iGEM, seems like a regular competition merely from its name. However, it appears differently to participants since it provides high school students like us and undergraduates or even graduates a platform participate in group work. It enables us to make friends while learning from each other with who has the same interests and inspiration to use synthetic biology as a mean to contribute to different fields which eventually can make a big difference to our world. Hence, this year, our team actively participated by receiving and exporting ideas with team TJUSLS_China in terms of long-term projects, team iBowu, and team GreatBay_SCIE in terms of project communication and HP advertising, and other programs with team SHSBNU_China, Tsinghua, Keystone, BIT_China, ATCG.
Collaboration is an important part of our team's HP activities section. By receiving ,sending, and exchanging ideas with other teams, we have been inspired to improve our projects from different aspects, and have been provided an opportunity to expand our team's reach, making a lasting contribution to the HP collaboration as well.
First, we devoted ourselves to a big national meetup with over 20 teams in June, where we shared our projects, experiments, and human practice completed so far seeking further opportunities for one-on-one collaboration. The teams did peer evaluations which may help us to refine our projects and preliminary thoughts.
Later, seizing the opportunity of making improvement of the part TJUSLS_China’s mPETase last year, we further collaborated with TJUSLS_China by establishing cooperation in constructing experiment, model, HP, Wiki, and Art in order to achieve all-round mutual assistance. We took the advantages of our school’s reginal strengths and the professional skills of art members to help them solve problems in promotion videos, wiki, etc. Besides, they used their expertise in accumulation and experimental experiences to help us make further pivotal progress in our experiment.
Our collaboration with GreatBay_SCIE started from the same topic of PET degradation. We wrote an article about PET pollution awareness and published it on our team’s official account, which brought good publicity to both team.
Finally, we held an art exhibition at Beijing 798 Art Center with several other teams. We introduced the design ideas by using art materials in the project, which combined art with synthetic biology. The exhibition successfully attracted quite a few visitors to stop by and appreciate the works we made.
This event was hosted by iBowu-China and SHSBNU_China, through Tencent Meeting from 8:00-18:00 on June 26. Teams from each part of China shared the their works so far and their project design ideas. The meeting helped us to solve the existing difficulties of the project by sending and receiving comments in the chat box. The experts in synthetic biology from all over the nation gathered together to brainstorm for better refinement, and seizing for further detailed collaboration.
We participated in webinars, learned from other teams' projects and shared our own projects through presentations,. This meetup allowed us to gain knowledge from different fields, even the one we are not familiar with which given us more inspiration in the future got to know excellent teams from all over the country, and found potential partners for further cooperation.
In this meetup, we had our first presentation exercise of the year.
The sharing theme of our experimental part is: "A popular deteriorated cheese——BslA". We liken BslA to "popular cheese" and use it in every way to get the most out of it.
In the presentation, we introduced three topics derived from the protein BslA:
1.Using BslA to reduce the cost of protein purification and simplify the process
2.Using BslA to solve problems related to dug resistance
3.Using BslA to solve problems related to plastics pollution
After introducing the experimental part, we shared the HP part. We displayed the illustrations of scientists designed by the team art members which were currently posted at the back of the biology classroom, and attracted the attention from students who were interested in biology, and played a positive role in the promotion of our team. We also shared photos of different club activities carried out this semester ,which attracted students from different grades all over the school to participate in different biological experiments. Finally, we showed contact details and a willingness to collaborate with other teams.
In the follow-up questioning session, a team from Peking University asked for the reasons of why we choose to focus on these three aspects. We further explained the reasons for designing multiple sub-projects, that is, to better explore BslA.
In this meetup, the students of our team also recorded the bright spots of other teams, shared and discussed in the follow-up team meeting, and put forward suggestions for our own improvement: deal with audio problems in the follow-up presentation, express more naturally when sharing, and the refinement of PPT’s art aspect. Ultimately, we honed ourselves and our presentation expressiveness has grown considerably.
We have carried out in-depth cooperation with TJUSLS_China in many aspects, and established a partnership relationship. The specific details of the partnership can be viewed on the Partnership page.
Before establishing the Partnership, we first introduced each other's projects and discussed the cooperation policy.
Experimentally, they helped us with three plasmids test expression and protein purification. From the HP side, our team and TJUSLS shared some content of each other's official account to help each other promote each other. We also used our regional strength to help TJUSLS finding relevant companies in Beijing that can be visited offline, and helped them with the company visitation which in turn guided their projects. We also worked on the design of experimental procedures and tutorial videos together by using the strengths of both sides, and popularized the experimental procedures of synthetic biology to more people through different social accounts. Finally, we together held an online lecture on synthetic biology science to popularize the principles of synthetic biology.
In terms of Art, the members of our skillful art members helped TJUSLS with drawing the art materials they needed for official accounts, promotion videos and so on.
In terms of Model, the team members of the two groups studied the relevant literature together, and they also helped us with predicting the structure of the fusion protein, which provides forward-thinking guidance for us.
For wiki , we discussed the details of writing web pages and uploading wikis to third-party sites.
An advisor of BJEA_China, Sihan Wang is responsible for Wiki construction and is an expert in web building. When ICJFLS reached out to discuss technical issues found in their Wiki, Sihan provided software to edit the local ICJFLS's Wiki page and helped ICJFLS to solve technical problems in wiki construction. For example, he taught ICJFLS how to upload the local web page to Gitlab and find the original documentation in "Pipeline of CI/CD". Our support turned out to be helpful to ICJFLS, and we are more than happy to collaborate with outstanding peers in the Synbio community. The "Collaboration" page of ICJFLS: https://2022.igem.wiki/icjfls/collaborations
Since both our team and GBSCIE’s topics are related to PET . Their project is mainly about PET in clothing, and ours is PET degradation. Hence, we co-authored an article that popularizes where PET comes from, the dangers of PET, how PET is being disposed of today, and what we can do to reduce pollution, in order to increase the environmental awareness of different groups about PET pollution, while continuously improving our influence, subtly affect people's lifestyles.
GBSCIE is responsible for "What to Do with PET" and "What We Can Do" sections of the article, while we are responsible for "Where PET comes from" and "The Dangers of PET" and the layout of the article.
This article was published on the official account platforms of both teams, which successfully made more people from different ages and fields aware of the problem of PET pollution, and played a pivotal role in publicizing the topics of both teams.
We held a synthetic biology art exhibition at the Beijing 798 Art Center with several teams from Beijing that are: iBowu_China, SHSBNU_China, Tsinghua, Keystone, BIT_China, ATCG.
Members from art groups designed the exhibition board in advance, and HP members introduced the design details of our project to passers-by who are who are interested in our topics at the 798 Art Center.
To spread out, our team vividly depicted three projects around BsLA in the form of cartoons: improving traditional ATPS by incorporating a continuous-flow system and replacing fungal hydrophobins with BslA, constructing LL37-BslA fusion protein to further improve LL-37's binding ability to bacteria, and constructing the mPETase-BslA fusion protein to explore and increase the mPETase's potential in PET degradation. In addition, we also drawn two abstract works that represent the vision of our project, which one painting shows, "Even if we don't know the way to the future, we should follow the light, and another painting shows “The battle of plastics at the bottom of the ocean, where BslA and mPETase combine to break through the biological limitations of plastics. "
one painting shows, "Even if we don't know the way to the future, we should follow the light. "Another painting shows" the battle of plastics at the bottom of the ocean, where BslA and mPETase combine to break through the biological limitations of plastics. "
The passengers in of 798 daily is considerable. After a day of exhibition, many people have heard our introduction, and have a new understanding of the field of synthetic biology. Vividly and concisely presenting our topics to passers-by in the form of animation art paintings has given people of all ages who have not been exposed to this field have a certain new understanding.
