Collaborations

Due to our project’s similarity in topic with Thailand_RIS(both dealing with wilting in the agricultural industry), we exchanged many ideas and also co-hosted the infographic translation project.

In our initial meetings, we discussed different ways to tackle our diseases, ultimately settling on proteins that disrupt the cell walls/membranes of the pathogens. Upon further discussion, we learned that they specifically used enzymes from bee venoms to deal with the destruction of bacterial wilt in crops. This widened our understanding of wilting and the impacts it can have on the agricultural industry.

Team Thailand_RIS also helped us distribute our public survey to their community, diversifying our respondents, gaining new perspectives from different cultures. As we exchanged public surveys, both teams realized the language barrier in our own communities. This inspired our teams to start the infographic translation project, where we partnered up with two other iGEM teams to translate infographics into multiple languages, passing the language barrier within a swipe (more details on the partnership page).

In later meetings, our teams discussed implementation methods and our wetlab progress into solutions. Team Thailand_RIS gave multiple suggestions for our solution; as our solution is essentially using genetically modified organisms to solve our problem, we encountered heavy sets of regulations. With Thailand_RIS’s suggestion, we would implement proteins into the soil rather than genetically modified organisms; using proteins instead of living organisms significantly reduced the regulations we had to face as well as the time it takes for our solution to be put on the market.

Throughout the course of our partnership, we collaborated towards a common goal of eliminating language barriers in local communities. Their suggestions helped us increase the viability of our solution while also providing useful feedback with our wiki design.

On 8/23, our team attended the Taiwan Synbio Alliance meetup held by National Cheng Kung University(NCKU). This event was held by the iGEM ambassador from Taiwan for teams to interact and expand their horizons. Each team gave a presentation regarding their topics and progress; once they were done, the other teams asked questions to clarify confusion, give suggestions, and expose overlooked flaws in the spirit of scientific peer review. The atmosphere of intense, good-faith scrutiny helped us understand our own projects better and sharpened our presentation and question-answering skills.

The more interesting section came at the latter part of the day when team NCKU hosted a networking event similar to the Jamboree. The participating team held meaningful conversations with each other, creating collaboration opportunities that wouldn’t be possible online. This event enriched the collection of infographics for our translation project, allowing us to enable more teams to share their topics. Our project presentation can be found here.

Team Korea_HS hopes to use DNA data storage to help address climate change. In our collaborations, we took part in their instagram reels project, where we got to show our project in an engaging fashion; Korea_HS hopped on our translation project, allowing us to share the influence of iGEM to Korean communities. Both projects allowed teams to expand their audience, raising awareness through innovative ways.

Korea_HS was the first team we reached out to. In our initial meeting, we briefly discussed our project and exchanged ideas for collaboration activities. They assisted us in the distribution of our public survey to their local communities in Korea. This experience offered good practice in presenting our project and helped us better prepare for future collaboration meetings.

Our second meeting with Korea_HS was geared towards collaborations. We caught up on project progress based on the suggestions from the first meeting, then discussed possible collaboration activities in detail. They listed out all the collaboration efforts they’re hosting, such as the Instagram reels project, in which our team submitted a short video introducing the significance of fusarium wilt. On the other hand, Korea_HS helped us translate multiple infographics into Korean, contributing to the diversity of our project audience.

Team Stony_Brook attempts to address Protein S deficiency because of its impact on minority groups and people of color. In a similar fashion for the sake of public engagement, team Stony_Brook invited us to participate in a public journal archive, opening up another pathway into public outreach.

Stony_Brook reached out to us to participate in their journal archive project, where teams submit a simplified journal of their project for the general public to view. Eager to raise awareness on our topic, our team decided to participate in the journal archive. After much revision, the Wetlab and HP team wrote a three-page article about our project that briefly explained the cause, impact, and our solution to the banana crisis. Following the guidelines, our article explained the aspects of banana domestication that led to vulnerability to disease, the people that depend on the banana market, and a biochemical solution that we think might be able to solve the crisis. In writing this article, our team hopes to inspire future teams to look into fusarium wilt; or anyone interested in synthetic biology would come across the article and find it interesting. The journal archive can be found here.

Stony Brooks reached out to us to participate in their journal archive project; the Wetlab team and the HP team wrote a three page article about our project that briefly explained the cause, impact, and our solution to the banana crisis. Our article explained the aspects of banana domestication that led to vulnerability to disease, the people that depend on the banana market, and a biochemical solution that we think might be able to solve the crisis.

This year team NCHU_Taichung has decided to address the problem of chronic wounds, which causes diabetic foot, peripheral arterial occlusion, venous obstruction, and pressure ulcers. Our team submitted a simple educational video outlining our project topic, which NCHU_Taichung posted on YouTube for better social media outreach.

Team NCHU reached out to us for collaborations for their short video project. They created a YouTube channel to spread the idea of synthetic biology throughout the Taiwanese iGEM community. By creating short entertaining videos, anyone interested will be able to access these videos on youtube and learn more about iGEM. Furthermore, the videos are in mandarin for local Taiwanese communities to be able to understand the intentions of each team. Seeing this opportunity as a great way to inform the public on our project, our team decided to accept this collaboration opportunity. Through team NCHU_Taichung’s project, our video got several dozens of views on youtube, contributing to our efforts to raise awareness on our topic. Video

Team NYCU_Formosa coordinated a BioArt workshop in which our team was able to present our educational presentations.

We connected with team NYCU_Formosa through one of our team members Jonathan. They hosted a collaboration in-person meet-up at their university with our team to exchange progress and ideas. During the meeting, the drylab members of both teams discussed modeling techniques while the NYCU Wetlab brought our team’s Wetlab team to the NYCU lab to give suggestions on experimentation. Team NYCU also invited us to their BioArt collaboration, where they aimed to share the new concept of BioArt with different audiences. We coordinated with team KCIS_Xiugang_Taipei in hosting the BioArt workshop at Kang Chiao International School, in which we presented our project and shed light on the artistic aspect of synthetic biology.

With team KCIS_Xiuganag_Taipei, we established a new dialogue with students who are inclined towards biology. We coordinated the logistics of the BioArt event in which NYCU and GEMS Taiwan will join team KCIS in their labs to educate students of Kang Chiao International School. We also used this opportunity to show the vastness of synthetic biology simply lies in everyday items, such as bananas. Team KCIS also participated in our infographics project, sending us their infographic to be translated. Lastly, we submitted our team’s introduction to team KCIS_Xiugang_Taipei for them to distribute in their school newspaper, further drawing the whole school’s attention to synthetic biology.

Team CCU_Taiwan is trying to prevent Cardiovascular disease(CVD), which plagues thousands of people in Taiwan every year. Through the Taiwan Synbio Alliance meetup, our teams both took part in one another’s collaboration projects which aimed to educate the public on various iGEM projects.

During the discussion panel at the Taiwan Synbio Alliance meetup, team CCU_Taiwan introduced their cookbook collection, where teams submit a dish of their culture that helps prevent CVD. As for the translation project, CCU_Taiwan submitted their infographic and was among the first for our core team to finish translating. CCU_Taiwan was a joy to collaborate with.

For CCU_Taiwan's cookbook, we chose braised tofu fish. Our dish includes ingredients such as large yellow croaker, tofu, garlic heads, peppers, shallots, green garlic, rock sugar, vinegar, soy sauce, bean paste, Shaoxing wine, dark soy sauce, and tomato sauce. In the process of researching the topic of CVD, we found that fish and tomatoes are most beneficial for the prevention of CVD. Specifically, the Omega-3 fatty acids nutrient in fish can reduce the risk of humans dying from heart disease. From this collaboration, we were amazed by the variety of fields synthetic biology touches, leading us to believe in the unlimited potential the field offers.