SZPT-CHINA
First Meet in Southern China Meeting
In early June, both of us had attended the Southern China Meeting at Shenzhen University. This forum provided an excellent chance for us to introduce every team’s project. Thus, it is easy to acquire suggestions from other iGEM teams. After getting to know the similarity of our projects was using the live bacteria for the application, SZPT-CHINA started to communicate with us and share some ideas about Human Practices. They have inspired a lot in our hardware design. As they were more experienced in discovering the bacteria storage method, they introduced we could think about the freeze-dried powder as a possible choice in our hardware design. From then on, we started communicating with them and set up collaboration between mutual teams.
Together visit the Yakult Production Company
To acquire more information about food testing in the food industry, we visited Guangzhou Yakult Dairy Co., LTD. Together with SZPT-CHINA. Yakult is also a company that uses active lactic acid bacteria to manufacture milk drinks. Meanwhile, SZPT-CHNA aimed to learn about fermentation procedures during bacteria production. In the progress of communication, Yakult staff introduced the necessary food testing in the production process. When the Yakult is produced and sent for food security testing, various procedures are needed to ensure the quality of the product. They pointed out that there is great demand for rapid testing in the food industry. Since our project aims to detect the nitrite concentration inside food, it is essential to ensure that the time for testing should be finished in a short period. In conclusion, such collaborated Human Practices works helped us define that fast-testing speed should be one of the considerable characteristics of our device.
Co-education for SZPT students
On the way to Yakult company, we used a short commuting period to introduce synthetic biology and our project Nitrisensor, for SZPT students. Also, we explained more details about the importance of such devices in improving the quality of human lives. Here are the pictures of the two speakers for publicity. (Click here> to see details about this Education Activity)
Whole team meeting with each other
In early September, we have an online meeting to discuss the current process in the experiment, hardware, and Human Practices. After showing the promotion video of each team respectively, we started our discussion. At first, we raised confusion about the modeling. They have illustrated some examples they have done, which helped us understand it in-depth. After we mentioned the desire to learn more about dried-freeze powder technology to them, they sent the previous protocol for manufacturing dried-freeze powder, which was beneficial for our experiment in proof-of-concept part.
UCBerkeley
Whole team meeting with each other
This year, the project of UCB focuses on a diagnostic tool, while our team focuses on the detection of nitrite. Joint projects were intended to form a cheap, quick, and accessible detector device. Such a similar design idea linked us together. On May 24th, we had an online meeting with the iGEM team from the University of California, Berkeley (to their website, click here)
SZU_China
This year, due to the similarity of the project design, we established a partnership with SZU_China. Our communication started at the 2022 Southern China iGEM team meeting. The following collaborative activities include the exchange of project ideas, providing information to improve hardware design, co-education for senior high school students and et cetera. (For more information: click Partnership Page )
Tongji_China
We have established a partnership with Tongji_China. From the beginning of this year, we held an online meeting to help each select the iGEM topic. Then, we communicated with each other with respect to the current process of the dry lab, wet lab experiment, and human practices. Within discussions, we inspired them with the experiment design and helped each other solve encountered obstacles. Also, we held a synthetic biology forum for senior high school students together with SZU_China. (For more information: click Partnership Page)