Introduction

Over the course of the year, our team collaborated with three 2022 iGEM teams: Dusseldorf, Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT), and North Dakota State University.

Dusseldorf

Over the summer two members of our team were involved in research abroad programs in Aachen and Dusseldorf. While in Germany, our members met with team Dusseldorf!

At the meeting, our teams exchanged working presentations and constructive feedback. Team Dusseldorf is filled with passionate, driven individuals and it was an absolute pleasure to meet with them. We learned a lot about different cultural perspectives on synthetic biology and were able to share some of our scientific customs over a picnic.

Vellore Institute of Technology

We held our first call with Team VIT in July to discuss our projects and the progress we have made throughout the year. Our projects shared similar components including cloning, expression, purification, and modeling. We were both at points in our projects where we were troubleshooting. For VIT Vellore, they were struggling to get off the ground in coding and successfully transforming their plasmid. Our team, on the other hand, was struggling with some faulty protein purification protocols. They shared an ammonium sulfate purification protocol to assist with our purification, and we offered them our plasmid transformation protocol. Most importantly, we provided starter code for protein kinetics modeling. Our partnership with them greatly aided their progress in their project on the computational side. In return, they helped us understand more about protein purification as we continued wet lab experiments throughout the summer.

Later in the season, we provided further guidance on VIT's computational model and assisted them with troubleshooting the implementation of their code. We also discussed creating a joint Youtube playlist of interviews with researchers and clinicians in the field of antibiotics, antimicrobial resistance (AMR), and other relevant topics to help both of our teams further develop the implementation of our projects. For our Youtube playlist, we discussed how the researchers became interested in AMR, what innovative work they do to fight AMR, current research being done in the field, as well as what the general public should know in order to reduce their contribution to AMR. After completing these interviews, both VIT Vellore and MSBT learned more about the broader implications of AMR research as well as other problems that exist in the field, which may influence future directions of our projects.

North Dakota State University

We held a Zoom meeting in early October with Drew Jordahl, the Vice President of NDSU’s Genetic Engineering Club (GEC) to discuss our projects and to provide feedback and suggestions. Our two teams found similarities in our approaches to cloning, modification, and purification.

Our teams shared some obstacles at the beginning of our projects in modifying our construct to produce our respective desired vectors. NDSU’s team shared with us that they had tried over 40 different constructs in their experimentation process to get their expected results. One of the main suggestions we gave to their team was to look into computational modeling. The folding of the proteins created in their lab was causing issues in their results, and one of our teammates recommended using protein-folding algorithms like AlphaFold to predict how their constructs would assemble, which would save them a lot of time in their trials.

NDSU also provided insight into our project. Drew proposed that we put our AMP and encapsulin on two different vectors to lower the high energy cost that we imposed on our cells when producing both of these constructs in one plasmid. Drew also mentioned that their team attended another Human Practices meeting earlier in their project in which a speaker discussed technoeconomic analysis. This approach would provide insight by analyzing the cost of our system in regards to performance in opposition to traditional antibiotics. Both teams also left the meeting with suggestions on areas to improve in our presentations as well as which points the others thought were the most important to discuss while presenting at iGEM.