Team:BHSF/Collaborations
Meetup
On July 20th, 2021, along with QHFZ-2021 we successfully hosted the Northern China meetup. We invited some teams from prominent universities and other high schools to introduce their ideas and share their experimental designs. The speeches given by our fellow peers provided insight. Moreover, we shared our ideas with other groups that also wanted to focus on creating biosynthetic products for industrial purposes. The speech given by QHFZ-2021 helped us better develop and transform our ideas into actual experimental practices, because they talked about using E. coli to generate Tyrian purple dye. The ideas that the other university teams mentioned broadened our horizon to all the infinite possibilities that could be achieved with synthetic biology. For example, Beijing University of Chemical Technology mentioned the methodology that can realize the idea of using 3D printing technologies to create a scaffold for muscle cell growth. In addition, we invited experts from different universities.
In addition to the engaging speeches that the other teams gave, we also invited several experts to comment on our experimental designs. Their advice was constructive in revising our experimental designs. Professor Li from Beijing University of Chemical Technology agreed with our overall ideas with the synthesis of carminic acid using E. coli. However, he was also concerned over the large number of genes that we had to integrate into the plasmid. We listened to his device and perfected our steps so that we used one large plasmid. Later when we conducted our experiment it turned out that the professor was right. The large number of genes that had to be put in to the E. coli hindered our progress. Nevertheless, we still overcame these difficulties.
Finally, everybody took a picture together to record the moment and we went home. At the end of the day, this experience really benefited us and enriched us academically.
Collaborate with schools
Apart from this meetup we also collaborated with two teams Jianhua and QHFZ-2021 after we carried out most of our experimentation, on October 5th. This event has held with the intention of forming a three-way partnership that helps us would complement each other: to help each other out on our respective weak points. During this collaboration, we discussed wiki writing, mathematical modeling, and experimentation. When each team finished reporting their progress, we quickly concluded that we were confused about the mathematical modelling and wiki building, and that Jianhua had some insight over this matter. As a result, we offered to help them in experimentation (one of our strongest suits) in exchange for their services in wiki building and modeling. In terms of modeling, Jianhua shared their usage of the tool MATLAB, which we found as a helpful starting point for our model. As for experimentation, after listening to Jianhua’s first stage of experimentation, we advised them to lessen the amount of sample put into the electrophoresis and adjust the time to run it. Overall, we identified and solved problems with each other that day, and it helped us summarize and reflect on our current progress and plan for the future.
