HiZJU-China

1. Acquaintance on the Online iGEM Meeting Up

We and HiZJU-China met on the Online Meeting Up jointly organized by the iGEM teams of Zhejiang University on May 1st. At this online meeting, we found that our projects were both related to agriculture, and some ideas of the project design had certain similarities. At this point, we started collaborations between us.

Figure 1. iGEM Meeting Up

2. The first Exchange Meeting of Human Practices

In this communication in Human Practices, we shared our previous data on public surveys to complement each other's lack of surveys, and discussed the follow-up cooperation with Human practices in our project. During this meeting, HiZJU-China shared their research on biological pest control and pesticide understanding. Meanwhile, we shared our research on biological or chemical pesticides and genetically modified crops, so as to further improve and supplement the preliminary investigation of our project.

During the discussion on Human practices' follow-up progress, we discussed the difficulties between science and technology and practical application. HiZJU-China said that the agricultural Professor interviewed before had gone to the field to talk with farmers about using sex pheromones to control pests, but the farmers ignored him, let alone the method he said. Therefore, they suggested that we carefully consider whether to take farmers as the core target audience of our project. This suggestion is of great significance to us, because we have launched a series of relevant investigations under this reminder, and finally changed the core target audience of our project.

3. The First Exchange Meeting of Wet Lab

In the process of discussing chassis, HiZJU-China said that they also tried to find some fungi in tea gardens that can have effects on tea aphids at the beginning, but they found that it was difficult to genetically modify them, and the existing system was immature, so they chose yeast. Thus, we shared our process of selecting chassis and exchanged our understanding of the two fungal transformation methods.

Then, we mentioned to HiZJU-China that it was difficult to quantify fungi in our experiment. Rhizoctonia solani, which belongs to the Mycelia Sterilia, is difficult to quantitatively study it by spores. HiZJU-China provided us with an idea that we can try to filter the mycelium after liquid culture and then dry and weigh it.

Figure 2. Screenshot of the experimental group's first meeting

4. An Exchange about Dry Lab

We discussed the possible problems with the hardware equipment at the beginning of August. For example, HiZJU-China proposed that our team only does extensive gas detection, and whether it would be better to use specific gas detection. Our team reminded HiZJU-China that their equipment involves the conversion of multiple signals so they need to pay attention to whether the sensitivity and accuracy of the equipment would be greatly affected.

At the same time, we also exchanged views on the detection sensitivity of hardware equipment. Our team members recommended an article on the detection algorithm of electronic nose for their reference. Meanwhile, the method of amplifying chemical signals by hardware equipment of HiZJU-China gave our team new inspiration on the detection sensitivity of electronic nose.

5. The Second Exchange Meeting of Human Practices

At the end of August, our two teams made a deeper push into helping each other in human practices. We shared with HiZJU-China the contents of our field investigation and the key points of tea tree management techniques we interviewed. Simultaneously, they made suggestions for our interview questionnaire.

After the interview with the government, we shared the experience of the interview with them in detail, which provided help for their next interview. We also discussed the possibility of cooperation in popularizing science among farmers.

6. The Second Exchange Meeting of Wet Lab

Since there were many similarities between our two projects in terms of experiments, we finally conducted a wet lab exchange meeting in early September. We shared with them a filamentous fungal hydrophobic protein hfp, which is expressed by yeast, to expose their yeast to as much air as possible. Meanwhile, they provided us with fermentation data such as specificity and catalytic efficiency.

Figure 3. Screenshot of the experimental group's second meeting

CUHKSZ

1. First Meet in Southern China Regional Meeting

At the start of June, we held Southern China Regional Meeting and first met CUHKSZ. Because the communication was very pleasant so that we invited them to visit our laboratory and shared our plans for the experimental schedules. We found that there were some similarities between the mutual team’s project. For instance, the aims of us were both trying to use the synthetic biological method to detect some specific materials.

From that on, we started to plan our gradual collaboration.

Figure 4. The 6th Southern China Regional meeting

2. Human Practices' Group Exchange Meeting

After the first interaction in Southern China Regional Meeting, we held an online meeting aimed to discuss about the collaboration in Human Practices in the end of August. In the meeting, CUHKSZ presented about the recent progress of Human Practices. Since their project was aimed at creating a fast, simple method for testing nitrite, the targeted user was not confined. We suggested that they could discuss the potential users with staff in the testing company to know about practical significance of their nitrisensor in the application of food.

By chance, we were happy to find that both sides of the team had members who graduated from Shenzhen Foreign Languages School. Therefore, CUHKSZ invited us to do the co-education for the juniors in Shenzhen Foreign Languages School at the end of September. Our target people included students from Chinese entrance examination system and students who study the international curriculum system.

3. A Meeting for Product Discussions

In early September, we had an online meeting with CUHKSZ for the purpose of discussing the current situation and the obstacles that we needed to encounter. Both of us thought that freeze-dried powder would be one of the proper statuses for the storage of bacteria, so that we shared our ideas about product design and exchanged our understanding of the procedure of freeze-dried powder. CUHKSZ also sent us a video shot by their team members of the freeze-dried powder application process.

Figure 5. Screenshot of the hardware exchange meeting

Figure 6. Video of the freeze-dried powder application process

4. Co-education for Shenzhen Foreign Languages School Students

In order to let more teenagers get to know about synthetic biology and its application, CUHKSZ, Tongji-China and we decided to make a co-education for Shenzhen Foreign Languages School students.

We all presented our projects in a easy to understand way, incorporating synthetic biology into our speaking. Moreover, we also distributed questionnaires to check the results of our education before and after the activity. It was such a surprise that most of the students had a deeper understanding of synthetic biology, and a few even showed a strong interest in it! We felt very gratified and thought the activity was very meaningful.

Figure 7. Screenshot of the online co-education

5. An Exchange about Experiments

Since we used RNAi to achieve the complete elimination of R. solani, CUHKSZ recommended to us professor Chen, who has a deep knowledge of RNA and gave us many useful ideas both experimentally and theoretically. After understanding our project, Professor Chen suggested that we add a hairpin or some non-covalent bound small molecule to the other end of the shRNA to stabilize the shRNA, so that it is less likely to be degraded by RNA enzymes in the environment.

Meanwhile, as their project has higher requirements for accuracy in sensitivity and stability in the process of detecting nitrite, we suggested the necessity for them to figure out the causes of such interference, and improve the sensitivity of their device by regulating the response time. Therefore, it is significant for them to normalize and pre-process the raw data to generate a standard curve for nitrite concentration in Arduino. In addition, we helped them verify the modeling works with the result of hardware experiment.

NJU-China

1. Build a Bridge

In the online conference of iGEM Meeting Up, iGEMers and synthetic biology enthusiasts from all over the country attended the conference, as did NJU-China and us. Our two teams presented our project design at the meeting, and we were very surprised of the same technique we used——RNAi. During the free discussion after the meeting, we contacted NJU-China, hoping to have a long-term cooperation in the future.

2. Early Stage of Our Partnership: Project Design

In the early stage of project design, we tried to find the homologous genes of R. solani AG1-IA with NCBI, but only two genes could be found. After sharing it with NJU-China, they recommended a sequence editor and analysis tool called BioEdit. On this software, we successfully found more information and designed shRNA based on the obtained CDS sequences.

At the same time, NJU-China selected three 21-base sequences of the target genes Srd5a2 and Piezo1 for siRNA design. When they shared the project for the first time, we suggested that NJU-China select several different positions of target genes and BLAST the targeted gene sequences on NCBI to make sure that the designed siRNA would not target other genes. Therefore, NJU-China increased the number of siRNA for each target gene to 6. The siRNA with higher off-target rate was screened by BLAST. At the same time, we also helped NJU-China design three siRNA targeting Piezo1 gene and its qPCR primers.

3. Middle Stage of Our Partnership: Publicity & Science Popularization

Most of the time, our activities can only be held in our own school. Therefore, the target audience is too single and the obtained information is not comprehensive. In order to expand the audience, we decided to publicize the activities held by each other in our school.

On June 19th, 2022, NJU-China celebrated World No Alopecia Day with a popular science about alopecia. Because we knew that many students in our school pay attention to the problem of alopecia, we forwarded their educational slides to the college WeChat group and the social account to appeal to more people to treat alopecia scientifically and not to seek abnormal treatment.

The Imagine-Synthetic Bioworld activity we designed was also promoted by NJU-China. During the online "building" process, many students from Nanjing University left interesting and unique comments on artworks, which added a lot of fun to our activities.

Moreover, we jointly planned a science popularization activity for primary school students in Nanjing Science and Technology Museum. The activity aimed at popularizing the knowledge of biology and health-related knowledge, stimulating the interest of primary school students in biology and exercising their practical ability. In the activity, the children not only completed the experiment of maize DNA extraction with some simple props, but also gave full play to their imagination to doodle with the theme of "healthy life and good habits". We were pleased to know that most of the children are enthusiastic about these events.

Figure 8. Science popularization activity

4. Late Stage of Our Partnership: RNAi Popularization

Since both of our projects are RNAi-related, it was a good idea to collaborate on RNAi popularization. So we invited NJU-China to join our popularization activity online. They introduced the development history and related applications of RNAi and their project to freshmen.

In addition, we also participated in their popular science lectures online to introduce the interference mechanism of RNAi from the perspective of RNA pesticides.

Figure 9. RNAi popularization activities

5. Last Online Meeting

Before the competition, we arranged to meet online for the last time. To simulate the jamboree, we presented our projects again and gave each other some advice. NJU-China thought the content of our background introduction was a bit verbose and the overall text was too much, so we could add more animation. We proposed to NJU-China to try to integrate the logic of IHP into the whole presentation. Perhaps the effect will be icing on the cake.

Finally, we organized and summarized our Partnership work. NJU-China has been a very important partner for us this year and we have improved our projects in various ways throughout the season. We collaborated in almost every area of project design, event promotion and educational activities, which were critical to the success of both teams. We got to know each other through the competition, and we sincerely hope to have more in-depth communication with NJU-China after iGEM competition.

Figure 10. Screenshot of the last online meeting