Introduction
We have built a sturdy partnership with LINKS-China throughout the year. Sharing the same laboratory as well as the same instructors, the bond between two teams occurred naturally and smoothly.
Our team initiated this relationship since we believe it comes with mutual support. LINKS-China, as the high school Grand Prize winner of 2021 iGem, has abundant knowledge and experience which our team has been enriched by; us, on the other hand, has also supported them with great effort from public education to human practice. By building this partnership, both projects gained more intellectual and practical resources.
Moreover, members from the other team can provide both objective and targeted perspective that the team’s own member might not have. As two teams participated in each other’s online meetings to exchange meaningful feedbacks and suggestions, both projects get to spot its existing flaws and develop into a more comprehensive version. With the share of knowledge, capabilities, and talents, our partnership ensured both teams to reach for its optimum results.
Figure 1. Meeting notes by a KEYSTONE member (Bessie) on August 23rd
Stage 1: project formation
Our partnership began with arranged meetups exchanging details of the project from both sides.
On August 23, 2022, we used Tencent Meeting as the platform to reach members in both groups. During the meeting, both teams shared their conception of the project and specifically the product, asking for suggestions as well as potential development spaces. One of the members of LINKS-China after our presentation pointed out a vital concern about market advantages. She asked that if the bacteria that our product targeted is what truly caused armpit malodor, why don’t our clients just use alcohol wipers which achieve the same result of killing bacteria and are cheaper? Namely, what are our product’s market advantages when compared with existing products? Our team, finding that the question addresses straight to our weakness, continued this conversation and drove it to a further-on brainstorm of our original plan. Then, building on their feedbacks, we gradually sorted out the remaining flaws in our project conception and plans for marketing, hardware, as well as social influence and objective. Thanks to this partnership, many problems that had been bothering us in the early stage of the project were solved through cross-group discussions.
Moreover, when LINKS-China expressed their concerns over public education — what and how to conduct in order to promote their project — during the meeting, we offered some key features in our plan that they could consider applying. For example, ideas of holding public lectures and arranging small introductory classes for primary school students were all shared in between the two teams.
Stage 2: Human Practice
In terms of human practices branch, we also collaborated with Links China to interview a dermatologist, Dr. Wang in Shantou Hospital, Guangdong. The intention for this was to investigate and comprehend what are the common issues sunscreen and deodorant users were facing and in which ways we could mitigate them from a professional doctor’s perspective. Both team benefited from this collaborative interview greatly, as having the intention to solve skin-related problem was the similarity both teams share. During this partnership, we provided human resources and found the doctor, and Links China provided their time and collaboration with us, and later they helped us a lot in terms of hardware and public education.
We made a sturdy relationship with each other as we were mutually giving each other’s help during different stages.
Figure 2. Some interview records with doctors.
Stage 3: Hardware Modeling
Throughout the year, team Keystone and Links have maintained a strong partnership. At this stage, our team has completed our engineering part, but the ways to present and package our product is also of crucial importance, since it could both impact its appearance and function. After discussion our team members, we decided that we want to make hydrogel wipe/gel, and both a domestic fermentator + spray. However, after we came up with the design layout, we surprisingly found out that no one in our team was adept on modelling. So it could become very hard to get hands-on since we were not sure about its 3D look. But luckily, an advisor from team LINKS, decided to help us out. Her name’s Mary, she gets along with many members in our team very well, and also she’s very adept at STEMM fields. She helped us to make the model for fermentator on Fusion 360. Also, Mary had participated in many of our team’s own meeting to discuss her ideas for our hardware design and get valuable feedback back from Keystone members. Also, after Mary finished modelling, it offered us a practical visualization for our hardware, inspiring us to reconsider its plausibility and revise it afterwards. Without Mary’s model, we wouldn’t be able to construct our comprehensive and well-planned entrenuership plan , and we wouldn’t be able to achieve Aromata as our final product. In addition, she helped us twice in modelling, after she modeled our first fermenter, we made huge adjustments, and proposed another version of hardware. She then helped as to model another one.
Even afterwards, Mary helped teammembers in Keystone by giving valuable suggestions and teaching to build the real portotype with us. This helpful partnership told us a lesson that competing against each other for ranking is not the our priority, but rather acquiring new skills and moral lessons from the competition is what really values the most.
Figure 3. Schematic Representation of Our Two Fermenter Modelings. Figure a and b are the first design and the second one respectively.
Stage 4: public education
In terms of the Public Education branch, we have also collaborated with Links China to reach a bigger crowd. As a cooperation between SCIE, Links, and Keystone, we have gathered the projects of all three teams together and brought them into campuses in late September.
The exhibition consisted visual, auditory, sensory, and olfactory triggers that are related to synthetic biology. A rather entertaining approach can intrigue the audience even more. Our activities took place in campuses, targeting middle and high schoolers. As the younger generation, our targeted audience in The Sensory Exhibition are more likely to embrace new and yet cutting-edge technology, hence accomplishing education in depth.
Figure 4. Sensory exhibition hosted by Team LINKS-China.
Links and Keystone were mutually supporting each other to complete the exhibition, that both teams were benefited via our partnership. Links China provided their excellent organizational abilities and resources to implement the exhibition. We were able to engage with a larger group of targeted audience, rather than limited to Beijing and our online resources. On the other hand, we have used our project to contribute to the event, helping Links to enhance the exhibition’s effectiveness. Keystone created posters and visual aids about synthetic biology and our specific project in a light way, which attracts more participants to the event. Our product, Aromata, also demonstrated the power of synthetic biology to the public by entering from a day-to-day angle, then further emphasizing bioengineering and our product’s importance.
Our partnership with Links largely benefited our dry lab, by improving both quantity and quality of our public education. Not only were we able to access a larger crowd, but Links and Keystone were also able to enhance the depth of public education by gathering the information and demonstrating the potential of bioengineering in the upcoming future.
Figure 5. Sensory exhibition hosted by Team KEYSTONE.
Conclusion
Links China have been working with Keystone throughout the entire year, and both teams have gained a lot from this experience.
1.Shaping our project
Sharing ideas with another team guarantees that we can have doubled number of suggestions and resources. Our meetup collaboration provided a precious chance for both sides to adjust our projects in time to avoid the problems being enlarged in the future. We were also able to further improve our projects by making modifications during discussions.
2.Mutual benefits throughout the season
Our long-term cooperation throughout the season guaranteed that both teams are familiar with each other’s projects. With this convenience, we were able to give out mutual supports. For instance, the hardware collaboration with Mary from Links China helped our development, and the human practice interview that we’ve introduced sources to Links helped their market investigation. Moreover, the public education that Links and Keystone have hosted with SCIE was a perfect representation of mutual help from both sides.
Therefore, we sincerely appreciate the process of partnership with Links China, that we have gotten the chance to enlarge the positive effects of our dry lab branches, while being able to improve our wet lab sections too!