During the past year, we have engaged in many events and collaborated with many 2022 iGEM teams in a meaningful way, gaining lots of feedback from them. The mutual help between different teams has made iGEM an even better adventure!
In order to optimize our project and introduce people to the issues we are concerned about, we consulted numerous iGEM teams for opinions. To start from, we first presented our plan to domestic groups and exchanged ideas with them to make our project better. We also contacteded three iGEM teams abroad to understand if there were different opinions from diverse cultures and views. Lastly, we invited the teams collaborating with us to sing the English version “Theme Song of Synthetic Biology” to help promote iGEM and synthetic biology. Through these conferences and activities, we can not only optimize our project according to the suggestions obtained, but we can also unite all iGEMers and make iGEM a co-benefit community.
ARS 2022 - Synthetic Biology & Protein Engineering is launched by a synthetic biology study club named Society for the iGEM, composed of people in Asia interested in synthetic biology. The teams include Tokyo University, Waseda University, Hong Kong University, NYCU, NCHU, and more. It is held online through Zoom. In order to exchange ideas and improve our research, each team shared their slides to introduce their projects and had Q&A sessions. During the forum, we got some invaluable information to improve our project. For starters, learning the microneedle drug delivery study from Tokyo University, we had more concrete ideas about hardware design and marketing (for more information, please see the Hardware page). In addition, we were inspired by the Tokyo Institute of Technology in terms of detection kits. Their topic, ”Serotype detection kit Producing SRIPs,” motivated us to dig into Antigenic variation related to our project.
Taiwan IGEM Meet ’22 is a conference held and supported by Taiwan iGEM alumni. The Taiwan iGEM alumni are composed of past iGEMers from all over Taiwan. This meet-up was on August 22th and 23rd for two days. Ten iGEM teams in Taiwan this year attended this activity. The primary purpose of this meet-up was to give iGEMers in Taiwan a chance to practice the presenting part of the Jamboree. There were 20 minutes for each team to present their project and 10 minutes for judging. To allow teams to seek opportunities for collaboration, the alumni also set up poster sessions and happy hour for us to communicate with each other.
During the conversation, many alumni gave us multiple of advice. For instance, they taught us how to do problem-shooting on our original construct and some extract things that we had to adjust in the design of our bioreactor. Besides, many iGEM teams came to our poster to understand our project and showed their interest in collaboration. We ultimately collaborated with four teams, including iGEM MAP from NTHU_Taiwan and. We learned a lot from them, such as a recipe for CVD precaution from CCU_Taiwan, online lecture promotion for NYCU_Formosa, and the dry lab online meeting with NCKU_Tainan. Meanwhile, these fellow iGEM teams all took part in recording our theme song. For more information, please see the Theme Song of Synthetic Biology section below.
Due to geographical advantage, NCHU_Taichung was the first team to contacted us. Because our schools were near to each other. We therefore established a relationship of partnership. During the preparation of iGEM, we held meetings monthly and shared how our projects are going. Problems were always discussed and solved during that one to two-hour-long session. Besides the cooperation in the wet and dry lab, we also cooperated with them in the part of Education. After messaging each other for a short period, our team decided to invite them to engaging in the interview section of our podcast. In that episode, human practice and wet lab leaders acted as guests on our podcast talk show and answered questions about their project and the goal they hope to achieve through carrying out the project. During the recording, we understood more about their project and sought opportunities for more cooperation. For more information, please see the Partnership page.
Through Instagram, we found an opportunity to collaborate with iGEM UCL UK. After an arrangement through Instagram on both sides, we successfully scheduled a meetup on Microsoft Teams with them. During the meetup, we introduced projects to each other and share the difficulties we faced in preparing for the competition. They got intriguing and innovative topics and unique social media marketing skills. As we both endeavored to promote synthetic biology and had many ideas about education and Human Practice work, we helped them translate their questionnaire into Chinese and promoted it in our country.
Meanwhile, they assisted us with our theme song for iGEM and provided some practical skills to strengthen our social media management. Though we are not on the same Track, we still got helpful feedback about our project. We both challenged the existing method and had many obstacles to overcome. We shared our Wet-lab design and pondered the feasibility. Through exchanging thoughts on several similar ideas of both teams, we gained much inspiration and broadened our horizons, influencing our Human Practice work profoundly.
Since our project is significantly different from the previous projects in our school, we were eager to get feedback and suggestions. Since we collaborated with iGEM KCL_UK last year 2021 CSMU_TAIWAN Collaboration, we decided to have an online meeting with them. After contacting iGEM KCL_UK with emails, we arranged a date to meet with us on Microsoft Teams in July to discuss our projects. Through the meeting, they provided lots of suggestions based on their synthetic biology and immunology knowledge. They helped us find the blind spot in executing our plans, including our Wet-lab work and Human Practices and Education. They showed their timeline, which made us organize our storylines more carefully. Since we had more Dry-lab operating experience, such as modeling and docking skills, they asked us for further collaboration on the part of the Dry lab. Last but not least, we exchanged our ideas about wiki designing. Thanks to these informative meetings, we can deal with our project more prudently, and we are glad to assist them with some technical issues.
In mid-July, we had a meeting and discussion with iGEM Ionis_Paris. During the session, we introduced our projects and ask each other several questions. They found our project interesting and suggested that we can collaborate on the Education and Human Practice part.
To make our theme song more international and to promote synthetic biology more effectively, we translated the lyrics into the English version. Also, since we hope this song can gel with all iGEMers, we invited other teams to sing the song for us.
In this project, we contacted about ten iGEM teams in total, with six answering our call, including NCTU_Formosa, NTHU_Taiwan, NCHU_Taichung, Mingdao, CCU_Taiwan, and NCKU_Tainan. We combined their beautiful voices with the audio tracks of our team and made it a song that can unite all the iGEM teams. Apart from this, we also had them record short introduction videos for about 30 to 60 seconds. We edited these clips into a music video to let all of our audiences know more about the project of other iGEM teams.
Through this theme song of synthetic biology, we hope that this song can unite all iGEMers and make iGEM a co-benefit community.
For more information, please see the Education page.
