Worldshaper-HZBIOX
Overview：
As a high school team that participated in the iGEM competition in the first year, we had actively cooperated and communicated with other teams. Not only the process finding the collaborators but also discussing the proper collaborated proposals, we learned a lot. Our collaboration this year involves six aspects:
1 Co-host online public engagement activity
2 Gut alliance: cohost online lecture
3 Cohost workshops at school and in biology training camp
4 Cohost a virtual meetup
5 Long-term partnerships with LZU-China
6 Attend online meetup and CCIC 9
1 Co-host online public engagement activity
On July 10, we had an online publishing event with Worldshaper-HZ, Worldshaper-Shanghai, Worldshaper-Nanjing, Worldshaper-NJBIOX, Ivymaker-China and GYHS. The seven teams held a Tencent conference together and streamed it on WeChat Channels. Our team worked as a moderator, wrote the moderator script, and supported the teams in researching the sequence. Worldshaper-HZ was responsible for creating the posters, and Worldshaper-Shanghai was responsible for the live-streaming promotion.
With the theme of synthetic biology in life, this online event is divided into four parts, including introduction of synthetic biology and its applications in environmental protection, cancer detection methodologies, disease treatment, and food satety. During the conference, the seven teams have
• Discussed and shared how we applied synthetic biology
• Introduced the teams we are working with
• exchanged our current progress.
We and Worldshaper-Shanghai are responsible for the Disease Treatment part. In this section, we briefly explained what colon cancer is and shared some information about ECN 1917, the probiotic we used. At the same time, popularize the early symptoms of colon cancer and call on to pay more attention to their own body.
2 Gut alliance: cohost of online lecture
This year, our team (Worldshaper_HZBIOX) collaborated with HS-CHINA, LZU-CHINA, LZU-HS-PRO-A, NEU-CHINA, and NWU-CHINA-A and set up Gut Alliance of iGEM China. On August 14th, the six teams of Gut Alliance co-hosted an online seminar from 2:00 to 4:30 p.m. In this activity, we invited three experts as guests to the lecture, Canhui Lan from Warm Heart Biotechnology Research Institute, Daixu Wei from Department of Life Science and Medicine, Northwestern University, and Xiaojuan Dong from The Fifth People’s Hospital of Shaanxi Province.
All teams aimed to focus on the intestinal health in public from the perspectives of college and high school students, making people more familiar with the intestine through the popularization of various gut microbiota-related topics. The member from our team, for instance, introduced the association between sugar substitute and gut microbiota, bringing detailed and professional introduction of sugar substitute and its drawbacks to warn people about the significance of consuming less low-sugar drinks containing aspartame. Moreover, we were responsible for organizing each team’s presentation topic and making brochure after the theme lecture.
3 Cohost workshops at school and in biology training camp
On July 10, 2022, we held a campus presentation for 500 students and all faculty and staff at Hangzhou Foreign Language School. Together with the team leaders of Worldshaper-HZ, we organized a pre-project promotion meeting at the school. The purpose of the event was to introduce students to the iGEM competition and the content of our research. In this brief speech, we mainly introduced the composition and division of labor of our team. In addition, the background and future prospects of targeted therapy for colorectal cancer are also introduced.
On July 21st, our team collaborated with Worldshaper-HZ made a project share towards 20 students who attended a 7-day biology summer camp in the laboratory. We made the presentation about our project respectively. From our background investigation, experimental prospect, experimental process to the practical significance of the experimental results. Students from the Biological Camp also had a preliminary understanding of our project, and also realized the high incidence of intestinal cancer and the inadequacy of current treatment effect. I believe they also feel the significance and importance of this project.
4 Cohost a virtual Meetup
On September 10, Worldshaper-HZBIOX and Worldshaper-SH cooperated to organize an academic exchange event. The participating teams were BS-united-China (Hainan), LZU-HD-CHINA-B (Shanghai), XHD-Wuhan-Pro-China (Wuhan), NMU-China (Shanghai), BIT-China (Beijing), NNU-CHINA (Nanjing), and LZU-HD-Pro-B.
In this event, our team helped Worldshaper-Shanghai team to improve the planning plan and clarify many uncertain details. Our team also helped to make the PPT for the host, and our team's student Yu Ninger acted as the host, and she controlled the pace of the team very well. Also Worldshaper-HZBIOX invited Professor Wu Jiequn from Zhejiang University of Technology as a judge. Our team, Wang Weifan, explained the experimental results and principles of our project. After the sharing, Prof. Wu made comments and improvement suggestions on our topic：need to prove that EcN is necessary to be cleaved and lysin is necessary to be used. It is necessary to prove that EcN1917 is functional for target targeting.
5 Long-term partnership with LZU-China
Our team finalized our partnership with LZU-China in April because of the same topic about colonial treatment. We have been keeping in touch for a long time and discussing and figuring out the problems encountered. The areas we have been working together are as follows. We are grateful for this experience of mutual help, and we have learned a lot in this process. Please refer to Partnership page for details.
• Wet lab: Lysin gene improvement
• Education and public engagements: a synthetic biology-themed picture book promoted in Hangzhou Low Carbon Museum and Landa Elementary School, co-launched some pup-science articles on the self-media, co-hosted public activity in Hangzhou low carbon science and technology museum
• Human practices: information shared and subsequent improve our applied design
• Model: give useful suggestion for our model
• Applied design: explore applied design and constantly improve it
6 Attend online meetup and CCIC 9
In addition, our team also participated in the online meetup organized by iGEM China and the 9th China CCIC Conference.
On July 16 and 17, iGEM China hosted the largest two-day online seminar this year. Twenty-seven teams from all around China, including Guangxi University, Jiangnan University, Northwestern Polytechnical University, and Jilin University, participated in the Tencent conference. The purpose of this event was to promote the iGEM competition, and at the same time to increase mutual connections and understandings between the participating teams, to find the possibilities for further collaboration.
During the meeting, each team introduced in detail the background, research significance, innovative ideas, and HP achievements of their project.
On this meetup, we introduced our project which is how arginine-engineered probiotics can be used for colorectal cancer immunotherapy. We talked about the background of this project and topic, why we’re researching this, the basic principles, and more!
As a high school team, we learned a lot from the exchange and sharing with other undergraduate teams, which also inspired us to better design our projects and better understand the iGEM competition.