Introduction/Motivation

Not only Collaboration, but also through Partnership,we hope to establish relationships with teams of different backgrounds, increase communication between different ethnic groups, learn synthetic biology knowledge from each other, promote synthetic biology knowledge, educate the public, and continue to cooperate to achieve our goals. This year, we cooperated with CSMU_Taiwan . Through continuous and multi-modal cooperation, we hope that both teams will benefit.

Partnership with Team CSMUˍTaiwan

We started to think about the project in 2021, when Taiwan was at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, so we prioritized the problems seen in the pandemic and paid attention to recent emerging technologies. It just so happened that CSMU_Taiwan also thought of the recent situation and technology. In addition, CSMU_Taiwan is also the closest team to our team, only a 10-minute drive away, so we started a long-term cooperation. Our cooperation projects include the following six items, which are: mutual discussion to find experts and ideas, discussion of new wiki writing methods, discussion of social people's views on biotechnology, mutual help to promote biotechnology to the public, experimental skills seminar, experiment assistance (western blot test,Mingdao to CSMU_Taiwan).

Brainstorming

At the end of 2021, after several months of peak pandemic situation in Taiwan, the confirmed cases finally declined. Therefore, we and CSMU_Taiwan discussed with each other the recent related pandemic technology and new innovation technology and suggested experts who are acquainted and related to each other's topics to our partner.

CSMU_Taiwan

CSMU_Taiwan suggested Mingdao to the professor, Dr. Ming-Shiou Jan, who is an expert in immunology. Through their help and coordination, professor Jan explained basic immunology to us, so that we, as high school students, have a better understanding of the immune system, and then we can go more smoothly on the project.

Mingdao

We introduced Dr. Pei-Hong Chen, a biology teacher at Mingdao High school, who has expertise in molecular biology and genetic engineering, to CSMU_Taiwan, hoping that we would be able to give our partner a hand in experiment conducting.

Because of the cooperation between the two teams and discussions to stimulate ideas, both teams had a clear goal in early 2022 and were looking for more experts in related fields.

Wet Lab Section

1. Experimental Skills Seminar

At the beginning of the long-term cooperation, the team members were still adapting to the basic experiments in the laboratory. In view of the convenient transportation between CSMU_Taiwan and Mingdao, we conducted two-day basic experiments during the holiday, including: PCR amplification technology, Plastid extraction, DNA electrophoresis, DNA concentration test, Ligation... and other experimental skills. In the two-day experiment, we successfully put the GFP(fluorescent protein gene) into E coli. and became familiar with the equipment and experimental procedures. Through the cooperation between the two teams, the process of discussing the literature has become easier, and the use of equipment has become more sensitive.



2. Experiment Assistance

Finally, after a series of experimental discussions and promotion of mutual assistance between the two teams, the experiments of both finally reached a stage, and because both of us hoped that the project can make a greater and more complete contribution to the society, we did some experiment to enhance the data authenticity.

CSMU_Taiwan still expected to do a few more times of western blot after completing all experiments to ensure that the output of the project was as expected, but there was some delay due to difficulties in the process, so they invited us to their laboratory and ran the western blot experiment again. In the process, they taught us experimental techniques such as SDS-PAGE, transfer, blocking, etc, and suggested to us some literature about protein purification which gave us the great potential to continue our project. Because high school students lack lab skills compared to CSMU_Taiwan members having been working in labs for a longer period of time than their counterparts, the suggestion they gave us is really useful to our project.

After the two teams completed experiments with each other, CSMU_Taiwan successfully confirmed the feasibility and success of the project, and Mingdao also led the project to have more capacity.

Education Section

Through the collection of Mingdao questionnaires and the phenomena observed in the society, we found that although the general public has a simple understanding of biotechnology, it is only a description of a few words, so we discussed with CSMU_Taiwan and thought about how to improve public awareness of synthetic biology.

CSMU_Taiwan

After discussion, CSMU_Taiwan decided to make the iGEM theme song and introduce the iGEM competition and bioengineering to the public.

Mingdao

We started from children and made a set of board games related to biotechnology and vaccines, hoping to provide more knowledge For children, expect to subtly enhance their interest in biotechnology and hope that they can become biotechnology talents.

During the process, we participated in the singing of the theme song of CSMU_Taiwan and united the iGEM team in Taiwan; CSMU_Taiwan also helped us test the content of the board game and provided relevant improvement methods (such as making gameplay of different levels of difficulty, simplifying text, etc. )(more in Collaboration)

Human Practice Section

The development of a plan also requires social support and understanding. We and the CSMU_Taiwan team have each produced a questionnaire, hoping to understand the public's thoughts and society's cognition of synthetic biology through the questionnaire.

CSMU_Taiwan

CSMU_Taiwan made a questionnaire for interviewing professionals in the reduction of experimental animals. Because the vaccines we need to make are also related to animals, and experimental animals are also something that every team must face, so we also participated in the idea of the questionnaire.

Mingdao

We made a questionnaire for the Taiwanese public, hoping to understand the public's knowledge of biotechnology and to formulate plans for the next public promotion. Although, as high school students, we have a huge number of young people under the age of 18. However, because CSMU_Taiwan is a tertiary school with a teaching hospital attached, it has more channels in the social group, so we invite the CSMU_Taiwan to help us send it to higher academic institutions and universities.

Together with CSMU_Taiwan, both teams learned about social phenomena and inspiring questions on the questionnaire. Finally we completed cooperation in the delivery of the questionnaire, which increased the number of completed questionnaires and effective surveys by a large percentage.

Dry Lab Section

In the wiki writing, because this year is a new writing method, the members of both parties devoted themselves to the layout and content research of the web page after they knew the information and started to cooperate, hoping to get started quickly and reach the standard. After many discussions, we jumped out of the past framework and combined the past materials to write web pages, and because of mutual discussions, we were all more efficient in the subsequent wiki writing and saved a lot of time.

Summary

Our partners are interdisciplinary and multidimensional, and more importantly, this is not for our experiments. Our cooperation is also built on assisting the world of synthetic biology and beyond the fields covered by our full exploration; moreover, it is based on bringing the reach of synthetic biology to our next generation.