With the invitation of SZU-China, we participated in the 6th Southern China Regional meeting in Jun, 2022. This virtual and on-site hybrid conference was held by SZU-China and aimed to gather iGEM teams which are located at Southern China to share our project and discuss our troubleshooting.
The conference has two parts: public presentation and group discussion
In the public presentation, we are encouraged by several excellent projects proposed by BNUZH-China, CUHKSZ, GreatBay_SCIE, LINKS_China, SCUT-China, SYSU-Software, SZPT-CHINA, SZU-China and SUSTech_EMB. We also presented our TPE project and collect a lot of useful suggestions to develop our experiment, including suggestions about team management.
During group discussion, we contacted with SCUT-China immediately based on the similar application and methods they showed in the public presentation. We talked about more details in our projects, from the way of introducing mutants to screening in directed evolution. After these exciting discussions, we have successfully reached an agreement to establish a partnership with SCUT-China this year.
In Aug, Chinese iGEMers meet online at The 9th Conference of China iGEMer Community (CCiC), hosted by the ShanghaiTech University and co-organized by CCiC Executive Committee. The theme of 2022 CCiC conference is "Life Meets Everything". Its aim is to encourage iGEMers to think and explore the role of synthetic biology in different fields of scientific research and industry, so that synthetic biology has the power and opportunity to participate in life and change life.
The conference invited a number of guests from the academic, industrial and social sciences of synthetic biology to give excellent presentations. iGEM Foundation and CCiC Executive Committee also held several workshops like Dual-Use Research Workshop and Human Practices workshop, which benefit us a lot.
77 iGEM teams from China gave their public presentations. We also participated in this exciting event by presenting our projects in panel session and showing our poster in poster session.
In addition, 2022 CCiC conference is the first time to hold a startup showcase. The iGEM Entrepreneurship Program Innovation Community EPIC is iGEM's official non-profit entrepreneurship support organization. EPIC-China serves local iGEM entrepreneurial teams in China and encourages the development of synthetic biology startups. At this CCiC conference, EPIC-China invited former iGEMers, investors and the new generation of iGEM start-up teams to share their voices from different directions.
In the startup showcase, 3 Chinese entrepreneurial iGEM teams supported by EPIC this year showed how they are planing to transform their iGEM projects to industry, bringing inspiration and thinking to other teams and individuals for the industrialization of the project.
As one of the three teams, we gave our road show and received many supports with suggestions from investors and guests. We enjoyed this entrepreneurial event so much with the other two teams, BUCT and ONCE. More details in Entrepreneurship.
1. Two teams presented their experiments and designs. We detailed our current progress of Tyrian purple synthesis and consulted LINKS_China members (also participated in 2021 LINKS_China) some tips of using their offered plasmids.
2. After listening to their presentation, we provided a wechat media南科微木(Nanke Weimu) for their reference, which has posters about related topics like sunscreen and sunburn repair. The wechat media is founded by professors at the department of chemistry, SUSTech. 南科微木(Nanke Weimu) is an entrepreneurial beauty brand, featuring the use of chemical knowledge to help customers streamline skincare ingredients and effective skincare steps. We hope the information in this wechat media could help LINKS_China to develop their ability of storytelling and presenting.
3. For entrepreneurship in biotechnology, we also discussed our different user portraits.
LINKS_China suggested that we could focus on the luxury module for the promotion of our TPE project based on the characteristics of Tyrian purple which is non-daily and has a long history.
For UV-PRISMA project of LINKS_China, we said that we will have an interest on their natural ingredients and technology inside if we are customers to buy their synthetic biological product.
After discussion, we have a better idea of how to present highlights in our projects and what the audience cares about and is interested in.
All in all, it is a great honor to cooperate with LINKS_China. We gained a lot.