Partnership

1 Introduction

This season, Worldshaper-Nanjing applied for the laboratory of Nanjing Normal University to carry out our experiment. At the same time, the iGEM team NNU-China from Nanjing Normal University also conducted experiments in this laboratory, which made us believe it is an ideal choice to establish a partnership with them. We constantly help each other from May to October, since summer vacation, we have met about every two weeks to discuss the problems encountered in recent projects.

Our first formal meeting was on July 20th. We share our projects and current progress, together with some ideas of human practice and activities to see how to communicate more closely in the next stage. We also made a discussion on iGEM competition rules. Moreover, we confirmed further cooperation directions: interaction in the laboratory, support of interviews, online synthetic biology course , offline science lecture and picture book production.

Fig.1 Formal meeting on July 20th

Please slide the wiki page to the bottom to see our partnership map！

2 Details

2.1 Interact in the laboratory

Our first meeting with NNU-China was on May 5th. They kindly invited Dr. Wang Qingzhuo from Nanjing Normal University to give us a lecture on synthetic biology. During the meeting, we learned how to combine biobricks and brainstormed together. At this time, we thought NNU-China will become our good teachers and friends.

Fig.2 Studied synthetic biology with NNU-China

When we started the iGEM experiment in early July, NNU-China showed us around the laboratory and taught us how to use instruments and equipment. They also gave us laboratory safety training and explained professional biosynthesis knowledge about our project design.

Fig.3 Laboratory safety training on June 10th

Then we worked together from July to August. As NNU-China understands yeast culture and molecular biology experiments, such as PCR, plasmid construction, optimization of fermentation conditions and other technologies, we turned to them for help when we encountered difficulties.

Fig.4 Work with NNU-China

2.2 Human Practice

During the first meetup of July 20th, both teams found that our respondents included catering industry and therefore reached the intention of offline interview together. However, due to the sudden epidemic prevention and control in Nanjing, all offline interviews were interrupted.

On August 6th, in an online meeting, the two teams discussed how to continue our human practice work based on the current epidemic situation, and exchanged current difficulties, such as the troubles in conducting field investigations, finding expert resources, being rejected by respondents, etc. NNU-China suggested that they could help introduce the professors of Nanjing Normal University for interview. They introduced Mr. Guo Dongsheng of the school of food and pharmaceutical engineering, who gave valuable suggestions on our hardware device design.

Fig.5 Experts introduced by NNU-China helped us design the hardware devices

Since August 25th, offline human practice work was restarted after the epidemic situation in Nanjing was alleviated, and we exchanged the current recovery of offline activities in Nanjing. At that time, our public questionnaire lacked some data from people aged between 18 and 30, and NNU-China helped us expand the publication.

Our team also gave helpful suggestions to NNU-China on finding expert resources. For example, seeking help from other iGEM teams by participating in meetups. What's more, we also exchanged experiences in holding meetups, then on August 29th, we invited NNU-China to participate in our online meetup and gave them a good demonstration of meetup preparation.

Fig.6 Online conference on August 25th

2.3 Science Communication

During the meetings in July, the two teams reached a cooperation intention to carry out science popularization together. In terms of activities, We shared an interesting online interactive platform to NNU-China. Meanwhile, we also put forward the idea of making multilingual picture books, which was supported by NNU-China. They not only actively completed the picture books, but also led us to cooperate with more iGEM teams, producing a series of picture books together.

Fig.7 Worldshaper-Nanjing sharing experience and thoughts on the lecture and picture book on July 20th

Until October, we finally completed the final popular science picture book with other eight iGEM teams, which was a gratifying result we never thought of.

Fig.8 The final picture book

In addition to this, NNU-China has given us great help in the implementation of popular science activities. NNU-China shared their popular science programs and invited us to participate in them, such as the online science lecture for junior middle school students in Guizhou mountainous areas (August 13th) the science activity in Nanjing Wufu community (September 11th).

During the online meeting with mountainous area students, we focused more on basic knowledge about biology related to our projects. NNU-China’s Yan Xu showed the students around the laboratory using his mobile phone as he was there.Worldshaper-Nanjing, on the other hand, mainly introduced the origin of our project, more specifically, the problem of gutter oil.

Fig.9 The online science lecture for students in Guizhou mountainous areas

In Wufu community, the two teams both presented our picture books to the audience and introduced synthetic biology together. Then we separately talked about our projects and hand out leaflets for them to fully understand.

Fig.10 The science activity in Wufu community

2.4 Preparation for final presentation

In order to help each team complete the competition successfully , on September 10th, we met with NNU-China again in Nanjing Normal University. At this meeting, we discussed the preparation of various materials.

Fig.11 Offline discussion on September 10th

NNU-China and us also shared ideas on the production of wiki. It helped both a lot for saving time to look for other practical methods. On October 10th, The team members who responsible for wiki programming in two teams solved the problems encountered in web page programming and put forward new ideas and suggestions together.

Team:Worldshaper-Nanjing/Partnership