Team:UESTC-China/Collaborations

description

Many hands make light work. We are deeply aware of the importance of teamwork, so we take every opportunity to collaborate with other iGEM teams and have made many good friends in the process.

IGEM Southwest Region Online Meeting

iGEM teams in southwest China had an online concept exchange session at Tencent Conference. Five teams including Sichuan University, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Xian Jiaotong University and Beijing University of Chemical Technology participated in the conference. This online exchange meeting, hosted by Beijing University of Chemical Technology, aimed to share projects between teams, exchange project progress and solve problems we encountered. In addition, we could learn from each other's experience and find similar teams to cooperate with. We gainer a lot.

Taking Part in the Online Meet-up by SZU-China

In May we participated in an online meet-up hosted by SZU-China. In this online conference, we came across a lot of teams that use yeast as the expression vector like us. In order to provide a platform for communication and cooperation among these teams, we formed an organization named yeast alliance, and shared the literature we have read and the tools we used with other teams.

Yeast Alliance

Figure1. The logo of Yeast Alliance

In the online meet-up hosted by SZU-China, we came across many teams similar to us who use yeast as expression vector. So we established Yeast Alliance to provide a platform for these teams to communicate and cooperate.

Daily Communication

We had a special group chat for daily communication. No matter sharing protocols and tools or exchanging experimental experience, it was visible that we always keep active.

Mini-Meetup

After the establishment of Yeast Alliance, we expected the teams in Yeast Alliance to greet each other. Therefore, we held an informal Mini-Meetup to start the first round of communication. This Mini-Meetup consisted of five parts:

(1) The experimental communication;
(2) How to fill in Safety form;
(3) How to write parts;
(4) HP activities;
(5) CCiC participation matters.

Figure2. Mini Meet-up

In this meetup, members of Yeast Alliance got to know and were familiar with each other, and discussed difficulties that appeared in the experiments. Everyone said that this organization helped them a lot.

Yeast-Meetup

Three months after Yeast Alliance was founded, every team’s experiments have entered a critical stage. Many teams encountered experimental bottlenecks, so we held the Yeast meetup. UESTC-China, HUST-China, CPU_China, ECUST-China shared their project and described The key problems in experiments. After a discussion of technical problems, we discussed the sustainable development of the yeast alliance and initially drafted the content of the Yeast handbook. Click here for the corresponding calendar.

Figure3. Yeast-Meetup

This Meet-up consisted of four parts:

(1) Opening Ceremony;
(2) Team Sharing;
(3) The sustainable development of Yeast Alliance;
(4) Closing Ceremony;

In this Meet-up, UESTC-China, CPU-China and HUST-China shared their protocols, which brought lots of inspiration to the audiences. In addition, they talked about the difficulties they faced in experiments and how to solve them. But there were still some hard problems that hadn’t been worked out. UESTC-China had collected them and asked teachers in Chengdu Institute of Yeast for help soon. As all of the alliance members thought this organization was significant and it was necessary to think about the sustainable development of Yeast Alliance. Finally, we decided to use a recruitment system to find the organizers of Yeast Alliance.

Figure4. Group photo of members

Yeast Handbook

The good news is that we have produced a product of intellectual contributions! Yeast handbook was edited by UESTC-China and UM_Mucau, and seven teams participated. Without exception, when every team first started using yeast, they were once or more misled by protocols that were lack of implementation, unsystematic, incomplete, and even incorrect. Suffering from groping experience all the time, We found it difficult to obtain substantive project results. So we have summarized several teams’ experience from selection of strains, selection of plasmids, to design of plasmids, experimental protocols that have been revised many times, and some experimental problems we encountered and solutions. We have completed this handbook at the end of the competition, hoping to record iGEMer's personal experience with yeast so that the teams using yeast will avoid some detours in the future.

Figure5. Several pages from YeastHandbook

"Download Yeast Handbook"

Communicate with CPU-China

In an online Meet-up, we met CPU-China, who used Pichia pastoris strain GS115 to express their target protein just like us. We were glad to engage in further communication and collaboration with CPU-China. Therefore, we communicated about project similarities and then determined our partnership.

Figure6. Communicate with CPU-China

Participate in ICII

During the summer vacation, we planned to hold a publicity activity in the science museum. At this time, CPU-China invited us to join ICII, a national outreach campaign and we signed up rejoicingly.

Figure7. Poster of ICII

Video1. Video of ICII

Be Interviewed by Beijing 101 Middle School

Beijing 101 Middle School' project is about improving the quality of recycled paper, which is similar to our project and both of us focus on paper. Therefore, in July, they did a short interview with us to find out how the two projects could work together.

Figure8. Online Tencent Conference

Make Popular Science Video with Beijing 101 Middle School

Beijing 101 Middle School’s project is similar with ours, both of which focused on paper issues. In China, there are some schools established in remote areas where students' learning conditions are not particularly good. Therefore, we worked together to provide these students with an opportunity to learn more about paper. As one of the four great inventions of ancient China, papermaking has a long history. So, we made a comprehensive introduction to the knowledge of paper from four aspects. They are: the origin of papermaking, modern and ancient papermaking, the value of recycled paper and DIY recycled paper.

Figure9. Online Tencent Conference

Pen and Ink Grocery Store

Inspired by the famous Japanese novelist Keigo Higashino's novel "The Unworrying Grocery Store", we set up "Pen and Ink Grocery Store". We made our deinked paper into cultural and creative product. Then invited more than 10 teams to join us. We send the products to them. Then they took photos for certification near their school's landmark. Finally, we collected these photos and show Deinker's footprints around China.

Figure10. Feedback from other teams

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