It's such a surprise for us when first got into contact with ShanghaiTech and knew that they were doing project on astrobiology as well. Their idea of buiding up a mini-ecosystem with three bacterium-based systems on Mars to provide convenient food resource truly amazed us and inspired some meaningful collaborations between us two teams.

We had an immediate meet-up online for further contact with the team members from both groups. Project designs for each group were briefly represented and we ultimately decided to collaborate on the education for both of our teams were doing project related to the space and trying to promote the development of future cosmic expedition.

From the materials collected together, we realized that in the field of cosmic biology, less was concerned on the bio-security problem and this is also related to what iGEM safety form concerned. For example, in the ShanghaiTech project, is it all right if we transport bacteria or even eukaryotes into a new planet where life had never existed before? And, as things going in our project, what will happen if our bacteria are accidentally released into the wild or even in space because of some unpredictable force majeure?

To better assess the level of knowing of these controversial questions in the public, we designed an online questionnaire, which focused on bio-security problem in the outer space, together. Inspiring results were obtained and we made thoughtful analyses.

At the end of July, we happened to learn that the team from Tongji University also usde B.subtilis as the host organism, and to our surprise, they also chose WB800N which we had selected as well as the specific strain to produce bromelain. We hosted a small-scale online meet-up and exchanged the ideas of projects of us two teams.

Through the meet-up, we knew that they encountered serveral difficulties in the wet-lab work due to the pandemic here in Shanghai. Undergraduate students from Tongji were not allowed to enter the campus, let alone the laboratories.They had no choice but to postpone their wet-lab experiments until the beginning of the autumn semester in late August. So we offered to help them with our experiences of culturing WB800N strain. For instance, how long it usually takes for the bacteria to grow into their logarithmic phase. Other protocols on B.subtilis, tested successfully amid our project, were also shared with them. These included commonly used operations such as how to produce competent cells, do electrotransformation and lyse cells to extract proteins for quantification.

In September, we still had a close relationship in the wet-lab and dry-lab alike as they are graping the time to carry out subsequent experiments but our university was stuck in an accidental suspension due to a small outbreak of COVID-19 on campus. We were planning to employ knowledges in direct evolution to enrich our project and Tongji team was just an excellent expert in this regard. They helped us a lot when we used the websites and softwares recommended by them to build up some models.

SUSTech was doing project in emplying directed evolution strategy to simplify the production of tyrian purple in E.coli.

Knowing their goal in the direct evolution, we sought for some useful suggestions from them. Their team members kindly shared their methodology process with us, this helped a lot because their strategy was valueble for reference so that we didn't have to do it from scratch!

Our collaboration with Tianjin began after a meeting of Chinese iGEM teams and at the beginning of May. We couldn't wait communicating with them when we found out their 'Multi-target editor for DNA data storage' had so much in common with our project.

Consequently, we arrange for a meeting.

On the meeting,we shared our opinions on DNA storage from its fundamental algorithm and future development to application scenarios and possible limitation. While we were all looking for a better algorithm to optimize the storage efficiency in our project, it was inspiring to see their unique design of encoding and decoding methods in their Micro NuWa project. Moreover, we both chose to embrace the idea to conduct the DNA storage in living creatures ( eg.B.subtilis ), which offered lots of opportunities to discuss the experiment protocols together.

We were glad to cooperate with them for our same pursuit in the area of DNA data storage and a close partnership was therefore established. As a result, we launched several collaborations on HP and education work,including the scientific blogs aiming at the public to promote the idea of DNA data storage (Education), and a little brochure concentrating on DNA information storage is produced toghther to popularize the technology. To see more specific information about our HP and eduaction work with TianJin, please turn to partnership.

It is rather reasonable to turn to our dear brothers and sisters of another team in our school----SJTU-software, for help. We got in touch with each other as soon as we started our project this year and had active contact since then.

In this summer, we decided to cooperate in both model part and wet lab verification part. Their research on Actinomycetes's DL-ecGEM set an good example for us to conduct our directed molecular evolution. As they had rich experience in protein programming, we received lots of sweet guidance in using ROSETTA, alphafold and hotspot wizard to proceed our work.

Meanwhile, having the edge to conduct wet experiment, we offered to verify their model by cultivating Actinomycetes under their conditions.Despite the sudden pandemic which almost ruined our experiment plans,we still communicated in this regard to help their verification work.

During our communication, there was also an issue that we both concerned about ——the biosafety. The utilizing of Gene-modificated microorganisms were bound to raise social concerns. The key is how to secure our usage of our bacterias and eliminate public's stereotypes on GMO ,especially those applicated for inedible industries (for example, DNA storage).

At the end of September, we also raised another meet-up with them, along with Beijing Tech (which we will mention later).

Sharing both miserable pandemic experience in this summer,we discussed how to deal with the problems raised by the COVID 19 lockdown,such as no access to wet labs, lack of experiment data for further modeling, and failure in holding offline HP & education work.We shared our experience of these difficulties, hoping to make a difference.

As mentioned above, collaboration between our team and Beijing Tech was undergoing online, with SJTU-Software attending the meetup as well.

The conference was about utilizing gene-modified microorganisms bound to raise social concerns. After disccusions and sharing each team's opinion, we came to a conclusion that the key to solve is how to secure our usage of our bacteria and eliminate public's stereotypes on GMO, especially those applicated for inedible industries ( for example, DNA storage ). More information and questions arose during writing wiki pages were also discussed.

This meetup was so inspiring for us to work on the bio-safety issues.

This is the first iGEM meetup we've participated and we met so many other teams around China. At that point, we hadn't determined which project we shall do this summer so we shared two project candidates and ask for some suggestions.

Both our DNA data storage program and the perfume program (a program about producing perfume in yeast lol) were introduced briefly. In the free-discuss time, our members met other teams from CAFA and Tianjin. CAFA is short for Central Academy of Fine Art and their participation in iGEM really surprised us. Anyway, it was still very interesting to listen to their opinions of our proposals in a unique way, which had more to do with sensibility of art instead of the rationality of techniques. It was indeed a pleasure to know that they are interested in our project!

Another great thing was that we met Tianjin in the meeting and gladly figured out that they also worked on DNA data storage. We established a partnership there after and for more stories between us please visit partnership.

An iGEM meetup was held in Hangzhou, China and we participated to share our work with other iGEM teams!

We were glad to learn from so many lovely iGEM teams and shared our projects. We received some constructive questions like the application and limitationof our storage technology.

The CCiC conference this year was one of the biggest iGEM meet-up in Asia.We were really privileged to be invited to show our projects with so many teams there.

Before the conference,we were told to make a introduction video of our project. As our early version of promotion video, this video inspired us to make our formal one.

It was really exciting to meet so many friends who were also working on the cause of astrobiology , especially when we were getting close to the end of our project. We found it really inspiring to hear the project from them —TUIT and Oslo, the former worked on the synthesis of melanin in baker's yeast and the latter focused their jobs on CelluALT, a material that can be used to create various biomaterials to support space life. We were surprised to see so many commons we had with TUIT, like our way to fight against radiation and our experiment methods.That also motivated us to have further collaborations together.Meanwhile it was also interesting to hear the work from Oslo, showing us a great blueprint of sustainable biomaterials production in Universe.

After the introduction, we also found it helpful to hear their stories on why they would choose space as their theme, which drove us to reflect on our own project. Knowing how enthusiastic we all were on this topic,we felt really identified.

At last, we stuck to the question of what challenges we met when adapting our project to the space conditions. Sharing our difficulties on radiation verification and oxygen condition tests, we had a brand new version of these problems reality.