With the diversification and deepening of research content, collaboration plays an increasingly important role in the achievement of goals. One explanation for collaboration: to achieve a common goal, the full use of organizational resources, relying on the collective strength of the team to complete a task. This year, ZJUintl-China has cooperated extensively with other iGEM teams and social forces, which is the success of our team and Ambrosia-T. We agree that it is important to establish broad, long-term, solid collaborative links between different iGEM teams, which will bring great growth potential to each iGEM team and iGEM.

At the beginning of this year, we invited ZJU-China 2021 to share the projects of the two teams. At that time, considering the difficulty of defining a perfect senescence marker, we introduce the classical SynNotch system to our anti-aging CAR-T. Our SynNotch system first recognizes the first senescence marker and thus triggers the expression of CAR. Then the CAR recognizes the second senescence marker and activates the CAR-T system to eliminate the senescent cells. We wanted to achieve the precision recognition of senescent cells through the identification of two senescent markers. However, ZJU-China mentioned that according to their former experience, it is not easy to make the SynNotch system work as our expectation. Considering the lack of related experiment experience, we discard the SynNotch system and focus on the other aspects to improve the function of anti-aging CAR-T. What’s more, ZJU-China shared with us their experiences in teamwork. We realized the importance of timely notification of project progress between different members. Thus, we utilized the benchling to timely update the experiment progress and held the group meets every weekend.

CPU_CHINA, ZJUT-China and HiZJU-China, ZJUintl-China and ZJU-China, respectively, decided to jointly hold a large-scale online communication activity on iGEM during the May Day holiday. Promote communication and cooperation between iGEM teams in China, i.e., iGEM MEETING UP. We invited Dr. Bao Yuhan, iGEM Humanities Practice Program Officer, Dr. Liu Yunlong from Zhejiang University, Professor Wu Fang from China Pharmaceutical University, Yuqi Wang, Director of Zhiyin Capital, and Wenxi Li, iGEM Ambassador in China, to attend the conference. This online MEETING UP gathered 25 teams and more than 200 iGEMers in China. All teams actively communicated with each other and were willing to share their experience on iGEM, which provided an open platform for the development of iGEM in China and was conducive to maximizing benefits. The student in charge of our team's human practice presided over the conference, and the exhibition of ZJUintl-China won widespread attention and support from the participating teams.

Thanks to our acquaintance at the iGEM Conference in China, and having similar project topics, ZJUintl-China and NMU-China have established a strong partnership. We have carried out extensive collaboration with NMU-China on plasmid construction in wet experiments, target selection in dry experiments, and synthetic biology atlas in human practice. We respect each other and make efforts for the common project goals.

The iGEM 2022 season is underway and Meeting Up is a platform for iGEMers to communicate projects, exchange cooperation, expand their thinking, learn from each other and make progress. On July 22, 2022, ZJUintl-China participated in Meeting Up hosted by Bioplus-China. The meeting up will consist of a speech session and a question-and-answer session. The teams participating in this meeting up are from University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, Zhejiang University, Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University and Zhejiang University of Technology. In addition, there are two teams from high schools. We introduced our project, Ambrosia-T, and listened carefully to the progress of several other teams. The participating teams discussed the common problems and the development prospects of iGEM human practice, which broadened the thinking of the participants and achieved good results.

Synthetic biology, as a new and vigorous discipline, is growing in constant exploration. Based on the history of synthetic biology over the past 20 years, synthetic biology has its own ideas, basic technological developments, and permeated many different application fields. To make the synthetic biology knowledge map more comprehensive and innovative, we invited NMU-China and five other teams to jointly write the "Co-create Map" on synthetic biology. The 7 teams involved had a clear division of labor and carried out the "compilation of co-creation atlas" from the aspects of synthetic biology overview, ideas, technologies, applications, crossover, and prospects. The completion of this knowledge map will largely improve our understanding of synthetic biology, deepen our understanding, and be of great benefit to the development of science popularization.

We worked with other iGEM teams throughout the year, and this collaboration largely overcame the drawbacks of working alone. Collaboration makes our team more efficient, and it also broadens the way we look at problems. We agree that good collaboration must be an important reason for our deep understanding of the significance of the development of synthetic biology and the spirit of iGEM competition.