Summary
Our partner team,Worldshaper-Nanjing, is a high school iGEM team composed of 19 students from Nanjing，Dalian, Hefei, Suzhou, Beijing, and Ningbo. Their project is to enable Clostridium tyrobutyricum to survive in aerobic conditions, greatly expanding its usage.
Being in the same city and operating on the same bacteria species, Worldshaper-Nanjing and us naturally established partnership relationship since the beginning of our projects in May.
In the 6 months of close collaboration, we exchanged huge amounts of information and mutually benefited from each other considerably. The areas we worked together on include project brainstorm, experiment, public activities, hardware design and model.
1. Project Brainstorm
We collaborated on background research of C.tyrobutyricum, sharing the important previous papers we found. Our understanding of the characteristics and potential of bacteria was greatly strengthened after several discussions. Before finalizing our project brainstorm, we exchanged and mutually checked the feasibility of our plans.
2. Experiment
Worldshaper-Nanjing remained close with our team throughout the entire experiment process, from training to real work.
-The experiment personnel of Worldshaper-Nanjing and our team attended the Summer Training Camp hosted by NJTech_China together, where we learned the operation of the various lab instruments. In the process, we helped each other learn and practice, almost like we were one team.
-We shared a lab in the Nanjing Pharmaceutical Valley and worked side by side every day. As neither of us had rich lab experience at that time, we frequently referred to each other’s opinions, especially checking calculations, such as the appropriate template amount in PCR and the correct dye concentration in DNA gel electrophoresis.
Also, we tried to share the work in the common areas of our projects. For instance, when both of us needed the plasmid vector pMTL-82151, our team did the extraction and provided Worldshaper-Nanjing with our sample.
3. Public Activities
Sharing of information and platforms for public activities was established between us. We attended and organized a number of activities together. In this way, we could better utilize the talents and social resource of 2 teams.
-We both attended 3 public engagement activities: 2 online on July 10 and August 13 (we co-hosted this one), and 1 offline on October 5. Basically, Worldshaper-Nanjing, with their art talents, were in charge of leaflet design. We, meanwhile, did the live hosting, platform setup, expert inviting, etc. Thanks to the collaborative promotion by two teams, we had more than twice audience than expected if the event was done only by ourselves.
-Worldshaper-Nanjing came up with the idea of an education booklet about biology lab instruments and operation. We were invited to join them. In the end, Worldshaper-Nanjing finished most of the artwork and operation method description, while we provided the scientific theories explanation and the printing fund. The booklets were first given out on the October 5 activity. Later, we cooperated in spreading them in high schools: we focused on the national curriculum high schools, while Worldshaper-Nanjing worked on international high schools.
4. Meetups
We also attended 3 offline meetups together, one hosted by NJTech_China and NNU-China on August 5, one hosted by Worldshaper-HZ and ZJU-China on August 7 and 8, the other one hosted by our team on September 29.
5. Hardware Design
We discussed hardware design with Worldshaper-Nanjing members as well. They suggested an improvement for our shrimp shell processing device: change the rotation speed of the crushing unit to optimize the mixing and crushing of shrimp shell. They also suggested that the strength of our construction material has to be ensured to endure possible higher rotation speeds.
6. Model
Worldshaper-Nanjing has team members who are good at mathematical modeling, so we asked them for advice, and they gave us directions and ideas about modeling. They suggested us to try to analyze the mode of butanol and butyric acid production. Then we built the model according to these.