EDUCATION & ENGAGEMENT

TONGJI iGEM PUBLIC NUMBER

We created the tongji iGEM public number and regularly posted relevant pushes on iGEM in the public number.

THE FIRST PUSH: PROGRAMMER (BALD) iGEMER IS ONLINE

Main content: Introduce igem from the perspective of software, including the teams participating in the calendar year, the main content of the project, etc., so that readers have a general understanding of igem and software.

THE SECOND PUSH: 6th CCIC IN SHENZHEN

Main content: It mainly introduces the tongji software team's participation in ccic in Shenzhen, and the harvest of our team. In the process of participating in ccic, we not only listened to the presentation of many teams, but also learned from the experience of other teams. We also listened to many lectures by biological experts and valuable suggestions from the judges on our projects. This was before the official igem competition. Very good exchange opportunities in China.

THE THIRD PUSH: SUBVERSIVE DISCIPLINE - SYNTHETIC BIOLOGY

Original intention: Since our project is closely related to synthetic biology, we hope that our readers will have a certain understanding of synthetic biology before we formally introduce our project, so that we can better understand pathlab.

Main content: As an emerging discipline in the field of biology in the 21st century, synthetic biology is the product of multidisciplinary intersections of molecular and cellular biology, evolutionary systematics, biochemistry, informatics, mathematics, computer and engineering. So far, it has made remarkable achievements in many fields such as bioenergy, biomaterials, medical technology and exploring the laws of life. In 2014, the US Department of Defense listed it as one of the six major disruptive technologies for priority development in the 21st century; in the third technical forecast completed in 2014, China listed synthetic biotechnology as one of the top ten breakthrough technologies. . Moreover, in the “13th Five-Year Plan” for scientific and technological innovation strategic planning, synthetic biotechnology has been listed as a strategic forward-looking key development direction.

THE FOURTH PUSH: EFFICIENT PATH SEARCHER - ALPHA ANT

THE FIFTH PUSH: PATH SEARCH 2.0 - INTEGRATED SERVICE PLATFORM PATHLAB

Main content: Pathlab is a comprehensive platform for channel design, which is mainly used for brainstorming in the early stage of determining the topic. When the user knows the product he wants or the substrate he can use, Path search, enzyme selection, and component search can be performed through Pathlab. In addition to the functions of these backbones, we also have functions such as word cloud, data update, and data upload to assist users in their use.

XIANG MING HIGH SCHOOL

In the early stage of the team, we represented for 2019 Tongji_Software team to give an introduction of Alpha Ant, the project of 2018 Tongji_Software, to the high school students of Xiangming High School.

We aimed at making those who are going to enter university have a general idea of iGEM and synthetic biology by making project presentations. Meanwhile, we encouraged them to take part in the iGEM competition, because they can learn many interesting and useful things by engaging themselves to the whole process of iGEM. Through this presentation, we found that those high school students showed great interests in iGEM and synthetic biology, and they also had some fresh ideas about synthetic biology and the project. For example, they asked whether there are connections between synthetic pathway of biology and organic synthesis of chemistry, and they were interested in the possibility of using machines or robots to simulate the biology pathways in reality.

This presentation, for our team, is the first human practice activity, and the key to this human practice is a review and conclusion of Alpha Ant, so as to have a clearer understanding of the whole project process and a deeper understanding of iGEM. Through this human practice, we realized the importance of biology simulation and the necessity of using computers to simulate bacteria to achieve the goal of reducing costs.

PRESENTATION IN TONGJI UNIVERSITY

The second presentation mainly introduced the status of bioinformatics in life science, the functions of bioinformatics in iGEM and how to use the knowledge of bioinformatics to construct a software about synthetic biology in iGEM. This presentation made us have a new understanding of bioinformatics, and understand the application of bioinformatics in synthetic biology. Meanwhile, in the process of preparing, we also organized the construction of software，to prepare for the later construction of software.

Firstly, we raised questions and divided these questions into parts, then we read related literature and discussed about the solutions, and in the process of finding solutions, we collected and cleared up useful data, built models to solve it, and we set up visual platform to make abstract problems more concrete. The interesting combination of codes in bioinformatics attracted students to join in the study of bioinformatics. The participation of software teams in iGEM competition also makes them see the wide application of bioinformatics and more motivated for them to learn. At the same time, in this presentation, we raised a question to the students about how to do the sequence alignment, and some of them thought that we can do the alignment from the beginning or the end of the sequences.

Although the students didn’t take many aspects into consideration, their different opinions on the same question inspired us to continue to try different algorithms, continuously optimize.