Team:HK SSC/Collaborations
Collaborations
Virtual Meetup with Team HKU
This year, team HKU hopes to develop a symbiotic relationship between BL.21 strain Escherichia coli and PCC7942 Synechococcus elongatus. Whereas our team aims to modify Synechococcus elongatus UTEX 2973 so that it can synthesize valerolactam using carbon dioxide as a sole carbon source. Since Synechococcus elongatus strains are used by both teams, we had a virtual meetup on 4th August to discuss the similarities our projects shared and to explore how we can extend our project to relate with environmentalism in Hong Kong. We also shared lab experiences regarding how to cultivate the Synechococcus strains and exchanged strains and grew their PPC7942 strain.
HK iGEM Symposium
This year, we have joined the Hong Kong region symposium on 11th August to share our projects and the ongoing lab results. By presenting our project to different iGEM teams in Hong Kong, we had the opportunity to practice our presentation skills. During the presentation, we’ve received different opinions and comments from other teams on our project. Through answering such questions raised by other iGEM teams, we got to reflect and improve our project as their suggestions came from different kinds of perspectives.
Ethics Module with Instanbul_Tech
In September, we’ve taken part in the Ethics Module made by Team Instanbul_Tech along with numerous other iGEM teams around the world. Team Instanbul_Tech made videos that gave us an overview of ethics that we may encounter in the Synthetic Biology field and introduced several ethical approaches such as deontology, consequentialism, and virtue ethics. We also participated in discussions hosted by them on Slack and expressed our views on the ethical dilemmas that they’ve raised. Through these discussions and their online platform, we’ve absorbed views from teams around the globe and looked at ethical issues from an international perspective, and reflected on whether our project is truly moral and ethical.
