This year, due to the COVID-19 circumstance, we are not only not allowed to leave Beijing, but all universities and research institutions in Beijing were also not allowed for visiting, not to mention accommodating so many of us to conduct experiments at the same time. In this case, a high school team like us need to find a company to finish our experiment. Faced with such a dilemma, we found a company that could accommodate us for doing experiments, but it did not have the conditions to conduct protein purification experiments, and the platform for trial expression was not mature. While doing the test expression in company, we encountered bottlenecks, and at that time TJUSLS_China reached out to help us break through this difficulty, and finally explored the appropriate protein induction expression conditions.
We established Partnership with TJUSLS_China.
We have established the partnership in experiment, model, HP, Wiki and Art to achieve all-round mutual assistance. We used our regional advantages and the professional skills from the art members to help them solve emergency issues in art, and they also used their strength in laboratory conditions and experimental experiences to help us make pivotal progress in experiment.
TJUSLS are our old friends, since we have established a partnership with them in the 2021 iGEM competition which we both focused on the theme of PET degradation, and we have all achieved better results after helping each other, apart from the gold medal.
While starting apply for the impact grant in the mid-May, TJUSLS_China came and asked about our successful application last year, and we shared our experiences and suggestions.
This year, due to the sever COVID-19 circumstance in Beijing which limit the development of our experimental sessions, and the lack of professional art team manpower to start the painting work in their team, we still continue with our in-depth cooperation, in order to renew our acquaintance.
At the beginning of the partnership, we quickly proposed to start a meetup of all the members of the two teams to quickly confirm the specific direction of the cooperation from all aspects. At the beginning of the meeting, we introduced them to the three sub-topics developed around BslA this year. Subsequently, TJUSLS shared with us their project this year: the isolation of strong proteolytic enzymes from Candida albicans and their application in the field of nucleic acid detection.
After the topic sharing at the main venue, members of HP, Wiki, Model, and members in charge of Experiments communication went to separate conference rooms to communicate with the members of the corresponding group about the details of the direction of cooperation.
Facing the difficulties of not being allowed to leave Beijing due to COVID-19, the strict control of access by universities and research institutes in Beijing, the fact that the companies we found were not mature for completing the pivotal parts of the experiment, and difficulties in reaching desirable results in plasmid expression. Seniors from TJUSLS_China reached out to help us break through this difficulty, and finally explored the appropriate protein induction expression conditions by using their mature lab conditions at school and rich experimental experiences.
Initially, we planned to go to Tianjin University like last year to conduct experiments, that are not available to carry on because of the lack of experiment facilities, with them, so that we could learn more experimental skills, improve the communication efficiency between the two teams, and as well as making friends. However, due to the restrictions of leaving Beijing policy based on COVID-19, we were not able to go to Tianjin, which is regrettable for us.
However, members of TJUSLS_China are very friendly and helpful that they were more than willing to help us when it came to experiments. Ultimately, although we were not able to conduct the final stage of experiment together, they helped with doing three plasmids test expression, and a protein purification, which is a great breakthrough through our projects, and we are thankful for their requested help for us.
For 3 recombinant strains (pET28a-EBFP-GSlinker-BslA, pET28a-mHoneydew-GSlinker-BslA, pET28a-mOrange-GSlinker-BslA), TJUSLS_China helped us try three IPTG induction concentrations of 0.1mM, 0.3mM, 0.5mM and two induction temperature of 16°C,37°C, respectively. We found that the induction concentration of 0.5mM IPTG and the induction temperature of 37°C were the best (Figure 2-7a). In addition, the color of the bacterial pellet after centrifugation can also directly prove that the fusion protein of the fluorescent protein has been successfully induced to express (Figure 2-7b).
In terms of models, seniors who study in the relevant major are more experienced than us, and the use of our team's model software was guided by them last year. Hence, this year, the team members from both groups studied the relevant literature together and carried out literature seminar, in order to gain deeper understanding Team members from TJUSLS have mastered the application of various software, so they helped us to use the software to predict the structure of the fusion protein which in turn guided the lab work in our team
In terms of Wiki, the two groups of students have their own strengths .thus they set the cooperation project as a long-term exchange and study, and discussed the writing of the webpage and the details of uploading the Wiki third-party website together.
The HP part is the common strength of our two teams, hence after exchanging HP work in the separate online conference room, both HP members found that there is much to help and learn from each other to make greater contributions to the field of synthetic biology advertising. The two teams mainly cooperate in the following four projects in HP.
① Official Accounts Promotion
Both teams have official accounts with certain fan base who are interested in the content of the respective postings, hence our team and TJUSLS_China shared valuable content from each other's official accounts in order to promote the publicity influence by using different forms of contents . TJUSLS reposted the four issues of our "Female Scientist" promotion, and we reposted their popular science teaching content on synthetic biology software technology.
② Help Tianjin University to visit related enterprises
Since TJUSLS_China locates in the center of Tianjin, which is surrounded by universities and bustling office buildings. And we are in the Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area which contains the largest number of biopharmaceutical companies in Beijing, with about 1200 companies. Hence, we take advantage of our school's regional strengths to help TJUSLS with finding relevant companies in Beijing that can be visited offline, and helped them complete the company visit in order to guide their project. After contacting several enterprises, we finally found YICON, and our team members went to YICON and conducted tours and interviews with employees there to help TJUSLS collect this key part of the information for them.
③ Production of experimental tutorial videos
Our team and TJUSLS_China also worked together on the design of lab procedures and tutorial videos based on the plan we discussed at the initial meeting. Ultimately, we chose to make an instructional video on how to use a pipette which is one of the most commonly used tools when conducting experiments, since it is relatively important to lay a solid foundation for beginners in the field of synthetic biology experiments. By shooting this video and making the video content more intuitive than most of the resources on the Internet currently, we can popularize the experimental steps of synthetic biology to more people, and make it easier for students who want to start experiments to find learning resources.
④ Organizing synthetic biology lectures
Finally, we held an online lecture on synthetic biology science together to popularize the principles of synthetic biology. In the lecture, our team was mainly responsible for the PPT beautification work, and we put the publicity of the lecture on the public platform in order to attract more audiences from different ages and walk of life. In the end, the lecture was held successfully, and we helped more people get to know about the field of synthetic biology.
Since we have skillful art members this year, TJUSLS reached a relevant cooperation with us after seeing the cartoon images we designed. And we are also more than willing to help them with the key drawing in completing promotion videos, wiki and so on. In terms of Art, the members of our Art team helped TJUSLS draw the art materials they needed.
In early October, our art team undertook the work of beautifying the PPT for the online popular science lecture on synthetic Biology jointly conducted with TJUSLS. The main results of our work are shown in the picture.
[1] Hydrophobins: multifunctionalbiosurfactants for interface engineering
https://doi.org/10.1186/s13036-018-0136-1
[2] Continuous Flow Separation of Hydrophobin FusionProteins from Plant Cell Culture Extract
Continuous Flow Separation of Hydrophobin Fusion Proteins from Plant Cell Culture Extract - PubMed (nih.gov)
[3] BslA is a self-assembling bacterial hydrophobin thatcoats the Bacillus subtilis biofilm
www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.1306390110/-/DCSupplemental.
[4] Aqueous two-phase system (ATPS): an overview and advances in its applicationshttps://doi.org/10.1186/s12575-016-0048-8
