2022 Northwestern China iGEM Meetup
Our team, as the organizer, hosted the 4th Northwestern China iGEM Meetup. A total of 7 teams participated in the conference, including NWU-CHINA-A, NWU-CHINA-B, NPU-CHINA, XJTU-China, SZPT-CHINA, LZU-CHINA and SZ-SHD. In addition, three members from the CCiC (China iGEMer Exchange Conference) Committee, Yujie Li, Jianglai Nie and Yujie Wen, who participated online, were excellent iGEMers in the past, and Jianglai Nie delivered an online speech.
We designed posters for conferences
Conference badge and conference logo
The teams at the meeting used online or offline forms to show their projects from the aspects of project background, experimental design, modeling, HP, future prospects etc. And we put forward the advantages,disadvantages and doubts of the team project. In the Q&A session, everyone actively asked questions about other teams' projects and put forward some suggestions for the project’s improvement. Because of Covid-19, some teams couldn't attend the meeting on site. So we take a combination of offline and online methods.
Presentation and exchange discussion
For our project this year, in the question session, we gained a lot of thoughts, such as: we can make a colorimetric card of different concentrations of blue that appear at the end to be compared, and they ask some questions such as:
①Have you considered the smell of feces? If not, you can consider adding a deodorization link?
②Will Color of feces affect the final blue display?
③Will fecal components affect the growth of bacteria?
This allowed us to look at our projects from different perspectives and refine our projects in the course of subsequent experiments.
Then, in the free discussion session, the team on intestinal diseases reached a consensus, and our team proposed to establish Gut Alliance.(Click here to jump to gut alliance related content)
Finally, Jianglai Nie of CCiC summarized our meeting and gave some suggestions, pointing out that we should pay attention to the completeness of the background introduction, the project design of each team should be iterated according to feedback and application scenarios, and it should be displayed on the wiki, and the process of learning from the interviews of experts should also be performed on the wiki.Overall, the conference was a perfect success, and we received a lot of valuable advice from both the experimental part and the HP part.
Offline participants took a group photo
CCiC meeting
The 9th CCiC Conference, held online from August 18 to 22, 2022, is the world's largest regional iGEMer conference. Due to the impact of Covid-19, we were unable to attend meetings offline, so we used Tencent conferences to participate in this CCiC meeting.
Participation process
We presented our team's project at the conference, and the judges' advice was to synchronize the experiment with the HP progress, which gave us a lot of help. In addition, through this CCiC conference, we found a lot of teams that are decoted to gut work, so we continued to expand the membership of the Gut Alliance and continued to expand our reach.
Participation in other meetings
Conference on Synthetic Biology
On April 14, we attended a lecture on the theme of "Synthetic Biology Assists the Degradation of Plastics and the Synthesis of Degradable Plastics" which was prepared by Professor Qi Qingsheng of Shandong University. Professor Qi introduced the concept of synthetic biology and its application in plastic degradation, the food synthesis of degradable plastics PHA and succinic acid, and the carbon emission reduction design in the biosynthesis of degradable plastics.Through this conference ,we can further understand the importance of synthetic biology in degradable plastics, and also have a deeper understanding of synthetic biology.
Relevant contents of the meeting
Five school seminar
After we attended the science popularization lecture of "Entering the World of Synthetic Biology" sponsored by SZPT-CHINA, we held a seminar of five universities. We introduced our own projects,and discussed their own projects. Other teams put forward many suggestions on our projects. In terms of experiments, they that we should check other causes of bleeding. And in terms of modeling, they reminded us to pay attention to the status of probiotics in the acid and alkali environment, which helped us a lot in the follow-up.
group photo
CRISPR meeting
Because we selected E.coli Nissle 1917 as the chassis, in order to prevent the impact of bacterial leakage on intestinal flora and the surrounding environment, we hope to use CRISPR-Cas9 technology to design a blue light suicide switch.(Click here to jump out of the relevant content of the experimental group) In order to have a deep understanding of CRISPR-Cas9 technology application and find some inspiration for our suicide switch design, On August 14, we participated in the CRISPR exchange meeting hosted by UESTC-BioTech and HainanU-China. At this meeting, we learned about CRISPR schemes of different teams, which provided some ideas for the design of our "Suicide Switch".
Participation process
China iGEM Online Meetup
At the same time, in order to learn about the projects of other teams and learn from other excellent team members, we participated in the meeting of GXU-China, Jiangnan-CHINA, NPU-CHINA and JiLin_China on July 16 and 17. The online conference hosted by the four teams of China,we have learned a great deal of valuable experience from them.
Conference manual