Throughout the whole year of iGEM competition, we partnered closely with the NCKU_Tainan team. The two schools are physically close, and both part of the Taiwan Comprehensive University System (TCUS), a group of four universities in southern Taiwan that have signed an agreement to share many programs and resources. Both teams have maintained active communication and discussion about how to improve our projects. Moreover, we also focused on starting a business, and future collaboration.

  Asian Federation of Biotechnology (AFOB) is a non-profit organization, and the AFOB Regional Symposium (ARS) is a major activity for exchange of research about biotechnology. We were invited to participate in this conference by NCKU_Tainan, to share our research project in synthetic biology experiments with different iGEM teams in Asia and to broaden our view.

  This was important and meaningful because it was our first opportunity to present our project to others and obtain their feedback, including blind spots we had not noticed, and get useful advice to help us move further.

  Following the ARS, NCKU_Tainan hosted a physical meeting event for all the iGEM teams in Taiwan. In the meeting, we had a chance to meet up with teams from other colleges, and be able to exchange our projects with each other. Moreover, this was our first time to make a public presentation, and the experience really helped our team to sharpen our skills of presenting on stage and responding to questions. By joining in this activity, we and the NCKU_Tainan found that we were both interested in turning the crazy ideas into business. Our consensus finally led to the TCUS Entrepreneurship Competition.

  Although we are all interested in starting a business, it is not easy for student teams to reach out to a biotech company in Taiwan. Joining a symposium or an entrepreneurship competition would make it much easier for us to connect with industry.

  However, neither we nor NCKU_Tainan could find a suitable symposium or competition. Thus, our principal investigator, Prof. Yu, suggested that we could hold our own symposium or competition, since the student affairs office was calling for proposals for inter-university activity in TCUS. We submitted a proposal to run a two-day entrepreneurship competition, and the career center, which is under the student affairs office, showed strong interest in our proposal.

  After extensive discussion, we obtained permission and resources to hold the first TCUS Entrepreneurship Competition. For this event, we hosted the competition at our university, and were responsible for logistical support, while NCKU_Tainan was responsible for inviting speakers and companies.

  Through the cooperation, both we and NCKU_Tainan gained feedback about how to start our business. Through this competition, we also connected with the prestigious Taiwan Synbio company, TWBIO, and earned our first MOU with them for cooperation in the future.

  During the break time at the TCUS Entrepreneurship Competition, we learned that the NCKU_Tainan team had used talk shows to promote their project in an interesting way. We all considered that it would be great if we could have a united talk show in the future. Therefore, CCU_Taiwan and NCKU_Tainan collaborated on a talk show at CCU to let the public know more about our project, and use an entertaining way to share synthetic biology and an iGEMer’s daily life.

  In addition to these activities, CCU_Taiwan and NCKU_Tainan also searched for a connection between our projects, and came up with a crazy idea to try to combine our projects. One common point lies in the high risk of CVD for astronauts. Astronauts who travel beyond the earth’s magnetic field are more likely to suffer from CVDs, which may be caused by radiation-induced high blood pressure. (Delp, Charvat, et. al. 2016).

  Since EPA has been confirmed to relax blood vessels (Sherratt, Libby et al. 2022), we and NCKU_Tainan hope to produce an E. coli that could survive the radiation of space to produce EPA supplements. This naive idea may be too crazy, but we believe that one day this crazy idea may turn out to be another new business.

Reference:

1. Delp, M. D., J. M. Charvat, C. L. Limoli, R. K. Globus and P. Ghosh (2016). "Apollo Lunar Astronauts Show Higher Cardiovascular Disease Mortality: Possible Deep Space Radiation Effects on the Vascular Endothelium." Sci Rep 6: 29901.
2. Sherratt, S. C. R., P. Libby, D. L. Bhatt and R. P. Mason (2022). "A biological rationale for the disparate effects of omega-3 fatty acids on cardiovascular disease outcomes." Prostaglandins Leukot Essent Fatty Acids 182: 102450.