Team:XJTU-CHINA/Collaborations
Collaborations
In the process of the competition, we have got support and help from other teams, and at the same time, we did our best to contribute to other teams. In this atmosphere of mutual help, we successfully completed our project and made many new friends.
We helped YAU-China to build the model for simulation of their system, and in return, they provided us the pSB1K3 plasmid.
We first asked YAU-China nearby for pSB1K3, but unfortunately, we failed to complete the transformation after many attempts.
The team of Yan 'an University encountered some difficulties in modeling and asked us for help. The drylab group of our team has helped Yan 'an university to establish one mRNA transcription related model in the form of ordinary differential equation (ODE) system to simulate the expression of relevant proteins based on biochemical kinetic mechanism and molecular biological theories.
Organizing Shaanxi Meetup and kindly help a new team in 2019: YAU-China
Most importantly, we organized and held a Meetup in Shaanxi in Xi'an at July 19th 2019. YAU-China，NWU-China and XJTU-CHINA participated in this Meetup. In this meeting, the iGEMers of the three schools shared their own projects with each other at first. After that, we mainly discussed the project of YAU-China. We believe that the safety of the projects needs further consideration, especially after the bacterial lysis. It is of great importance to deal with the possibility of harming other cells. YAU-China carefully considered our opinions and they knocked out the T3SS gene cluster to ensure its biosafety.
3.Attending many meetups and obtain advices
During the igem competition, in order to improve our project and find out the novel ideas of other iGEM teams, we participated in a series of Meetups.
The first one held at 2019.5.1-2019.5.3, Southwest China Meetup held at University of Electronic Science and Technology. In this meetup many teams gives us a lot of suggestions about our two initial ideas which are ‘bacterial radio’ and ‘bacterial fragrance generator’. After the in-depth discussion with them, we made our final decision to choose ‘bacterial fragrance generator’ as our project.
2019.8.19-2019.8.23 Conference of China iGEMer Community Meetup was held in Shenzhen, China. Teams attending these meetups gave us a lot of plausible suggestions to improve our project. The most important one is to change the focus of our modelling work to the efficiency of the light-controlling switch. After this meetup, we deeply analyse the mechanism of the light-responsive system and established accurate model with amazing results.
4.Parts database has been launched by the three teams in Northwest China : XJTU-CHINA, NWU-China and YAU-China
In view of the fact that there are few iGEM teams in Northwest China, it is rather inconvenient to ask for help from nearby teams. Based on this, in Shaanxi meet up, we decided to build a Northwest database of frequently-used genes or parts among iGEM teams in Northwest China, to facilitate the future teams. iGEM official will provides 30 kb-DNA synthesis for free each team per year, which we plan to use to build our part library, and this year we have synthetized and build a DNA database with about 100 kb DNA lengths. Moreover, this is a five-year plan, and we will continuous to enrich this database in the next year, next next year etc., aiming to benefit the teams in Northwest and all over the China.
5.Kind plasmid donations from other teams
Our backbone plasmid pSB1K3 was kindly supplied by 2019 team NWU-China and turned out to be successful.
To prevent loss of regulatory plasmid, we used kanamycin resistance, which is different from the resistance of precursor plasmid pGPP (chloramphenicol). We found the plasmid pSB1K3 by kit search, but the official kit has not arrived yet, so we had to contact with other teams. Firstly, We sought help from Yan 'an University, but unfortunately, we failed to get transformants. Later, we found help from NWU-China and successfully transformed the vector into E. coli.
Plasmid pJBEI6409 was kindly offered by 2018 team GreatBay_China
When we were planning to design plasmids to synthesize the precursor GPP, we were pleased to find that the 2018 team GreatBay_China also worked on the synthesis of GPP. Through communication, they sent us plasmid containing GPP synthase. To our surprise, this plasmid also harboring our interested gene-limonene synthase. We are very grateful to GreatBay_China for their generous help.
Light-controlled plasmids KX011464 pJFR1、KX011465 pJFR2、KX011466 pJFR3、KX011467 pJFR4 were kindly donated by UCAS 2018
When we designed the control circuit, we determined to use the optical control system, and we were lucky to find that UCAS-2018 used the optical control system. After communication, they generously gave us the plasmids containing the whole optical control system.