Our team has begun a strong partnership with team NYCU_Taipei. Through months of communication and planning, we created a bond that propels both teams to progress more efficiently and effectively.

Since both of our teams would like to exchange our project ideas, we scheduled a virtual meet-up of which we got inspired and decided to have a long-term partnership.

Our first collaboration came into place when both teams presented their project. Team NYCU_Taipei shared their project about SsrA degradation tags to reduce the half-life of fluorescent proteins. Further, we extended in-depth discussions about using fluorescence sensors as tags to increase accuracy in indicating essential time points within the bacterial growth curve. Through the questions they asked, we learned the underlying problems and potential methods to improve the efficacy of the polyP sensors. Aiming to gain more insights and communication, both teams agreed to collaborate on the experimental aspect. We hope our partnership will help both teams to yield better perceptions to solve our target issues.

After a series of communication and task delegations, team NYCU_Taipei and our team started our collaboration on experiments in July. Both teams benefitted from the discussion by adopting ideas of experiments and design contributed by each other to one’s project.

Team NYCU_Taipei shared the idea of using the SsrA tag (degradation tag) to improve the efficiency expression of fluorescence protein in polyP sensor plasmids; therefore, our team re-designed and generated the polyP sensor version II, flanking the gene sequence of mCherry fluorescent protein with a C-terminal SsrA tag. For more information on the design and engineering of the polyP sensor, please visit the polyP sensor section of the Engineering Success page .

Our team designed and built an AsPhoU vector using a plasmid-compatible vector used by team NYCU_Taipei. By transforming our vector into the engineered bacteria generated by the NYCU_Taipei team, they could test the application of their bacteria. The phase-sensitive fluorescent proteins produced by the bacteria could assist in demonstrating the activity of AsPhoU on the bacteria's growth, therefore, proving the real-life application value of the NYCU_Taipei project in research fields.

Our team and team NYCU_Taipei collaborated on the design of our implementation devices. As both teams used the sensing and analysis of fluorescent signals, we discussed the technical aspect for the design of Arduino chips. Moreover, we exchanged ideas on the design of filtering devices, including the material and pore size that could help reach the highest efficiency and lowest biosafety risks.

As both teams valued the importance of raising public awareness, our team invited Team NTCU_Taipei to record an episode on our human practice project, the podcast channel Eutro in Vitro. This episode was named after their project, E. Color! The term “Color” comes from their approach to expressing the E. Coli population, using fluorescent proteins with different colors to make E.Coli observed easily. Our conversation began with their goal to improve the present growth status measurement of E. coli, extending to environmental and clinical applications. In this collaboration, we hope to let more people notice their efforts and spread public awareness through our podcast channel.

In the last stage of our partnership, we held calls and in-person meetings to go through our collaborations in wet lab and human practice. We also focused on the discussions about the future goals and the market position of our projects. Finally, we confirmed the details in the partnership criteria of the competition.