Team:GA State SW Jiaotong/Collaborations
iGEM Journal Documents
Team Maastricht's iGEM Journal Initiative
For our collaboration this year, our team participated in Team Maastricht’s Journal Initiative. Team Maastricht’s goal was to create a Proceedings Journal by compiling many different projects from the 2020 iGEM competition. Our team authored a detailed review paper titled “A Review of Coral Bleaching Resistance Genes in Symbiodinium,” which we submitted to Team Maastricht. After submission, we received 3 papers written by the iGEM teams at Manipal Institute of Technology, University of Nantes, and Cayetano Heredia University in Peru (UPCH) to peer review.
Our team was given a detailed peer-review guideline that required us to read through the article several times, make edits throughout the paper, and take note of specific things that should be altered. We were to fill out and send this document back to the respective teams, so they could make any necessary adjustments. Similarly, our team’s review paper was reviewed by members of Team Maastricht and was sent back to us for corrections. After the changes and final submissions, teams were required to vote on which papers should be included in the journal. Our review paper was selected as one of the articles to be part of Team Maastricht’s printed journal.
This collaboration served as a valuable experience for the members of our team. Many of us gained experience in scientific research, citing, and communication through this journal initiative. Additionally, the peer-review process allowed us to not only critique other scientific papers but also be able to accept constructive criticism ourselves to deliver a higher quality article. Along with the experience we gained, this collaboration also gave our team a wonderful opportunity to read about the research other iGEM teams around the world are doing. With the Covid-19 pandemic, the poster session this year will likely not be as it was in previous years and information about other projects may not be as easily accessible. However, being able to read and review other research helped us feel a little more connected to our scientific community. We thank Team Maastricht for their initiative in this collaboration and the opportunity to be a part of an iGEM journal.
Meeting with SCU-China
At 4:00 PM, October 20th (Beijing time) GA_State_SW_Jiaotong, a joint team of Georgia State University and Southwest Jiaotong University, held a mutual discussion meeting about our projects with the SCU-China iGEM team of Sichuan University. SCU-China hopes to construct a set of eukaryotic polycistron exogenous gene expression systems to realize abscisic acid biosynthesis in Saccharomyces cerevisiae to prevent the effects of climate change on Spring weather patterns. We really appreciated their CRISPR experiments, data analysis, and predictive software design. We have learned a lot about data processing methods. In addition, we suggested that they highlight their key points and focus on using logical reasoning in their presentation. Since the greenhouse effect is becoming more serious, our GA_State_SW_Jiaotong team hopes to transform the symbiotic Symbiodium of coral by introducing a plasmid carrying coral bleaching resistance genes to improve its heat tolerance, which could prevent the loss of marine resources. The SCU-China team praised our hardware work and the impact of human practice. At the same time, their team shared with us a lot of notes and experience. They told us some tips about this competition, such as the poster question session, the requirements of awards, and the development suggestions of human practice.