CCU_Taiwan
The Beginning of Our Partnership
We first met CCU_Taiwan through an online meeting and the ARS (AFOB Regional Symposium) online conference. In our first meeting, we discussed the possibility of combining both teams’ projects together and collaboration in person. After TAIWAN IGEM MEET 2022 held by Taiwan Synbio Alliance, we decided to collaborate on future work and continued the partnership from last year. Despite the difference in our topics, we managed to help each other in various aspects to refine our projects.
TCUS Entrepreneurship Competition
While both our teams belong to Taiwan Comprehensive University System (TCUS), we participated in a TCUS entrepreneurship competition held by CCU_Taiwan and met the team in person. This competition served as a warm-up for iGEM teams to prepare for the Grand Jamboree in Paris this year. It included presentations from every team to share their projects judged by professional experts from various fields, and a poster session, where teams could exhibit their posters in an open area and discuss. With previous troubleshooting from online meetings and the ARS conference, we could go deeper into both teams’ projects and provide precise advice and ideas.
This competition was also dedicated to help iGEM teams in building a business case and commercializing their project. While CCU_Taiwan strives to prevent cardiovascular disease (CVD) by producing fatty acids that were originally extracted from fish, we have invited Dr. Lance, a CEO of Trade Wind Biotechnology who specializes in synthetic biology manufacturing, to deliver a speech with valuable insights on current entrepreneurship in synthetic biology. With rich experience in biomanufacturing, he shared his opinions on the ideas we have proposed and mentioned the pros and cons of using E. coli as the host to produce substances. We hope that by doing so, not only CCU_Taiwan but also any other team who have chosen the biomanufacturing or food and nutrition track can inspect their projects with perspectives from the industry.
Future
According to research, astronauts who travel beyond the earth’s magnetic field are four to five times more likely to die from cardiovascular disease (CVD) than non-flight and low Earth orbit astronauts due to space radiation
Reference
[1] Delp, M., Charvat, J., Limoli, C., Globus, R. and Ghosh, P., 2016. Apollo Lunar Astronauts Show Higher Cardiovascular Disease Mortality: Possible Deep Space Radiation Effects on the Vascular Endothelium. Scientific Reports, 6(1).
