Due to the pandemic and social distancing policies, it is relatively demanding to conduct face-to-face collaboration activities in Shanghai in July 2022. Thus, virtual meetings were adopted as the main collaboration format because they enabled people in different physical locations to communicate.
The project Pepsick team conducts is to improve the quality of the water where the domestic ornamental fish live. They aim to produce and purify natural antimicrobial peptides in gene-engineered Escherichia coli, also known as E. coli and inhibit the breed of bacteria in fish tanks. The maintenance of clean water quality is essential for the growth of all types of fish. To improve the quality of water, efficient tools such as antibacterial charcoal can be used.
Snapshot of virtual meeting with Pepsick (Shanghai_city)
The collaboration with Pepsick has been proven to be fruitful in a mutually beneficial relationship. Members of Pepsick, who conducted experiments prior to our project, shed some light on the experiment design by introducing their theoretical background, methods, and precautions. In specific, they suggested that the performance of specific genes has to be carefully monitored in gene knockout experiments to investigate gene loss. Regarding the supporting entrepreneurship, the business model they developed is insightful, like SWOT analysis and positioning analysis, for it contains various analytical frameworks that we decided to use in our business plan as a part of entrepreneurship. Additionally, they generously offered to assist with the survey distribution so that we can obtain bigger and more representative samples through snowball sampling.
To return the favor, we provided some suggestions on their questionnaire design by pointing out a few logically inconsistent questions there. The sequence of their questions was a little problematic. They admitted that, rather than categorizing the questions into different parts, they just listed all the questions they came up with during brainstorming regardless of the intercorrelated relationship that lay among the questions. They appreciated our advice and mentioned they would modify the survey lately. Besides, practical tips on how to conduct interviews with experts in different fields were also provided to them.
ATCG, a 2022 iGEM team from Beijing, conducts research on the new generation of CRISPR gene editing technology. It is adopted to realize copy-and-paste site-point insertion by transforming the common tool plasmid of the prokaryotic expression system and adding TSD and TIR elements recognized by Casposons. This technique can not only play a role in the research of genetic disease treatment but also become a highly efficient tool for upstream gene cloning.
Snapshot of virtual meeting with ATCG (SHBS-BANZ)
During the virtual meeting, they seemed to be troubled with the sampling method in their survey distribution. They shared their opinions on how we could obtain information and valuable suggestions from the public survey, but they still had trouble settling down the final question list and deciding on the survey strategy. Our group advised them to perish the thought of taking much time deciding on the sampling methods, snowball sampling is a widely applied sampling method in terms of public opinion which is practical for their research work.
After our conversation, we realized that though they had planned some interviews and other activities, they had yet to start. Therefore, we shared some of our experience in dry lab work, including how to conduct public education and decide on our implementation plan. We also gave some advice on how to conduct online charity activities for fund-raising along with our fund-raising experiences.
