Team:ZJUT-China/Collaborations
We attach great importance to the communication with companies and iGEM teams. In this webpage, you can see that we have carried out in-depth cooperation in project installation, experimental design, wiki construction, etc. These cooperation have promoted and improved our projects.
To help team members better understand the iGEM, ZJUT-China and BUCT-China invited Prof. Xiaoling Tang, the director of College of Biotechnology and Bioengineering, Zhejiang University of Technology.
Prof. Tang has extensive coaching experience, who had led a team to be awarded the gold prize. She introduced us the composition of iGEM website and the competition schedule, highlighting the emphases of each group. We benefited a lot from this course.
We conducted a wiki webinar together with BUCT-iGEM. The webinar covered HTML and CSS basics, and also invited Yi Fan (the dry lab leader of ZJUT_China_B 2020) to explain the official requirements for wiki pages. The content of this webinar is a guide for students who are trying to learn web code (HTML and CSS).
This summer, we conducted online communication with SYSU-China team.
SYSU-CHINA use semi-rationally designed circRNA molecular scaffold to colocalize enzymes through the interaction between RNA binding proteins and RNA aptamers, for a higher rate of muti-enzyme reactions.
RNA designed by ZJUT-China
Through communication, we found that both of our projects needed to transcribe RNA in vitro, which we had little experience in. SYSU-China gave us a lot of suggestions which helped us solved the problem of RNA degradation due to improper operation after in vitro transcription very well. Meanwhile, in our EMSA validation experiment, SYSU-China team suggested that we anneal the RNA to form its secondary structure which made it better to bind to Cas9 protein. With their advice, our EMSA experiment was a success! Thanks for SYSU-China's help in our experiment.
We also made some suggestions for the SYSU-China team's RNA design. Initially, we hoped for more collaboration in the experiment and wanted to experimentally verify the RNA of SYSU-China. However, we found that the secondary structure obtained by NUPACK RNA prediction was too complex, and the stem-loop structure formed did not meet the requirements. In addition, through different software analysis, we found that SYSU-China RNA had a stem-loop structure that might affect subsequent experiments. In this regard, SYSU-China took our advice and improved its RNA sequence, and we also helped them complete the prediction of secondary structure.
Prediction of circRNA2 secondary structure by using Structure Editor
Predicted circRNA2 secondary structure by using RNAfold
We joined SynBioMed Hangzhou meetup on July 15th. In order to facilitate the understanding of information, ZJU-China contacted this meetup to promote the cooperation between teams in Hangzhou.
On May 29th and 30th, we joined in the 2021 China iGEM Online Meetup led by Jiangnan University, with 42 iGEM teams attended the conference. At the meeting, we listened to the project reports on four different topics. After the reports sharing, Jionglin Chen, Secretary General of CCiC Executive Committee, gave a speech and predicted the 8th CCiC Conference to be held in Fudan University this year. Through this meeting, we had in-depth communication with other teams. We not only had a better understanding about CCiC and its history but also be aware of what kind of support and help each team can get from CCiC.
On September 11th, the CRISPR conference led by Tianjin University was successfully held with 11 iGEM teams from China participating in the conference. At the meeting, ZJUT - China team and each team had a deep and meaningful discussion. We discussed the problems of our respective teams and shared some experiences and solutions with students from NEFU-China, CPU-China, and LZU-China at the CRISPR conference. These materials were eventually compiled by the TJU-China team and written into a "CRISPR Handbook", which we hope will provide some help for future teams.
From August 27th to 29th, we participated in the 8th CCiC Conference on Synthetic Biology in Asia. The Conference of China iGEMer Community (CCiC) is a national summit independently initiated by iGEM teams in China. It aims to provide a platform for iGEM participants to share ideas with each other and learn from each other. While listening to other excellent programs, we showed our posters and promotional videos as well. Thanks to the judges and other participants, we received valuable suggestions. We also realized our shortcomings, like "Why Cas9 proteins in CRISPR/Cas system are used instead of Cas12 and Cas13 proteins", and "how to solve the commonly off-target problems of Cas9". These would be the parts we need to improve in the subsequent experimental design. During this conference, we were lucky to have a chance to communicate with other teams, such as BIT (Beijing Institute of Technology team), to solicit further cooperation.
On September 8th, we were lucky to invite a technical consultant from GenScript Company to guide our project on how to proceed better. We consulted on the cutting activity of Cas9 and gRNA. Also, we have a further understanding of GenScript's related products, several different Cas9 proteins, and their related roles, as well as Cas12 and Cas13 proteins.
