Team:BNDS China/Collaborations
In order to share our experiences and learn more knowledge from other teams, we collaborated with QHFZ_China, SHSBNU_China, GDSYZX, JNFLS, Beijing_4ELEVEN and KEYSTONE_A this time. Through the collaboration, we not only refined some imperfect project design but also achieved the production of bacterial cellulose in large scale. Besides, communications with other teams also gave us some helpful enlightenments, raising some new ideas that are noteworthy.
-
Figure 1. The invitation letter from QHFZ_China for
Beijing International iGEMer Collaboration Seminar.
-
In August 2020, we attended the meet up hosted by QHFZ_China to share our project description and design with other teams.
To begin with, we stated the current situation of the leathery industry as a foreword to introduce our project about bacterial cellulose. In order to solve the problems that exist nowadays, he said that we plan to produce environmental-friendly leathery, which has great physical properties, while maintaining the conservation of animals and environment.
After our presentation, we received lots of kind suggestions from QHFZ_China and other teams attending this meetup. Accordingly, we also sent out our own advice for other teams.
Online Communication With QHFZ_China
In March 2020, we collaborated with QHFZ_China through an online communication (Figure 2). First of all, Tianhong Li, the advisor of QHFZ_China, invited us to deliver an online sharing session for QHFZ teammates. In details, Tianhong Li considered the importance to let new iGEMers be familiar with iGEM community as soon as possible, and we totally agreed with this viewpoint. Therefore, our presentation was mainly about the basic information of iGEM and the operation of BNDS_China, which serves to be a reference for the team management of QHFZ_China.
First of all, we introduced our recruitment and selection methods. Here we emphasized that iGEM was an attractive competition in our school because near 100 students were interested in participating iGEM 2020, and we had to make a selection among them. In this way, we hoped iGEMers in QHFZ_China would be aware of the significance of iGEM competition and work hard.
-
Figure 2. The sharing session hosted by BNDS_China.
-
Moving on, we also talked about how team members in BNDS_China were trained. For example, we shared the way how we teach our freshmen to use Snapgene to perform molecular cloning to QHFZ_China. Additionally, we also highlighted the importance of literature research and suggested them to hold Journal Club regularly.
At last, we expressed my wish to reach friendly collaboration with QHFZ_China and sincerely wished both teams could get a good result in the end.
Through this online communication, we became familiar with each other. More importantly, this communication was also the basis of our later attendance in the meetup hosted by QHFZ_China.
Collaborate With SHSBNU_China
Our team has designed an oscillatory incubator, which can be compatible with a culture flask for large-scale culture of bacteria when we experimenting in the Bluepha Lab. We do that is because the incubator there can only be compatible with the culture tube but cannot deal with the culture flag with a large volume. And also, the temperature is usually set at 37 degrees, which cannot be changed. From this point of view, our transformation is particularly important when doing some experiments that need flask or higher temperatures.
And because the team SHSBNU_China needs a variable temperature incubator, we lent them our oscillatory incubator to help them set the right temperature to complete their project.
Online Meeting With GDSYZX
We made an appointment for an online meeting with the GDXYZX team this year. And in the meeting, we communicate about the projects and put forward opinions on each other's plans on how to do the project.
In the process of communication, we found that an inducible promoter in their project cannot produce the desired product after concatenating a gene. In this case, we suggest that they can replace the target gene with a reporter CDS, such as pigment-protein or fluorescent protein. In this way, we can test whether their inducible promoter can work or not by judging the color change of the chassis organism, which helps the team solve this problem.
Collaborate With JNFLS
Since both our team and JNFLS projects involve bacterial cellulose and we all need cellulose to do the experiment and finish the research. In this case, we share one of the bacterial cellulose JNFLS needs, which is G. Xylinus, to help them complete the whole project.
Collaborate With Beijing_4ELEVEN
Both our team and BNDS_China's experiments incorporate the utilization of Pichia pastoris, so we had a discussion about approaches to transform plasmids into P. Pastoris. According to the experience of both teams' experiments, we finally determined an effective way to transform plasmids into P. pastoris. Meanwhile，in our friendly collaboration, we give them E.Coli, MG1655, and get the sequence of the plasmid pPIC9K in return.
Overview of Partnership with Keystone
In order to realize the mass production of cellulose, we need to design a more complex hardware, the Rotary Disc Reactor which also increases the difficulty of construction. Thus, it is difficult for our team to construct the hardware by ourselves due to the limited team members and working space. Our instructor Songyuan Zhang helped us get in touch with team KEYSTONE_A. Since bacterial cellulose was involved in the projects of both teams, we decided to work together to construct the hardware. See more information in our partnership webpage.
PARTNERSHIP