Team:USTC
NNU
Scientific progress is inseparable from team cooperation. The cooperation and exchange between teams can not only promote the technical development of both sides, but also build an essential bridge for science. In this year’s iGEM competition, we chose to build in-depth collaboration with NNU-China for both of us picked Yarrowia lipolytica as our biological chassis to efficiently biosynthesize terpenoids.
It’s the first time for us to conduct genetic operations on the Yarrowia lipolytica thus unknown difficulties especially complex metabolic pathway are a giant challenge for us. After encountering some of them at a slow rapid via researching more articles at the beginning of our experiment, the team NNU-China offered us perfect helpful assistance in elements and methods.
The first online conference
To have a better command of each other’s projects, our team together with NNU-China held an online conference in Tencent Meeting. We respectively introduced each design of experiment thought as well as latest consequence and experience. After a sincere exchange of opinions, we both got inspiration from the project of opposition.
The second online conference
After months of work, we held the second online conference with NNU_China at Aug 20th. Our aim of this meeting was to communicate and discuss problems occurred to us during experiments and try to find more efficient way to use Yarrowia lipolytica as a chassis to biosynthesize our target product.
Collarborative experiments
Both of us made great efforts in collarborative experiments. We selected the promoters in yeast and finally picked up the GAPDH-ERG19 as a responsible element to give NNU_China. In return, they gave the plasmid with His-URA-His, which is a key component of selective tag in Yarrowia lipolytica. After that, we used it as plasmid backbone in construction of the plasmid HUH-ERG10-ERG13. And the picture of Ago-Gel below confirms the existence of our target genes.
SYSU
The members of our team went to Guangzhou in person and had an intimate and friendly exchange with the members of iGEM experimental team of SYSU in Guangzhou. We had a few offline meetings. At the meeting, we told each other about our experimental projects and put forward some suggestions for each other's experimental projects. We both feel that we have gained a lot of new knowledge. Not only that, but we talked about directed evolution together. Because they know less about it, they ask us a lot of questions about it. So we taught them our experience in this area. And there are also some things we would like to ask them about. We consulted them about the relevant aspects of the mass production of borneol. They gave us some very good advice, which we had never considered before. So we express our heartfelt gratitude to them. In the end, the offline exchange ended perfectly.
