There is a Chinese saying goes: Learning alone without friends is gnorant, which means that if someone don't exchange ideas with others, he will lack of holistic understanding, and his cognition will be inevitably defective. This is also true for our iGEM team. iGEM provides us with a good platform, where we can communicate, discuss projects, and imagine the future of synthetic biology with iGEMers all over the world. Below is our team's cooperation record:
NJU-GenScript conference
NJU-China and Genscript co-hosted an online workshop on gene editing on October 24.ZJU-China, NJMU-China, NJTech_China, ShanghaiTech_China attended the conference. These teams employ the use of CRIPR or RNAi technology, so we discussed our common concerns during the meeting.
During the meeting, we addressed the prospects and shortcomings of CRISPR and its relevant technology. The comparison of these two gene editing tools, CRISPR and RNAi, was also stressed. A common sense was reached that RNAi has the following features compared with CRIPSR: Due to the limited molecular size of Cas protein, CRIPSR system is more difficult to be used for fine genetically operation, while RNAi can. Apart from that, CRISPR editing is thorough, which means it can “silence” certain gene completely, while RNAi editing is more like putting a brake on gene expression. Since RNAi is a post-transcriptional editing, its ethical issues are less controversial than CRIPSR's.
In addition, we also discussed about the financial accessibility of our projects. We discussed about how our projects would be made into products in order to serve for the society in the future. Due to the relatively high cost of individualized therapy, the price seems to be the most tough obstacle for the public to access to our product in the future. Luckily, our team was inspired by experts from GeneScript who envisioned a model in which biological companies and commercial insurers could work together to promote their products so as to lower the expense.
Meanwhile, other iGEM teams also posed questions they interested in. For example, ZJU-China puts forward the discussion about bioethical issues arising from organ cloning techniques such as the formation of chimeras through xenograft or xenochimerism. The problem raised by NJMU-Chian was that “the current gene therapy of personalized medicine mainly focuses on single-gene mutated disease, while there are only several other treatments for multi-gene mutated diseases. How to cover the field of multi-gene therapy in the future?” These open talk session gave us a new point of view towards some realistic problems and was of great inspiration.
The conference provides a good platform for iGEM teams to meet face-to-face with experts and professors from various fields to discuss issues related to gene editing and treatment. Through this conference, we broaden our view about gene editing tools, and are significantly inspired to plot our future application. Through the consideration for financial accessibility we may better polish up our design in the future. Last but not least, In this meeting, we exchanged our ideas and deepened the collaboration and partnership between other iGEM teams , professors, and experts, which is of great help for both for our iGEM project and individual cognition towards gene editing.
Korean-HS
Similar to our idea, Korea-HS iGEM team from Korea also tried to treat cancer by targeting KRas, so our projects are highly relevant. On July 19, we had our first online discussion. We reported our project progress and human practices ideas, and exchanged each other's experience on how to carry out iGEM in response to the epidemic. On September 26, we had our second online meeting. As they try to target KRas, we suggested that they learn about the latest KRAS targeting drug AMG510 for inspiration, and that they try to target different states of KRAS (i.e. KRAS-GTP and KAS-GDP) or different KRAS mutant proteins to obtain the best therapeutic effect. And for their HP work, we kindly reminded them to pay attention to IRB and other ethical issues.
Their wiki address: https://2020.igem.org/Team:Korea_HS
Worldshaper-Wuhan
The team Worldshaper-Wuhan from Wuhan China also focus on the treatment of cancer using RNAi, so it is natural for us to collaborate together. Due to the epidemic in Wuhan, a large number of cancer patients could not get proper treatment. So in our online meeting, we interviewed them, those who involved in the eye of the epidemic, about the patients’ situation in Wuhan. Luckily, some of them just live nearby the hospital, and they gave us the firsthand information of the patients in Wuhan, which is of greatly help to our HP.
Moreover, since we have more experience in RNAi, we gave them some suggestions on their project. For example, a certain mRNA will be regulated by multiple microRNAs, so it is crucial to optimize the microRNA they choose, in order to achieve best therapeutic effect.
Their wiki address: https://2020.igem.org/Team:Worldshaper-Wuhan/Collaborations
NJTech_China
The project of NJTech_China has unique insights and knowledge on promoter and its regulation. In our online communication, they suggested that we change the original CMV promoter in Tet-On system into albumin promoter to ensure specificity, so as to better express our plasmid in liver, and ultimately improve the controllability and safety of our project. click here for more details.
Their wiki address: https://2020.igem.org/Team:NJTech_China/Collaborations
ShanghaiTech_China
Shanghai University of science and technology maintains good friendship and interaction with our school; this iGEM competition is no exception. In this competition, we assist each other significantly.
Because they need a device prototype to verify their experiments, which consists of the tube rack, tube set, fluorescent element, mangent, etc. However, they don't have 3D printer and corresponding technology. We helped them optimize the design of 3D models, using our own 3D printers to help them print the final product and mail it to them. In addition, because their project involves the use of CRIPR/Cas12a to detect genes, it is pretty crucial to determine the binding between the protein and its aptamers. As a result, a neural network is needed to extracting all feature and predict the binding capacity. Due to the limitation of their modeling ability, we help them complete the neural network modeling.
In addition, due to some difficulties in the construction of tetracycline promoter efficiency model in our project, ShanghaiTech_China contributed the kinetic and thermodynamic parameters of our siRNA expression model, which helped our modeling progress smoothly. click here for more details. Moreover, in our online discussion, they offered us some issues to concern, like “will strong expression of exosomes affect normal liver function?”. Which provide ideas for our in vivo confirmation experiment of siRNA delivery system next year.
Their wiki address: https://2020.igem.org/Team:ShanghaiTech_China/Collaborations
SZU-China
We had a meeting online with SZU-China in this summer. We started with a PowerPoint presentation and had a general understanding of each other's projects. Later we discussed the cooperation of the synthetic biology handbook and other possibilities for collaboration.
Their wiki address: https://2020.igem.org/Team:SZU-China/Collaborations
CCiC online conference
This year's CCiC conference was held online. CCiC is a platform for China iGEM team to share experience and receive suggestions from judges and all China iGEMers. In this online salon, we shared and displayed our project and poster design, and we were honored to receive the Best Poster Award. Huang Wenqi, Ambassador of CCiC, asked some questions about our project about exosome remote delivery, which inspired us to modify the targeting and delivery system of exosomes.
iGEM meetup in East China
East China Meetup held by Jiangnan University is an online meeting concluding iGEM teams form East China. Various iGEM teams will introduce their projects one after another. Also, scholars and previous iGEM judges will be invited to the conference to give either a speech or some suggestions. Among them, Hassnain is helpful to our HP design, and let us focus on the public without biological background. Zhu Zetian suggested that we should be careful in setting up blank control, negative control, positive control and homotype control, which also optimized our experimental design to a certain extent.
