During our initial meeting with the Linköping University (LiU) iGEM team on July 13th, we decided to collaborate with each other to help advance our projects. This started out by exchanging questions and answers via email to clarify each other's projects and gain insight into how we could further assist one another. As our communication continued we realized that there was significant overlap between our projects so we formed a partnership with the LiU iGEM team. In this partnership we shared with them our initial protocol for adhering oligos to a chip or glass slide.They then sent us their protocol for the production of Tau proteins. While we wanted to adapt their protocol for Amyloid-Beta protein, the plasmid that we had available needed to be transfected into a eukaryote instead of transformed into a prokaryote. Nonetheless their protocol significantly informed our approach to producing the protein and we later sent them our initial protocol for this experiment. Other than exchanging information we also looked into sending each other samples to verify the diagnostic tools. Unfortunately, due to the specificity of the apatemers we were using and the difficulty of sending and receiving biological samples in the United Arab Emirates, we realized that this was not feasible.
Our team worked on an aptamer book in collaboration with LiU along with three other teams as we found out that we were all working with aptamers in our iGEM projects. The book looks at the history of aptamers and introduces what they are. We believe that this is a useful source of communication to people, teams, or any entity should they find themselves interested in learning more about aptamers. Find a copy of this book below or by clicking here.