Team:ZJU-China/Collaborations
Host a meetup
For Chinese iGEMers, the CCiC is a great chance for teams to communicate and collaborate. However, only few high school teams attend CCiC every year. This year in August, in response to the request from high school teams to have their own meetings, we co-hosted a meetup called iGEM x highschool in Hangzhou with ASTWS-China and XSHS-China (both of them are high school teams). We invited many high school teams from eastern China to participate in.
The meetup lasted two days, providing high school teams with a “simulated Giant Jamboree environment” to warm up for the real competition. Two university teams were also invited to provide some peer guidance for the high school team.
In addition, we invited members from After iGEM Committee such as Dorothy Zhang, professors from Zhejiang University, postgraduates from MIT-media lab to give suggestions and advice for every team.
Mentor a team
XSHS-China has received safety training and conducted some of their experiments in our laboratory. We taught them experimental skills and helped them adjust the test design to ensure the test was completed successfully.
We provided help in reformulating the plasmid construction program and construct laccase scLac and CotA expression plasmids.
Help with trouble shooting
In the process of communicating with WHU_China, we discussed the problems in their binary oscillator design. They designed a binary oscillator to improve the output of AMP and build a mathematical model to compare this binary oscillator with the classical ternary oscillator. They are concerned by the result, and our suggested that result may mean that their binary oscillator reach a steady state and it won’t be better than the ternary oscillator. We also pointed out that it’s better for them to use production not engineered bacteria to the fabrics, it could avoid the problem of AMP output.
CCU_Taiwan Team designed and developed “ASFAST” to detect African Swine Fever Virus (ASFV). Both of us wanted to use Cas12a protein as a diagnostic tool in our project. Feeling extremely lucky, we talked online in August and exchanged our ideas, concepts and difficulties we met. We found that we do have much information to share: we interchanged our experience in Cas12a protein expressing, purification and storage to each other; we gave them some advice on modelling and they also pointed out some problems in our projects. In brief, that meeting helped us a lot, so we decided to keep in touch. Then in October, we discussed about the reporter we use in our project and the measurement work we are going to do. It helped us to polish our methods in showing our results.
This year, we also collaborated with XJTLU-CHINA. We communicated about our modelling and gave them some advice in parameter choosing. On October, we discussed about Part measurement work on how to make sure the measurement methods are quantified. We also gave them two Parts from 2019 distribution kit (Plate 1, 14O and 16A).
