Completing a project requires not only a concerted effort by team members but also communication with other iGEM teams. We shared experience, got inspiration and solved problems through communication, which benefits our team a lot. We have cooperated with other teams, including NYCU-Formosa and XMU-China, and shared our experience with CCU-Taiwan and CSMU-Taiwan at ARS 2022. The Central China iGEM Communication hosted by WHU-China let us know the experimental ideas of many other teams and get information on how to solve common experimental problems. Moreover, their suggestions opened new ideas for our experiment.
In the process of communication, we learned various ways to search for information and made great improvements to our experimental design. In addition to in-depth study and communication, we also learned many experimental skills and improved lab safety. And we also provided a lot of constructive suggestions for other teams and gave our perspective on their experiments to help them solve problems.
We had an online communication with NYCU-Formosa. During the online meeting, we first introduced our projects, which makes iGEMers from two teams fully understand each other's projects. During the Q&A session, iGEMers had a wonderful discussion. Finally, we shared our difficulties in the project, and the two teams with different research backgrounds provided constructive suggestions to each other from their own perspectives.
They suggested that we can research information on biochips and compare the advantages of our methods. They also reminded us to think about the preservation and safety of bacteria before detection. For their experiment, we proposed that the PilA protein is a part of conductive nanowires for Geobacter, and its electrical conductivity may be weak in the absence of other proteins. Hopefully, our suggestion can help them to improve the experiment.
Communication with NYCU-formosa
We took part in the 13th Asian Federation of Biotechnology Regional Symposium(ARS 2022), organized by the Biotechnology and Biochemical Engineering Society of Taiwan. It is a major AFOB activity for research exchange. Due to COVID-19, it was held in a hybrid mode. Participants like us who can not went to Kimen in person were able to attend online. In the joint session, under the theme of ‘Synthetic Biology and Protein Engineering’, 14 iGEM teams from different places in Asia gather together and shared their experience. We had a wonderful discussion with many excellent iGEM teams like XMU-China, and Waseda_Tokyo. We also had a Q&A session and we were pleased to answer the question they brought up about our biosensor.
CUG in ARS 2022
Together with Team HBUT-China, Team HUST-China and Team HZAU-China, we attended the Central China iGEM Communication hosted by Team WHU-China. We introduced our own projects, shared our experiences, and discussed how to improve our projects. In the discussion section, we asked WHU-China a question about the reliability of using the temperature control switch to kill the engineered bacteria released from the body. This way to avoid the leakage of engineered bacteria may not be able to kill the engineered bacteria because there is little difference between the room temperature and human body temperature. We suggested that they need to consider more about safety.
We also received many suggestions from other teams, which are very helpful to us. For example, Team HZAU-China reminded us that we should cooperate more with pharmaceutical companies to verify the results of our experiments. Team HUST-China proposed that we should test the performance of our biosensor in more engineered bacteria and expand the application scope of our experimental results. In the following work, we thought carefully about the suggestions from other teams, and improved the application scope of biosensors. This Central China iGEM Communication broadened our vision and greatly improved the safety and rationality of our experiment.
CUG in Central China iGEM Communication
On August 18th, iGEMers in China attended the Conference of China iGEMer Community (CCiC). Due to the COVID-19 epidemic, iGEMers gave virtual talk rather than going to Shanghai in person.
In the conference, we introduced our project, shared our view of biofilm-associated problems and provides the perspectives of how to solve them applying synthetic biology. We submitted the poster and had a meaningful conversation with the CCiC judges. Judges from China Agriculture University discussed with us about the biofilm formation under different growth conditions and shared their difficulty in gauging c-di-GMP level. We believe that the sharing is of great significance for each other. The introduction of projects from other teams, especially the ones with similar design with ours, gave us new hints. During the discussion section, we were asked the questions about our human practice and received many constructive suggestions. We made many friends who also devote themselves to synthetic biology and got useful advice from experienced iGEMers. CCiC provides such wonderful communication platform in which iGEMers can share the projects, get suggestions from others, and achieve trouble shooting via communication. It is very supportive and helpful, especially for CUG iGEMers who participate iGEM for the first time.
Certificate of Participation of CCiC