Alone, his strength is limited, unity is strength, impregnable. This year, with the belief above, our team partnered up with 2022 BNU-China team. We have worked together for years and we share the same instructors. Communication and discussion with them gave us quite a lot inspiration. In this way, we are really grateful for the chance to partner with them. On this page we have collected the main landmarks of the ongoing relation we had established with the BNU-China.

1. Exchange ideas of projects
2. Promote communication with the public
3. Facilitate proper modeling and wiki design
4. Exchange experiences of experiments

2022 April
We conducted our first meeting. We not only presented our ideas, but also received suggestion from each other. Meanwhile, our instructors’ words inspired us, "The prospect of synthetic biology is trendy, concise, and it should have significant impact". After this meeting, we both gained a clearer understanding of the direction of our brainstorming. Their brief but smart ideas also evoked our interests greatly and gave us inspiration.

Fig.1 First meeting of Brain-storming report

May
To improve our project designs, we two teams reported our progress to our instructors. They commented on the projects one by one. By aid of this meeting, we both had a clearer direction of improvements of our topics.

June
It was in the four meetings in June that we decided the topics. We discussed our best ideas and decided final project topics in the aid of each other and our instructors. According to the comments from the meetings, we searched for more relative literature.

2021 July
We visited BNU-China’s laboratories on and received training of experimental equipment and the security with them for a week. During the visit, we built a deep partnership and helped each other when learning various laboratory operations.

Fig.2 Two teams were receiving training

Fig.3 Two teams were undergoing training on western bolt.

2022 September
We were ready for our monthly meeting on September 3rd.Firstly, the BNU-China introduced their project, "Cannabis Vaccine", which colonizes the gut to reduce the psychoactive nature of THC in cannabis and warns users of THC intake by colors in the feces.They used the E.coli substrain Nissle 1917 as their chassis and added several modules to it to fulfill their goal.（Check out their website to learn more!） Then we introduced our "Let yeast meet Mozart" project, which is to build an auditory module in yeast to observe the response of yeast cells to sound waves and the impact of sound waves on their metabolism.After that, we discussed several topics.



Fig.4 Members of BNU-China and BNUZH-China

Apart from the communication about wet lab and design, we expanded our partnership through sharing ideas and experience of human practice (HP), wiki, modeling and art design.

Human Practice
We talked about what a great HP is with interactivity. We reached an agreement that it must be bidirectional. Our HP activities should not be simply output to the audience, but should collect feedback to adjust the experimental design and our values. We gave BNU-China some suggestions in the form of HP, such as we can go to the science museum to give public lectures. On this basis, BNU-China came out of our way to conduct HP activities such as conducting an outdoor activity in our school to promote the project. After that, team members can collect feedback from other students or members of society. Apart from that, BNU-China and BJWZ-China also planned to design questionnaires to get feedback on this project. Among them, the publicity work carried out by our team in the Science and Technology Museum provides them with inspiration. The design and production of the project's cultural creation, the content and lines of the propaganda all provide BNU-China with a good reference.
recruitment

Wet lab
The BNU-China reminded us that it is necessary to check whether the enzyme used for digestion and ligation has not cut out the gene of interest. And when designing primers with snapGene, pay attention to the primer sequence alignment (such as whether there is a dimension or primer specificity problem) and pay attention to the selected digestion site.
Then we shared a new transformed protocol with BNU-China: The transformed bacteria can be directly coated on the plate after 90s heat excitation. We also gave BNU-China a tip that if the connected DNA fragments are not meant to be transformed immediately, they can be placed in the refrigerator at 4℃. In this way,more enzymes can be added and the digestion time can be extended appropriately when the digestion is connected.
In the laboratory operation stage, we helped each other to achieve a win-win situation. Therefore, the selection of digestion sites and the extension of digestion time had played a better effect. It promoted and improved the experimental process of both sides.

experiment

Art design
BNU 2022 team gave sevreral suggestions on art design:
1.We can plan how to arrange tasks for team members as early as possible according to the actual situation (task volume, time conflict with daily learning, etc.). You can learn the personal arrangements of the team members, the suggestions of the teacher, and so on. For example, a task (poster, ppt, etc.) requires multiple people to design from which we choose the best one or it is arranged for only one team member to complete.
2. Pay attention to the requirements and changes of the official website in time to complete the task before deadline.
3. Strengthen communication with other groups, such as communicating promotion video with the experimental group, communicating about website design with the wiki group and so on. By understanding the plans and rates of process of other groups in advance, we can adjust the progress of our group tasks.
4. Keep learning !As a non-professional, it’s of necessity to timely use online video to learn to update our own aesthetics, software skills. As long as you study carefully and are task-oriented, learning software is also very simple.
5. Control the overall creative style, and avoid different colorful styles.

cultural-and-creative

Modeling
Generally, mathematical modeling is a data-based, multidisciplinary topic that attempts to make a clear description/prediction of reality. It is built during an iterative process since the description/prediction needs to be specified sometimes while at other times, generalization should be considered instead.
It has to follow certain academic standards, like bibliography,measurements, and most importantly, original ideas, thus making it more compelling and easier to understand.
It demands cooperative endeavor throughout the whole process—talent wins games, but teamwork wins metals and awards. Specifically, modeling in iGEM is a subset of it.
Therefore, despite the common requirements above, the mathematical model has to be combined with biological perspectives, i.e., computational biology, thermodynamics, etc.

Wiki design
We reached a consensus that first of all, we need to determine the overall style of the web page according to the experimental theme, and the determination of the style will affect the design of the entire web page. By learning the work of the best wikis over the years, determine the design of the web frame and the functions and effects planned to be achieved according to the team's capabilities. In design, we need to pay attention to practical purposes, not be too fancy, pay attention to details, and make trade-offs. At the same time, pay attention to time planning, pay attention to time nodes, clear division of labor between team members, and timely communication. In addition, during this project collaboration, we fully realized the importance of the Wiki group negotiating and collaborating with the other two groups. Both the text introduction provided by the HP group and the digital images provided by the modeling group will be presented together on the page. Therefore, communication is very important.

2022 September
We were ready for our monthly meeting on September 3rd. Firstly, we introduced our project improved design, experiment progress and HP. The BJWZ team also shared the detailed engineering of their project "Yeast with Ears to Hear the World" , which was to build an auditory module in yeast to observe the response of yeast cells to sound waves and the impact of sound waves on their metabolism. For laboratory, we reminded BJWZ that it was necessary to check whether the enzyme used for digestion excised the target gene or not. They also suggested that we could place the connected DNA fragments in the refrigerator at 4℃ overnight, if they failed to be transformed immediately. Besides, we also had several discussions about running glue tailings, transformed protocols, digestion tips, etc.

In conclution, during this project collaboration, we fully realized the importance of the Wiki group negotiating and collaborating with the other two groups. Both the text introduction provided by the HP group and the digital images provided by the modeling group will be presented together on the page. Therefore, communication is very important. We are glad to share this exhausting but unforgettable iGEM season with team BNU-China. Thanks to their useful insights into different aspects of the competition, from the wet lab through coding the wiki to human practices. We wish them the best and a lot of success!