At the beginning of the competition, we were glad to provide Tsinghua with the Pmrc gene used by NEU_CHINA team 2020.

In the process of the pre-experiment conducted by the team of Tsinghua University, they came across the problem of logistics stagnation due to the impact of the pandemic, and the purchased genes could not be mailed, which strangled their progress. After knowing this, we immediately contacted them and provided their team with Pmrc gene to help them get back on track of their progress of the project.
See more in their “Human Practices”.

We got in touch with DUT_ China, and had the honor to invite teachers and student leaders to an online meeting on April 17. At the meeting, the teachers and students made comments and suggestions on each other's projects and got in good contact.

Mentors from DUT_ China particularly reminded us to pay attention to biosafety issues and we also put forward views on plasmid construction and other issues.

We also discussed the topic related to the follow-up cooperation. Although there are many differences between the project themes of the two teams, we can still have in-depth exchanges in education, HP and other aspects.
See more in their “Collaborations”

After we have designed and verified RTAC, we sought to further find its carrier for drug delivery. Our team got the better idea of the advantage using probiotics through mind-exchange with LZU-CHINA. Thanks for the inspiration from our communication, we evaluated our design of RTAC and finally decided to use yeast as our carrier.

During the construction of engineering yeast, our two laboratories cooperated to complete some experimental data. See more in their “Collaborations”

For accuracy, they helped us repeat the MTT cell growth experiment to demonstrate the anti-cancer function of our RTAC. We delivered our RKO cells to them because they had no enough time to deal with mycoplasma contamination.

In addition, we also held science popularization activities and produced brochures with them.
On September 5, we held a thematic debate on the theme of genetically modified food together with LZU-CHINA. The competition lasted for 14 days with 112 participants.

At the end of the finals, the representative of the NEU_CHINA team explained the current situation of genetically modified food and introduced the reason for the proposition and the significance of the debate that "everyone can choose whether to accept genetically modified food, but as professionals, we should correct the rumors of genetically modified food in a timely and comprehensive manner, and hope that all discussions on genetically modified food are based on science and rationality".

In order to let more people around the world know about biology and expand their influence, we contacted the LZU-CHINA team to jointly publish a multilingual picture book, including English, Chinese and Japanese versions. The picture book mainly vividly describes the occurrence and targeted treatment of cancer in the form of cartoons, as well as the use of E.coli to treat colorectal cancer.

Purpose: The projects of us three teams are all probiotic for cancer, so we collaborated and discussed the future implementation together.

Background of probiotic embedding and information of microencapsulation was done by NEU_CHINA and Worldshaper-HZBIOX.

Literature finding and experiments were done by LZU-CHINA.

After designing the yeast drug-loading system, our team leader communicated with Yuxin Lu, the advisor of SJTU-BioX-Shanghai Team, about the feasibility of our project.

He suggested that we should consider the option that the engineered yeast was capable of self-killing in the environment, and pointed out that we could add some safety-ensuring components in the yeast to solve the potential biosafety issue. Considering of his suggestion and any unexpected hazard, we designed and completed a self-killing switch in our engineered yeast to resolve this issue.

When we attended the CCiC Conference, we learned about CAFA_China team also studied the kill switch in microorganism in this year’s competition. We contacted CAFA_China and discussed the principle and method of the kill switch together.

Although their team mainly studied the kill switch in bacteria, they provided some constructive suggestions for our kill switch in fungi. CAFA_China Team study from the perspective of combining art and biology, which is novel and enlightening. They said that they would also investigate the kill switch in fungi in the future and would consult us then.

In the process of studying yeast growth, we considered learning from other teams in mathematical modeling. We communicated with the HBUT-China Team about the progress of our two teams in experiment and modeling, and further discussed the growth model. HBUT-China suggested that we model the growth of yeast in vitro to speculate the growth in vivo. And we have provided them with an idea of combining a single yield and growth model with a coupling model, so as to better understand the relationship between time and high yield.

Their “wiki”

During the competition, we were pleased to be invited to participate in the CCiC Conference (the exchange meeting of iGEMer in China), and shared our project with the Chinese team participating in the iGEM competition on August 20th.

During this meeting, we consulted with the judges about our project, and their questions and suggestions expanded our understanding of iGEM competition. For example, in the discussion of parameters of the mathematic model, we mentioned that it was difficult to obtain accurate parameters. The judges recommended that we could change our perspective and consider from a qualitative perspective rather than focusing on quantitative issues, which provided us great inspiration. After knowing that we wanted to build a flora competition model, they said the L-V model was too simplified, and we were recommended to use some more complex models to build models to improve the reliability of the model.

At the end of August, we communicated with FAFU team on various aspects to get a broader view. After understanding our project and modeling, FAFU provided us with a new direction, which is to use 3D modeling to study protein structure to make our project more visual.
Plus, they helped us beautify our comics.
See more in their “Collaboration”

August 27th, 2022, our team, NEU_CHINA, organized an online seminar on synthetic biology. DUT_ China and OUC-China were invited to the discussion.

1. Understanding of synthetic biology by each team.

2. Links between projects of each team and synthetic biology.

3. How to popularize science of synthetic biology.

The seminar was unexpectedly successful, as everyone expressed their opinions warmly. Through discussion, we optimized our education program and the science popularization.
See “education” for details

We were glad to form an intestinal alliance together with NWU-CHINA-A, LZU-CHINA, HS_China, LZU-HS-Pro-A and Worldshaper-HZBIOX, which popularized knowledge about intestinal tract to the public.

The six teams held a science lecture on August 14th, 2022. In this lecture, our team offered the talk about probiotics and intestinal tract：

1)Intestinal science knowledge

2)Did you test for H. pylori today

3)Treatment of depression with autonomously synthesized 5-HTP and GABA strains

4)Occurrence and detection of colorectal cancer

5)Treatment of lactose intolerance

6)The relationship between gut microbiota and sugar substitutes

The lecture received good feedback, and we decided to jointly prepare a science publicity manual after the lecture to further help the public understand intestinal knowledge, so as to better protect intestinal health and develop good habits.

We met SYPHU-China, DUT_ China，JLU_ China，NEFU_ China online and jointly exchanged ideas on research projects, human practices and experiments, etc. During the exchange, we mainly discussed about the relevant knowledge and data of synthetic biology, and about how to carry out targeted science popularization for different populations under the pandemic situation.