Team:Mingdao/Partnership

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INTRODUCTION

    We made a partnership with CSMU_Taiwan throughout this whole year. It's just a ten-minute ride between the campuses of Mingdao and Chung Shan Medical University (CSMU). Both of us had good training in synthetic biology and molecular biology lab skills by Dr. Pei-Hong Chen. We always met together to discuss iGEM projects, do experiments, host education event and share ideas to each other.

  Training in Synthetic Biology

      Dr. Pei-Hong Chen is a faculty in Mingdao High School in charge of Biolab for Synthetic Biology, who is also an adjunct assistant professor of Institute of Medicine at Chung Shan Medical University. Dr. Chen trained both of teams in lab skills in Biolab at Mingdao High School with many years of iGEM experiences. We always helped, inspired and encouraged each other to advance our lab skills, troubleshooting, experimental design and knowledges in iGEM projects.

IN CSMU_TAIWN PROJECT

  Brainstorming

    As soon as CSMU_Taiwan decided their topic, they were urgent to get some opinion from the public on this project. For this, our team members and the students from Mingdao High School expressed their thoughts in a survey and discussed ideas about their project in meetings, enabling them to gather some suggestions and consider the direction of their project.

  Experiments

    We have good iGEM curriculum in gene cloning training and are confident in doing this. CSMU_Taiwan wants to create toehold switch sensors to diagnose miRNAs in oral cancer. After simulating the possible DNA triggers, they planned to construct dozens of clones. They asked us for help. And we together completed so many gene cloning experiments this year such as plasmid extraction, agarose gel electrophoresis, restriction enzyme check, colony PCR, etc.

  Education

    CSMU_Taiwan hosted many STEAM fair and education activities in our school throughout this year. Our team members were involved in these events and helped them prepare materials and guide the participants. During these events, they were able to convey their ideas to high school students and raised awareness towards iGEM and synthetic biology. We all have grown up from them.

IN MINGDAO PROJECT

  Brainstorming

    At the beginning, we have several meetings with CSMU_Taiwan to discuss about our project. They gave us many examples in previous iGEM projects related to our project and encouraged us to do more. Furthermore, a member of them is a senior student major in Department of Dentistry, who provided us lots of fundamental knowledge about dental caries, helping us quickly determine the problems we need to solve in this field. Therefore, we can start the project well very early.

  Experiments

    In addition to culture a Biosafety Level 2 bacterium for us (as mentioned in COLLABORATIONS), they also taught us how to prepare several bacterial culture media that we aren't familiar with. They guided us to adjust pH values of media and concentrations of glucose. With their help, we got no worries and let experiments go smoothly.

  Data analyses

    They often inspired us to read our data and results in different ways, and new conclusions can often be found throughout that. During our partnership, they have given us advices to analyze the growth curve of bacteria several times, not only provided us new methods to read data, but also came up with numerous insights.

REFLECTION

    We've been working with each other during the entire year, from experiments to data analysis, from interviews and survey to education events. Both of us benefited a lot in all areas. We hope that by running a partnership program, these two projects can move closer to perfect from all we got from each other.