Although we are still suffering from the COVID-19 pandemic, it does not stop our determination to work with other iGEM teams to complete this year's competition.
On the evening of May 21st, GXU-China, Jiangnan-China, ZJU-China and ZJUT-China learned and communicated with each other through an online meeting. Each team respectively introduced their own competition items, in an attempt to find a common place with their own projects, to facilitate the future cooperation.
Through this project introduction, GXU-China also has the further cooperation with ZJU-China and ZJUT-China in WetLab experiment.
CCiC Round Table
The third CCiC round-table conference was held in an online way. The participating teams included BIT team from Beijing Institute of Technology, THU team from Tsinghua University, GXU-China team from Guangxi University, CAU-China team from China Agricultural University and CHINA-FAFU team from Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University.
This meeting mainly introduced Microfluidic chip, lateral flow chromatography strip, photoelectric detection technology, controller, software design, hardware design and so on.
During the discussion stage of the conference, first, all teams communicated with each other and reached a consensus that hardware must be compatible with biological functions and focus on solving scientific problems. It can't stand on its own. Second, the biological results need to be included and integrated with hardware and paying attention to user’s feedback is of vital importance. Third, wiki should be clear and convenient to show the contribution of the project.
The Online Party
On July 16 and 17, 2022, GXU-China, Jilin-China , Jiangnan-China and NPU-CHINA jointly hosted an online party. More than 30 teams from Chinese area were invited to participate in the party, spanning different tracks. (Please see the main brochure for more details)
At the beginning of the event, we invited Professor Chen Xianzhong from Jiangnan University in China to give a speech for us. Professor Chen made a profound comment on our iGEM competition, pointing out that iGEM competition is meaningful for all the synthetic biology practitioners.
Then we also invited the experienced iGEMers to share experience and answer our questions encountered by each team in the preparation process patiently.
After that, it is time for the team display part. Each team introduced their own project in detail and communicate with other teams in similar directions. After this party, our team also contacted many teams related to freshwater remediation, such as XJTLU-CHINA and FAFU-CHINA. We also established a long-term partnership with them to help each other in mathematical modeling, hardware and experiments.
At the end of the party, Dorothy Zhang, the vice president of iGEM community was invited to give us a speech. As an experienced official staff of iGEM, Dorothy Zhang gave us many suggestions on project completion, material preparation and other aspects. She also affirmed our enthusiasm and dedication in synthetic biology and iGEM.
Online joint science popularization
In order to enhance the cooperation between the team and popularize the science of synthetic biology and iGEM to middle and high school students, we also cooperated with HainanU_China and JLU_China to hold an online popular science lecture on "Watching the World with the Beauty of Biology" to the students of Hainan International Studies University (hereinafter referred to as "outside Beijing").
In August, GXU-China and HainanU_China were already planning to jointly hold offline science activities, but due to the impact of the COVID-19 , we had to hold online. Nevertheless, the popular science activity was highly praised by the teachers and students outside Beijing.
Conclusion
We worked with many teams throughout the competition cycle, not alone, which deepened the friendship between the teams and also contributed to each other in their respective projects.
