper-XSHS, and ZJU-China

It's a great honor for us to be invited by ASTWS-China to the first iGEM X high school. In the meetup, we gave a presentation about our currunt project and showed our poster to seven other teams. After iGEM committee chairs, university professors, and iGEM ambassador in Asia came as our judges, let-ting us experience the atmosphere of iGEM Giant Jamboree and helping us better prepare for the presentation. A lot of suggestions and informations leading us to improve our project better. We also learned about another team ,QHFZ-China, that had the same topic with us, we contacted with them more often after the event .

Figure 1 Meet up in the first iGEM X high school in Hangzhou

Meet up with QHFZ-China

After join in the meet up in Hangzhou, we learnt that there is another iGEM team: QHFZ-China, whose project also related to the gout. After the first online meet up, we knew each other better and have a comparison between our design. Although we are not the same project, but there is still some similar point in our pathway. We noticed that we both use HucR and pHucO, but different with the sequence and gene pathway. Actually, we met three times failures in one of our part funtion test at that time, as a result, we began to guess that the problems maybe happen on our promoter of pathway design

Accompanying with the questions, we have another meet up with QHFZ-China two weeks later. This time, the leader of their team told us that the promoter we used is so week that it can not let the gene pathway to produce enough mCherry while the promoter of HucR is stronger, causing a heavy repres-sion to pHucO. They suggested us to add an extra sequence in our promoter, which can enhance the promoter strongly. Two references that is published on Nature1-2 was given to us and letted us know how to improve our gene pathway in the future. Moreover, they suggested that we can also try to in-crease the copy number of pHucO, which have a good effect on combination with HucR as they have experimented and proved it.

Figure 2 Some discussion using Wechat with QHFZ-China

Another enlightenment QHFZ-China gave us is the way to let our red fluorescence successfully relat-ed to the uric acid level using an easy device. It was also the second online meet up, their team mem-bers introduce us to a simple version of the microplate readers (Figure2), and it also an optical sensor invented by LEGO. We putted the ideas into the applied design of Magnetic Beads Kit.

Figure3 the simple version of the microplate readers by the team leader of QHFZ-China)

Mutually, during the meet up, our team also helped QHFZ-China a lot. When we are introducing our gene pathway that use the red fluorescence protein as a marker, the team members of QHFZ-China confused a lot because the protein is the same color as the blood. Moreover, because of this, they first-ly exclude the red fluorescence protein and replace it with the green fluorescence protein and orange fluorescence protein. However, they examined that those proteins do not report well. We answered them that we choose red fluorescence protein mCherry as it is superior to other fluorescent protein la-bels because of its color and light stability of individual molecules. Also we were going to seperate se-rum from blood for further uric acid detecting so that it is unnecessary to worry about the same color between mCherry and blood. This information helped their team a lot and take the design of their ex-periment one step further.

Instead of using mCherry as a marker, we introduced some ways and places to make their Human Practice part better as they meet some problems in the HP. For example, we teach them how to make a nice publicity and how to make some speech about their project to the public. The collaboration be-tween our two teams is really meaningful and helpful.

Collaboration in Publicity

Our team participant in the public relations at Hangzhou low carbon science and technology museum China, together with Worldshaper-XSHS, ZJU-China,ASTWS-China, XHD-WS-Wuhan-B, and HZNFHS_Hangzhou. Each team had their own activities and we were engaged as a large iGEM publici-ty parts, leading children to come to each of us one by one.

We mianly cooperate with XHD-WS-Wuhan-B, who engaged in the activities that we have prepared be-fore: “the extraction of your own DNA”, we introduced our project to the public and make some small games to the children. For example, we are teaching children the procedure of extracting their own DNA while the team members of XHD-WS-Wuhan-B prepared the instrument that we need to use dur-ing the small experiments, and when we are talking aloud about our project in from of the public, their team members are instructing the children and their parents with the process of the experiments.

During the publicity to the public all of us learned a lot about how to introduce our project to the public cleat and we thanked each team that collaborate with us to let the whole activities fulfilled and meaning-ful. Also, we know the project of each other’s team better and acknowledge ourselves.

Figure 5 Engagement in Hangzhou Low Carbon Science and Technology Museum China

The references given by QHFZ-China