Team:NNU-China/Awards/BestAwards

NNU-China

Best Awards

Best education

We firmly believe that education and communication are a bridge of knowledge exchange between the public and researchers. This year, Nanjing Normal University has made many efforts to eliminate knowledge misunderstandings and attract public attention to synthetic biology and our programs . Due to the limited conditions of the epidemic, most of our science exchange activities were carried out online. Additionally, we also combine the offline scientific communication in different ways. In generally, we have increased public knowledge of IGEM, synthetic biology, and the life sciences.

As researchers, we consider it our responsibility to engage with society and show them first-hand information, either through the introduction of synthetic biology or our project. For more details on our Science Communication, you can visit our Education and communication page.

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Best model

Our project aims to build an enzyme restriction model of Escherichia coli (BL21) to guide the production of antimicrobial peptides. When comparing the difference in protein requirements between the cell growth phase and the product synthesis phase, 7 proteins were determined to be up-regulated. However, 21 proteins were classified as requiring down regulation.

To test the results of the model analysis, we chose the proteins AsnA and PurA. In detail, the IS site of the asnA gene encoding the protein AsnA was overexpressed in the BL21 (DE3) genome together with the strong promoter of Pj23119, resulting in the asnA engineering strain. In addition, the purA gene encoding the protein PurA was knocked out from the genome of BL21 (DE3) to produce an engineered strain of ΔpurA. We also tested the growth of the two engineered strains when there is no AMP expression. The results showed that both engineered strains maintained similar growth to the wild strain.

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Best Integrated Human Practices

This year, we plan to focus on the abuse of antibiotics. We decided to solve this problem by looking for alternatives.

First, we were inspired by television reports on the harms of antibiotic abuse. In addition, we have a more comprehensive understanding of the abuse of antibiotics through lectures, field visits, questionnaires, visits and surveys.

Then, in order to solve this problem, we consulted some professors and consultants. This helps us implement and improve our proposal.

Next, in order to make the project more acceptable to the society, we organized an offline public education activity with the theme of "synthetic biology" and distributed online questionnaires related to antibiotic abuse and our project.

In all the above activities, we have ensured the information security of participants in accordance with the guidance of professionals.

In the entire HP activity, every step complements each other to form an organic whole.You can click here to learn more details.

Best New Composite Part

BBa_K3868100-BBa_K3868109 are our favorite parts, which are based on the plasmid of pET-24a. the C-terminal of AMP was fused with eGFP in order to characterize the yield of AMP. The pET-24a was provided by our PI. Moreover, in order to purify the AMP, the enzyme loci of thrombin was inserted at the end of eGFP, yielding the plasmid of pET-AMP-eGFP. Aa a result, these pET-AMP-eGFP plasmids could not noly indicate the expression level of AMPs by the fluorescence intensity of eGFP, but also be good for later purification and seperation with His-Tag and the enzyme loci of thrombin.

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