Collaboration

1. Overview

Throughout the process, RDFZ_CHINA attended multiple conferences and arranged meetups with other iGEM teams. Many of the collaboration activities were fruitful and provided us with innovative ideas and constructive suggestions. Meanwhile, the experiences and prospective we shared deepened our understanding of synthetic biology.

2. July 7th WHU-China

Our team achieved a chance to collaborate with team WHU-China. The two teams shared experiences in the previous proceedings and promoted each other in project design and experimentation.

Their wiki:

https://2022.igem.wiki/whu-china

We reached out to WHU-China as both teams’ project is based on the gene modification of probiotics aiming to treat a certain type of disease. The two teams briefly introduced the design of the project and exchanged ideas on human practices. We learned that their project was designed to construct genetically modified Bifidobacterium Lactis that can synthesize natural antidepressant SAMe in human intestine, and they conducted human practices surrounding depression. We exchanged understandings of current research progress on probiotics and discussed our choices of chassis, which provided us with new perspectives on our project design.
Their plans and proceedings in human practice also inspired us. Their team reached out to a community of patients who has depression, which enlightened us to get in touch with obese communities in order to understand their needs and to improve our project design. Later in our project, we contacted obese groups in weight-loss camps and people with overweight problems in our school.

Our team then briefly introduced our project design and plans for human practice to share our views with them. They recognized our aim and project design, and suggested that there is scope for improvement of our design. For example, as a probiotics product, our team should also consider constructing a kill switch system in order to guarantee biosafety. Such ideas had occurred to us before so we further discussed about their kill switch design and asked for their advice.

Overall, the discussion was fruitful, we felt encouraged to proceed and to improve our design.

3. July 17th 2022 Synthetic Biology Panel held by Gansu microbiology society

The 2022 synthetic biology panel was held by Gansu microbiology society, which aims to offer iGEM teams to communicate, share their experiences and deepen their understandings in synthetic biology.

At the time when we participated in this conference, our project design was just in stage1, where only FadL, the long chain fatty acid transporter protein in E.coli. Our experiment data testing how well our bacterial cell can transport and metabolize LCFA failed to reach our expectations. During the discussion, we shared our concerns after our presentation, and were eager to find a solution to this problem. Luckily, one of the experts participating the conference suggest that we should research more about the integrated LCFA transport and metabolism pathway and seek for other targets to enhance the E.coli’s ability to absorb LCFA.

According to our previous research, we were informed that there are 4 proteins critical to the transportation and metabolism of LCFA. By reading extensively about the function of each protein, we decided to overexpress both FadL and FadD, where FadD is responsible for the ligation of coenzyme A to the LCFA, and thus enables it to enter the beta-oxidation metabolism pathway of the bacterial cell. After adjusting our design and doing another round of experiment to test the performances of the cells, we were delighted to find out that the bacterial cell's ability to absorb and digest LCFA was enhanced significantly.

Overall, the conference was an enlightening experience where we gained inspirations to upgrade our design.
Teams attending:
LZU-HS-China-A
LZU-HS-China-B
and other iGEM teams

4. July 20th CAU_China

Their wiki:

https://2022.igem.wiki/cau-china/

4.1 Getting in touch

Our team arranged a meetup with team CAU_China to exchange experiences in the previous proceedings, and had in-depth discussions about the project design and future work of both teams.

We learned that their team focused on the protection of stone relics and aims to modify genes of Pseudomonas bijieensis 2P24 to increase the production of exopolysaccharide and calcium oxalate monohydrate which can help preserve stone relics. We were interested in their design because our team thought of protecting cultural relics when we were deciding on the project aim. However, when we were conducting preliminary research into relic protection, we found out that methods to protect and repair stone relics were quite desirable and well developed. So we discussed about how their synthetic biological method was superior to other existing means and other prospective applications of their methods. Apart from that, members of RDFZ_CHINA were intrigued by the project design of CAU_China, and questioned about how calcium oxalate could have a protective effect on stone relics and whether or not such method can be applied to the protection of other relics.

Then, we shared our own project design and future work. Members of CAU_China were especially interested in our kill switch system. At the time, we were still doing preliminary research on our kill-switch system. As we briefly introduced our prospects and ideas, they raised inquiries and we had an in-depth discussion on this part of project design. The productive discussion inspired us to do more research on the kill switch design and reminded us of some deficits of our current idea, which undoubtedly encouraged us to proceed. After the meetup, we went further in depth of biosafety design trying to resolve the problems.

Finally, they made some suggestions on our future work, such as the processing technology we can use to produce our probiotic products.

4.2 Further collaborations

After the inspiring and fruitful meetup, the two teams decided to arrange further collaborations on education.

In the BioCamp our team held, CAU_China kindly offered some teaching materials based on our instructional design. for instance, they recorded lectures on Overlap PCR and Gibson Assembly which can significantly further the students’ understandings of PCR and its applications. Apart from that, we proposed that the lab in our highschool lacks some of the fundamental apparatuses in molecular biological experiments. CAU_China was willing to help us out. They recorded lectures to explain the principles and illustrate the operations of these apparatuses from their lab as well. Undoubtedly, such collaboration improved the integrity and quality of our BioCamp.

5. August 19th CCiC

CCiC (Conference of China iGEMer community) is a national conference held by Chinese iGEM teams. With 85 iGEM teams participating and 6 experts giving lectures during the conference, our team was inspired by great ideas in project design and in human practices.

On one hand, we deepened our understandings in applications and technologies of synthetic biology after listening to the lectures and the presentation of other iGEM teams.

On the other hand, comments on our project after our team’s presentation as well as in-depth discussion during group panels enlightened us as well. At the time, we focused on two types of kill-switch designs, temperature-induced and biomolecule-induced kill switches after extensive research. However, we didn’t decide on which one to use.
During group discussion, inquiries were raised on our choice of kill-switch design, and we discussed about both options. we realized that the biomolecule-induced kill switch could enable the consumer to terminate the probiotics by cutting off the biomolecule supply, while the temperature-induced one cannot. Besides, the temperature-induced kill switch requires more considerations on its processing technology and its storage conditions. This definitely helped us to determine our ultimate project design.
Apart from that, we were advised to conduct more human practice activities outside our own school. Therefore, we arranged educational activities in other highschools in Beijing and in other cities. We also reached out to more stakeholders in order to expand our influences and to understand their needs.

Teams attending:
BDSU-ICUnited
BIT
BIT-China
BNU-China
...and other 81 teams