Stony Brook University

  In mid-May, we first scheduled with the Stony Brook University team to meet through Zoom. We first met each other and troubleshot our projects, and then discussed the next objective of how we could help each other out. Since the locations of both our teams were in New York, one idea that we organized was to have an in-person collaborative wet lab session at some point. Notably, the Stony Brook team also requested help from us for future computational modeling.

Meetings

  We organized a meeting with multiple Stony Brook members to get to know each other more. We value work, but we value friendships and connections even more. Working with another group you’ve never met before is a huge commitment, so getting to know whom you are spending time with is incredibly important.

  Communication is key to partnerships, allowing us to work more closely and understand one another's projects and needs. One of Stony Brook's members, Lori, was able to have biweekly meetings with us to discuss goals on partnership and how to accomplish them. We kept each other updated on our progress by having frequent small meetings and constant messaging.

  At the beginning of our journey together, we presented our projects to one another. Stony Brook's team inspired us to create a brochure, so in one of our meetings, they read through it and showed us an example of theirs. Brochures are essential for projects such as these as they can relay so much information to those interested in the topic.

  Understanding each other's project is critical, especially in a partnership. They asked multiple questions, and we did the same for them. With their help, our partnership got off to a great start. Throughout this project, we catered to each other's needs to the best of our abilities. The Empire Gene team is grateful for the support and time that the Stony Brook University team has given.

Wiki Troubleshooting

  Due to issues with navigating through the wiki pages, one of our members, Mustafo Mustafokulov, scheduled a meeting with one of Stony Brook's members, Ahmed Rehman. Through this meeting, they worked together to troubleshoot the wiki and solve technical problems. Our teams realized that the iGEM navigation system is built on Flask and adjusted for that. Both of our wikis functioned properly and looked presentable for our projects.

Computational Research

  Stony Brook University needed to know if Protein S and COVID-19 were structurally related to one another for their project research. Our team did computational work and research to figure this out, and with our data, we discovered that they did not have any structural similarities. Our writeup was extremely helpful towards them in understanding that injecting Protein S into the bloodstream would likely not cause an immune response.

Coloring Book

  As an idea for our partnership, we decided to create a coloring book together. Our intention for creating this coloring book was to allow the young general public to gain more awareness about biology while being able to enjoy coloring at the same time. We hope to create a positive impact in the field of biology.

Youtube Video Translation

  Our YouTube Channel has uploaded videos showing our project and more general knowledge about biology. Stony Brook has given us some translations for us to upload, namely Chinese and Japanese. These translations can help us spread more awareness about the topic to those who do not speak English.

Protein Modeling

  Stony Brook University informed us that they had read how Protein S levels were lower in patients with COVID-19. They hypothesized that Protein s and COVID-19 must have structural similarities that cause COVID-19 antibodies to bind to Protein S and limit its presence within the body. We superimposed a protein structure of Sar-CoV-2 on the NMR structure of Protein S. We found no structural and sequence similarities in the proteins. In addition to consulting articles, we inferred that during COVID-19, a hypoxia environment causes mutations or deactivates Protein S, which causes less blood clotting.

Stony Brook Visit

  Two Empire Gene members, Amanda Son and Ashley Son, went to Stony Brook University to meet with their team. They got to understand the type of environment the Stony Brook University team worked in by getting a tour of the campus, including the buildings primarily used for Chemistry, Physics, and Medicine. They were also allowed to look at other campus main parts. Amanda and Ashley received valuable information when discussing our work with one of their professors. The professor commented that even getting to the transwell insert step is a massive step toward our goal, even if we don’t get to our results.

  This is a group photo of the students from both of our teams that met up and discussed at Stony Brook University.

Korea High School

  Team Korea HS was one of the teams we were already acquainted with even before this year’s iGEM competition began. Most of our team members remembered some of the members of Team Korea HS.This relationship was more than just business. It was a partnership, a bond of friendship that we created.

Meetings

  We reached out to them in March, even before they started their project. When we first met via Zoom call, it was a struggle as we had to go through many different logistics to meet. However, by setting up weekly meetings on Tuesdays and constantly keeping in touch and texting through Instagram almost every day, we were able to stay aware of each other’s projects well and help each other out a lot. We initially troubleshooted both of our projects, and Korea HS made the recommendation to use CHO-K1 cells to manufacture our Trojan horse proteins once we created our recombinant plasmids.

Badge Projects

  The EmpireGene team worked with the Korea team on the badge project. We provided Korea team with our team logo and an image of a Trojan horse, which was a key feature of our project. Korea team created a badge for us with those given images.

Youtube Channel

  We worked with the Korea HS team to publish videos on our YouTube channel, Bio Iuvenis Initiative. The purpose of this project was to show our (wet lab) process to the public. Korea High School published 3 videos to our YouTube channel. Two videos related to their team's project and one video described the procedure for Polymerase Chain Reaction.

Outdoor Poll

  To help the Korea team gather diverse responses for their survey, three members of the EmpireGene team, Yeju, Roy, and Mathew, went in front of the Empire-state building and replicated the survey for the Korea team. For several days, we asked people to mark our board with their answers that had the questions for the Korean team. This way, we helped the Korea team gather responses from two continents.

Coloring Page Book

  For our education and communication agenda, EmpireGene initiated the coloring book project. The coloring book was the initiative for four teams, including the EmpireGene. The Korean team provided us with two pages worth of drawings to be distributed to young children and help them understand the field of biology.

Networking Conference

  Our team joined two conferences in two days: the SDG conference and the Business technological conference. For the SGD conference, seven teams showed up and troubleshot their projects in front of a bigger crowd, provided each other with different feedback, and asked questions. The EmpireGene team also attended the Business technological conference, hosted in the international jamboree conference. At the conference, six teams showed up and showed their project briefly and introduced the implications of their project as a marketing tool. The EmpireGene team gained useful advice from both of these conferences.

Presentation

  EmpireGene created the slides called “Introduction to Synthetic Biology” for those unaware of the practicality of synthetic biology as a whole. Korea team distributed these PowerPoint slides in different places in South Korea, where our team could not go in person, and shared the information in churches and other daycare centers.

Google Form

  Korea team provided us with help for our survey regarding how much information people had about strokes. Our team created the survey in Google forms, and Korea team spread our surveys to different teams and the public. Korea team played a significant role in distributing our Google form to their school.