Team:NUDT CHINA/Collaborations
COLLABORATION
1.1 2021 Central China iGEM Forum Project Meetup
On July 24, we participated in the Central China iGEMer Forum(CCiF) with the initial project results. In the meeting, we got the following gains:
Figure 1. CCiF conference outcome.
1. Related cooperation with HZAU in experimental safety: In communicating with us, HZAU reminded us that it might be necessary to pay attention to the safety issues of blue light leakage. Its 2017 project is to regulate the cell cycle by combining optogenetics and CRISPR technology, and the Wiki provided by it has certain reference value. This could help us to further carry out the experiment and further improve the safety of the project, later we also did some experiments on the frequency and intensity of blue light conducive.
2. Achieve the Central China Alliance: The alliance will jointly explore the issue of how synthetic biology can be integrated with reality in the form of cooperation. Through online meetings or offline cooperation, we could exchange experiences and gains and losses, and jointly build a bridge between the laboratory and society.
Figure 2. Meeting members and contents.
3. Collaboration with CSU_CHINA and the Establishment of Partnership: In this meeting, we reached a consensus on joint preaching with CSU_CHINA. We combined questionnaire surveys and expert interviews to jointly achieve Human Practice and Integrated Human Practice. As we communicate more and more deeply, we had full exchanges and discussions with iGEMers from CSU, and finally reached a partnership agreement. The collaboration with CSU_CHINA can be viewed in the following, and the specific partnership cooperation afterwards can be viewed in the partnership summary report.
4. Established a "Skin Alliance" with WHU-China and HUST2-China in application export: In order to better connect our projects with the community and make full use of the resources of various parties, we established the Skin Alliance. Reached a skin alliance with WHU-China, the HUST2-China (both for acne treatment), and SZPT-CHINA. This and the application of this project in the skin, such as the treatment of psoriasis, melanoma and other diseases, have certain significance. For more imformation, please read “Skin Alliance” following the section.
Figure 3. Meeting scenes and presentations.
1.2 Skin League
At the 2021 Central China iGEMer Forum, we found that our project’s future possible application have some common ground with WHU-China, HUST2-China,which may applicated in the treatment of skin diseases. Therefore，we negotiated to build a "skin league" to co-produce a brochure advertising our projects and some knowledges about some skin diseases’ prevention.
While our projects applied to the treatment of diseases requires a longer-term process, helping the public with the prevention of related skin diseases can be carried out right now. After some communication, we agreed to co-produced a joint brochure on our project and related knowledge of skin diseases with WHU-China, HUST2-China and SZPT-CHINA, which we distributed it in many places, such as hospitals, libraries, middle schools, which increased publicly of our projects and arouse the awareness of skin disease prevention.
Figure 4. Brochure display.
1.3 8th Conference of China iGEMer Community
We participated in the 8th CCiC on August 27th to 29th, 2021, during which 79 teams all over China presented and exchanged their projects and ideas. Due to the pandemic, we use the online meeting system to present our work and discuss with others. At the same time, our instructors and some experts and scholars in synthetic biology also gave us lectures in related fields, which made us deeply feel the charm of synthetic biology. Some useful workshops were also held during the conference.
Figure 5. Our presentation video presented on the conference online.
During the meetup, we obtained important feedbacks from both judges and other iGEM teams. We also learnt a lot of interesting and illuminating project from other teams. We also negotiated with teams holding corresponding project with us, leading to a series of beneficial cooperation.
Figure 6. Online discussion with other iGEMers.
2.1 Collaboration with FZU-China
On CCiC, our team and FZU-China found that each other used components regulated by blue light in projects. In order to exchange some questions about the illumination light source, on September 5th and October 10th, we held two online meetings.(Click here to the Collaboration page of FZU-China)
Figure 7. Secondary online meeting with FZU-China.
On Experiment group, both of the two teams introduced their projects.
NUDT advised FZU to pay attention to whether it is necessary to consider the possibility of blue light damage to cells, as well as different experimental results of endogenous and exogenous sources. Besides, on the secondary online meeting, we suggested that FZU can first detect whether recombination occurs under non light conditions by PCR, and then analyze and optimize based on this result, or try to add degradants to opto cre VVD system.
FZU suggested NUDT that the wavelength of blue light should be adjusted appropriately to promote the progress of the experiment. It’s a good idea. However, due to objective reasons such as time and equipment constraints, this experiment couldn’t be completed this year. Therefore, we put the idea into future work.
Figure 8. Project presentation of two teams.
Figure 9. Instruction of FZU-China from NUDT_CHINA instructor.
In terms of Art and HP group, both teams participated in the production of cell factory picture books and had publicity materials in similar forms. We decided to make a kind of popular science publicity manual with the materials of the two teams in the cell factory picture books and distribute it in Fuzhou City and Southern Medical University. Besides, we also provided help to FZU on the questionnaire and helped them solve some problems about the display of CSS and JavaScript on the web page.
Figure 10. Display of Piture books.
Figure 11. Communication about wiki.
2.2 Collaboration with NMU_China
Following the long-standing friendly relationship, NMU_China team got in touch with us and we learned that the experimental ideas of the two teams, NUDT_CHINA and NMU_China were similar in some aspects.
Based on the understanding mentioned above, we further communicated and launched an online meeting on the evening of September 8 with the intention of collaborating with other teams, seeking some feedbacks and opinions from other teams on our project and improving our experiment. (Click here to the Collaboration page of NMU_China)
Figure 12. Online meeting with NMU.
In response to NMU's question: "Is there a way for macrophages to enter the body for external control? For example, after completing most of the virus removal, how to ensure that macrophages will not continue to cause excessive damage in the body?" NUDT_CHINA proposed to try heavy and light chain transcription and translation methods when constructing receptors, adding a switch system to macrophages, which can increase the safety due to external control. After the meeting, we helped the NMU_China team to add suicide genes to regulate macrophages in the project design, improving their experiment. (Click here to page of the improvement of NMU_China's experiment)
Figure 13. Experimental communication.
NMU_China team suggested that NUDT_CHINA team explore the blue light intensity threshold in follow-up experiments. After the meeting, the suggestions from NMU_China received by the HP group were fed back to the experimental group and the modeling group, and we will further consider and explore the threshold of blue light irradiation intensity.
2.3 Collaboration with CSU_CHINA
At 2021 Central China iGEM meetup, we were pleased to find that we and CSU_CHINA used Blue Light as the switch for our systems. Therefor, we agreeed to do further communication and cooperation as our project progressing. The similarity of the project gives us a lot of room for collaboration. We exchange our own insights for both projects and try to solve the designing and modeling problems encountered in each other's projects. And we communicate on some physical experimental questions in the laboratory. Moreover, we collaborate to do publicity and education activities based on the common part of our project. And we had acquired more feedback from communities.
In this way, we are lucky to establish a long-span and in-depth partnership with CSU_CHINA team. (Click here for more details)
Figure 14. Work with CSU_CHINA.