PARTNERSHIP
Overview
We are very happy to have met BIT, Tsinghua, JLU-China and become an iGEM-Partnership in 2022. Throughout the season we exchanged ideas with each other without any reservations. We were able to showcase our ideas of Human Practice, Experimentation, Modelling and Education almost completely. This helped us to identify strengths and weaknesses in our designs and to explore the potential of our projects and improve them. We are both very keen to promote synthetic biology and iGEM, so we have done a lot of meaningful and interesting things. We work very well with them, learning from each other and improving throughout the iGEM cycle.
What BIT Bring To FAFU
We met the BIT at the CCiC Hardware Roundtable and we were attracted to their excellent hardware capabilities. That's why we embarked on a six-month collaborative journey with the BIT. This season, we are committed to using synthetic biology to create value and jointly advance synthetic biology. At the same time, our frequent exchanges have contributed to the development of the projects of the two teams, which have a profound impact on the present and the future. In short, our cooperation is divided into three phases.
Meeting and planning
In May, our project was in its early stages and there was no familiarity between the two teams. We believe that communicating with acquaintances is a better way to express our ideas. As a result, almost every member of our two teams met online through the Tencent conference to meet each other and do some activities like “you draw and I guess” to facilitate communication between the team members. We exchange ideas with each other in order to promote the identification and development of issues. At this stage, we made preliminary plans for future cooperation. After determining the direction of our development, we hold regular group meetings to correct each other's mistakes and tap the background and potential of the project.
Cooperation and supervision
At this stage, our two teams hold regular group meetings. This very ordinary behavior had a very profound impact on us. Between the two group meetings, we also communicate frequently through WeChat and telephone.
In May, we shared the design of human practice activities. FAFU has been heavily affected by the COVID-19 but well prepared for Human Practice. After completing the HP closed-loop design, we shared our ideas with BIT in a timely manner and instructed them on how to carry out good social activities and the distribution of questionnaires. Since FAFU's experience in modeling is very weak, at this group meeting, BIT members enthusiastically shared relevant books and courses and studied with us.
In June, BIT shared experience on hardware design and implementation plans. Yining Wang said: "We want to make a device that automatically detects pathogens in sewage that is placed near the sewer pipes. BIT shared with us a series of detection devices, from the principle to the implementation, have made a detailed description. Our final protocol is to detect the fluorescence signal in the sample. For how to choose the motor type, choose the right power supply, BIT also shared many solutions for us.
In July, our theme is how to conduct education and science communication activities. Comic book is a very popular reading material which has a large readership of almost all ages. After discussion, we decided that we were going to draw a comic book about synthetic biology and projects. After the group meeting, Tsinghua invited BIT to give us a lecture on synthetic biology. This is a very successful science popularization lecture. At the same time, we also met more teams willing to draw comics, and began to draw comics.
In the group meetings as followed, we would all share our gains, shortcomings, and thoughts during this time. Frequent exchanges and interactions have greatly contributed to the development of our projects. We were very touched that BIT incorporated the background of our project into the interview transcript when planning the interview.
For the future
In October, our comic book was drawn and we uploaded it to the WeChat public platform. This is an engaging caricature! It attracts thousands of people to read! We compiled the data of the audience into charts and shared it with BIT as data for social surveys.
As the competition draws to a close, FAFU and BIT take a group photo online to reminisce about the interactions of the season. We don't just share on projects, in everyday life, we also share some interesting things, good food and good movies. We met offline during the winter holidays and are looking forward to meeting them!
For 2023 and the future, FAFU has made detailed plans. We have formed the iGEM Association on campus and have established strict rules governing the behavior of every FAFU iGEMer in the future. We want to pass on this year's experience. On October 2, FAFU launched the 2023 iGEM recruitment Lecture. We invite BIT to join us in the presentation. They speak about their projects live. After the event, Zihan Yan of BIT said: "This is a very successful lecture, and I also hope to carry out the 2023 iGEM recruitment in our school.
Conclusion
BIT is a very dynamic and enthusiastic team, we got along very well during the year, and we went deep into the bits and pieces of life. On the one hand, we have perfected the projects of all sides. On the other hand, we learned a lot of skills that we couldn't learn in the classroom and met many like-minded friends. Hoping BIT can achieve good results this year!
What Tsinghua Bring To FAFU
In May 2022, we met Tsinghua in the iGEM community in China. We held an online gathering through the Tencent conference in June to understand the starting point of the project and the future development direction. After a comprehensive discussion of experiments, modeling and Human Practices, we formally established the partnership relationship.
In terms of experiments, although our projects are completely different, they are all involved in the aspect of detection. At this time, FAFU is still considering what system to use to achieve the purpose of detection. After communicating with Tsinghua, FAFU accepted their advice and the two teams used a two-component system to test together. To this end, Tsinghua provided FAFU with strains that have been transferred to the two-component system. The two teams officially cooperated on the experiment of the two-component system.
In terms of modeling, the two sides discussed how to establish links between the input and output of the two-component system. At the same time, the two sides also briefly introduced their own projects and put forward some opinions on each other's modeling part.
After that, FAFU also hopes to be able to model PmrB and PmrA proteins in 3D to further understand the mechanism of action of the two-component system and improve the system so as to enhance the detection ability of this system.
Boring scientific communication is not well accepted by the public. After learning that Tsinghua will hold an art exhibition, FAFU also hopes to combine science with art. Therefore, after sufficient research, FAFU will carry out this plan in three ways: oil painting, comics and music.
Figure 1 On the left is the scene that iGEM team was responsible for the lecture, and on the right is the social media avatar of all the audience participating in the lecture.
In July, Tsinghua invited us to jointly hold an online science popularization lecture on synthetic biology, and invited ten excellent IGEM teams, including BIT and JLU-China, to jointly teach. This is a very meaningful scientific dissemination activity. Benefiting from the convenience of the Internet, hundreds of students from 27 provinces in China participated in the course. In addition, there are three students from Singapore and Australia. In this scientific dissemination, FAFU was responsible for hosting work and co-produced a questionnaire with Tsinghua to complete the after-class data statistics.
Tsinghua provides us with a good way of education. In the following period of time, we also spread biological knowledge and the history of synthetic biology to the community through the Internet.
We are very happy to get along with Tsinghua's enthusiastic classmates, which brings us happiness every day, and we meet offline during the winter vacation. I hope they can get good results this year!
What JLU-China Bring To FAFU
Since the COVID-19 outbreak in 2019, confirmed cases have appeared frequently across the cities of country such as Beijing, Fuzhou and Wuhan. In March 2022, there were so many confirmed cases in Fuzhou that laboratories and other crowded places are closed. The question “how to produce a new type of detection device to avoid meaningless nucleic acid testing?” occurred to us.
This year, FAFU intends to develop a regionalized detection of regional cases by detecting pathogens that survive in domestic wastewater, based on sewage epidemiology. Taking the COVID-19 as an example, we used the subsequent peptide library to screen out the protein that strongly interacted with the COVID-19 spiked protein, and fixed it on the surface of the cell membrane to grasp the COVID-19 present in the sewage and using this as a model to design fugitive model and detection model.
FAFU's project hopes to regulate downstream CheZ and suicide gene expression through blue light induction this year. On May 20th, we met the JLU-China team through the CCiC community. We identified the Partner relationship through an online meeting after introducing the project.
In July, we got the liquid bacteria from Jilin University. Subsequently, FAFU and JLU-China had an experimental part of the discussion. In 2021, some members of FAFU used the toxic effects of linalool on E. coli and neroliol on yeast to create an E. coli-yeast co-culture system which is similar to the idea of this year's JLU-China. We summarized the experience gained from last year's experiment and gave the mind map to JLU-China that gave them some suggestions for their project. Meanwhile, we reached a consensus on science communication, holding an online joint publicity activity with ten iGEM teams in China, including Tsinghua, JLU-China and BIT. In the cooperation, FAFU was responsible for the course hosting and post-course statistics. Through Tencent meetings, FAFU and JLU-China communicate frequently online, evaluate each other, and supervise each other from the beginning to the end, exchanging ideas for conducting science communication and innovations which contributed to the progress of our project. After learning that there were students majoring in economy in JLU-China, we started a series of communication and learned a lot from them, and started writing business plans.
In September, JLU-China invited us to write the 2022 Handbook. We put together our experience of the competition and made a book to let more people understand and accept synthetic biology.
Conclusion
JLU-China is a very enthusiasm team and it is our pleasure to meet them in 2022. We sincerely wish both of us get great results together in 2022 iGEM!
