Team:Kyoto/Collaborations
Collaborations
Overview
We have tried to take a comprehensive approach to reduce the environmental impact of the
flower industry using many synthetic biology tools such as CRISPR, RT-LAMP, RNAi, and antimicrobial
peptides. During the course of the project, we actively contacted many other iGEM teams for potential
collaborations and partnerships in order to expand the application of our synthetic biology tools to
various fields, and learn about the strategies being developed by other iGEM Teams to solve problems
similar to ours. In fact, we interacted with more than 10 teams and were able to form Partnership with some of them in order to
mutually advance each other's projects.
1. with iGEM Gunma
From May 27th, 2021 (Sat)
Collaboration achieved by:
Collaboration achieved by:
Online meetings, Providing / validating materials, Troubleshooting project design, Developing Human
Practices with ikebana
iGEM Gunma's projects are as follows:
Breakdown Biofilms in Baths
Various problems caused by biofilms are occurring in spa facilities around the world. For
example, biofilms play a role in protecting infectious microorganisms from antibacterial agents. To
degrade such biofilms, they focused on extracellular polysaccharides of bacteria and performed assays by
expressing fusion proteins of their degrading enzymes and red fluorescent proteins in E. coli with
suicide vectors (see the iGEM Gunma's Wiki for more
details on their excellent results).
Through SNS and our first virtual meeting, we learned that they are trying to express and
purify a polysaccharide-degrading enzyme in E. coli to perform an assay to break down biofilms, a problem
in hot springs. At that time, our team was looking into the use of antimicrobial peptides to solve the
problem of flower wilting caused by bacterial growth during the sales and consumption stages of cut
flowers.
After this meeting, we began to think realistically about using their purified biofilm-degrading enzyme in
addition to antimicrobial peptides as a countermeasure to flower wilting. iGEM Gunma may also be able to
prevent biofilm formation in hot springs by using our antimicrobial peptides. So, to make our project even
better, we decided to form a partnership with them with the common goal of "tackling bacterial biofilm
problem" (see the Partnership page for
details).
We also asked a member of iGEM Gunma who is learning flower arrangement to introduce us to a flower arrangement teacher. Through the interview with the flower arrangement teacher, we learned about ”ikebana”, an important part of Japanese culture that uses cut flowers, and the role of flowers in our daily lives. In addition, we were able to reconfirm consumers' needs for our project (see the Human Practices page for more details).
We also asked a member of iGEM Gunma who is learning flower arrangement to introduce us to a flower arrangement teacher. Through the interview with the flower arrangement teacher, we learned about ”ikebana”, an important part of Japanese culture that uses cut flowers, and the role of flowers in our daily lives. In addition, we were able to reconfirm consumers' needs for our project (see the Human Practices page for more details).
2. with iGEM UTokyo
from July 4th, 2021 (Sun)
Collaboration achieved by:
Collaboration achieved by:
Online meetings, Providing / Validating materials, Troubleshooting project design, Cooperation in
educational activities
iGEM UTokyo's projects are as follows:
YEAST-AID
"How can we extend our healthy life span?" One of the answers to this question is to
solve the problem of pressure ulcers. Pressure ulcers are serious wounds often seen in people who spend
a lot of time in bed, requiring continuous care by health care professionals and keeping patients away
from home once they have recovered from the initial symptoms. To address this issue, they developed a
multifunctional wound dressing using synthetic yeast that has three functions: monitoring of the wounds
oxygen levels, prevention of infection with antimicrobial peptides, and detection of Pseudomonas
aeruginosa infection (see the iGEM UTokyo's Wiki for
more information on their attractive work).
At our first virtual meeting, we were surprised to learn that UTokyo aimed to engineer
yeast to secrete the antimicrobial peptide Defensin-3. Our project uses antimicrobial peptides to prevent
germs from growing on cut flowers, and Defensin-1 was one of the enzymes we considered to produce (see
the Results Page for more on extending flower life
with
antimicrobial peptides, one of the pillars of our project).
We decided to form a partnership with the common goal of “reducing the growth of harmful bacteria,” so
that we can both work on producing different types of antimicrobial peptides and share / validate the
products and other materials with each other (see the Partnership page for details).
3. with iGEM NCTU-Formosa
on June 12th, 2021 (Sat)
Collaboration achieved by:
Collaboration achieved by:
Online meetings, Troubleshooting project design
iGEM NCTU-Formosa's projects are as follows:
Denteeth - A New Type of Dental Bone
Periodontal disease is an infection of the tissues that support the teeth, affecting
about 10% of the world's population, and is associated with many chronic and cardiovascular diseases.
They found it expedient to focus on the oral hygiene of dogs first, before humans. They used
antimicrobial peptides to kill oral pathogens, and also found several proteins that repair damaged gum
and tooth tissue (see the iGEM NCTU-Formosa's
Wiki for more information on their amazing achievement).
Our team was thinking of adding antimicrobial peptides to the water in the vase to kill the
germs that cause the flowers to wilt, so we were able to deepen our mutual understanding of antimicrobial
peptides.
4. with iGEM NTU-Singapore
in September
Collaboration achieved by:
Collaboration achieved by:
Online meetings, Troubleshooting project design
iGEM NTU-Singapore's projects are as follows:
Rapid Detection of Single Nucleotide Mutations in COVID-19 and Cancer
Detection methods that can accurately distinguish mutations are valuable in the diagnosis
of infectious diseases and cancer. In addition, in a pandemic such as COVID-19, rapid detection at the
point-of-care is essential. To this end, the research team has developed a highly sensitive and
easy-to-use diagnostic kit that provides results within 40 minutes, using samples taken directly from
patients without RNA extraction. They also developed a probe with high sensitivity for point mutations
and used isothermal amplification and CRISPR to distinguish between different genetic mutations in
COVID-19 and cancer (see the iGEM NTU-Singapore's
Wiki for more information on their impressive achievement).
In a virtual meeting with them, we learned that they were building hardware to make RT-LAMP
reactions easier to perform. This really surprised us. Our team is working on developing hardware to
cheaply and easily confirm the presence of viruses. Therefore, we found that combining their hardware with
ours would make it even cheaper and easier to implement our detection method that combines CRISPR Cas-12a
and RT-LAMP, which is one of the pillars of our project.
They were also surprised to learn that we were making our own reverse transcriptase to detect viruses
inexpensively, instead of buying it. This gave us confidence in our project and reaffirmed the
significance of developing "BLOOM", a platform for more efficient production of all biomolecules (See the Description pagefor a
description of "BLOOM", one of the pillars of our project).
5. at Japan Meetup
on September 11, 2021 (Sat)
Collaboration achieved by:
Participating teams:
Collaboration achieved by:
Online meetings, Troubleshooting organizational management system
Participating teams:
ASIJ Tokyo, Gifu, Gunma, HokkaidoU, KAIT Japan, Qdai, TokyoTech, Utokyo, Waseda
We had "Japan MeetUp" with the teams from Japan that will be participating in
iGEM. We presented our projects and it was a great opportunity to understand and sort out the progress of
our projects at this stage. After the online presentations, we also had a chance to interact with each
other across teams for each part of the project via Zoom. The exchange of information on team management
was particularly valuable. This is because we are struggling to communicate with each other online due to
the drastic decrease in face-to-face meeting opportunities caused by the new coronavirus. In fact, other
teams had similar problems, so we were able to learn about each team's efforts and use them as a
reference.
For example :
For example :
- Provide mentors for new team members
- Shorten the online meetings for the whole team to work more in small groups so that they can have more opportunities to speak up in the same amount of time
- Use Discord to hold light consultations and game sessions with team members