Overview

     This year, due to the similarity between our ideas, thoughts and project directions , we have started a close communication with NJMU since the winter holiday, when we initiate our project,. Eventhough we chose different items for our final project, we still decided to establish a close partnership with NJMU considering the comparability. Throughout all phases of the competition, we have kept in close touch, reaching out to each other whenever one ran into any problem, with a frequency of at least once a month. However, since we are in different cities, the epidemic prevention and control requirements limited our offline activity. Depending on effective videotelephony such as Tencent Meeting, we are able to hold most of our events online.

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WET LAB

     Our first meeting was held in April and we shared our initial design of the project. This is when we learnt that we had similar ideas in mind, both aiming to cure depression using synthetic biological methods. And this is the main reason that we built up this partnership for the following journey.
    Other than deciding them to be our longtime partner, this online meetup at the early stage also opened our minds, and enlightened us to think about mimicking the natural drug uptake with an oscillator. Moreover, we also discussed some experiences of participating in the iGEM competition and conceived a preliminary cooperation plan.
    During other phases of this competition, we have been using QQ to communicate online, mainly focusing on:
        • Experimental design
        • Troubleshotting
        • Other questions concerning this competition

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Education

Lecture on mental health science

     In April, we held a lecture that covers the basics of mental health, with participants from both Wuhan University and NJMU. We believe that although the influence of a single lecture is limited, it will make more people aware of the importance of mental health and therefore pay more attention to everyday preservation, which will relatively reduce the possibility to develop the depression.

     It’s worth noting that through this collaboration with NJMU, we managed to not only give a more comprehensive introduction from different points of view with the guests invited, but also enlarged our potential participants, from only students in our campus to students in both Wuhan University and NJMU.

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The online platform

    We came up with the idea of building an online platform where each team member can post their questions or provide their answer to an existing question. Users of the platform can either ask a question that they met during wet lab work or modeling, or share their experiences in these areas. Initially named the Intestinal Association, the platform was maintained and used by three teams: iGEM WHU-China, iGEM NJMU-China, and iGEM HZAU-China. Apart from the contacts, introduction, and design of each team, a discussion board was also set up for free discussion on the new findings related to intestinal microbiota.

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Ethics & entrepreneurship

    On September 12th and 18th, we held two online meetings centering around the related regulations and possible approaches to entrepreneurship, respectively. Since neither of us is familiar with the procedures of commercialization, these online meetups were an excellent platform for both of us to learn about entrepreneurship and make progress together.

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MODELING

Online meetup (WHU <--> NJMU In the early stage)

    In July, we started our cooperation on the mathematical models. Members from both teams met up and discussed the potential models that may fit in our project to benefit wet lab experiments. After We shared our recent models with each other, we discussed over the problems each other’s model may face and brought up possible solutions. Lastly, we exchanged our ideas for further improvement. During the workshop, we got inspired to consider the role that intestinal peristalsis played in drug uptake. Utilizing 3-D software such as Blender to construct a new model consisting of camsol model, intestine inhabitation of our engineered bacteria could be better described.

CONCLUSION

     NJMU is our perfect partner. We put forward our ideas, debated and then improved our projects in a variety of ways throughout the season. We think it is fair to say that this connection has really helped us a lot, aiding us in many difficulties that we are not able to overcome just by ourselves. From discovering an suitable part for out project, to proposing another math model that have it better described , it is the other team that opened our mind and made us aware of the possibility that our project has. All in all, we helped each other in so many ways that we cannot even imagine what our project would become without each other. We make acquaintances with each other and sincerely hope to have a deeper cooperation in and after iGEM.

Attribution Collaboration