Collaborations
The process of scientific research is one that requires input from multiple perspectives. Throughout the course of our project development, we reached out to team Leiden, team Vilnius, and team NCTU Formosa. The collaboration with these teams helped us validate our experiments and gain insights in different areas of our projects.
Team NCTU 10/4
At the beginning of October, our team was able to successfully replicate our RCA virus detection test several times . We wanted to see if our results could be replicated by people outside of our team. Therefore, we reached out to the NCTU iGEM team. They came into our lab to run our RCA reactions with the protocols we provided. The whole process took about an hour and a half for the reactions to run. As the color of the RCA tubes changed from pink to yellow, they were able to replicate our results. This thus validates our project and proof of concept experimentally!
We also helped team NCTU validate their project. They sent us strains of crtEBIY-expressing E.coli to see if could extract beta-carotene. We grew liquid cultures and extracted the beta-carotene in acetone. Then we measured the whole visible spectrum and found the characteristic peaks of beta-carotene between 400 and 500 nm (Figure 3).
It was an amazing experience for us to be able to collaborate with NCTU. We really appreciate them helping us validate our project, and we are glad that we are able to help out with their project as well.
Team Vilnius 8/11 and 9/3
After we revealed our project on instagram, team Vilnius reached out to us for collaboration. Team Vilnius’s project this year is to detect exogenous fish diseases using isothermal amplification and nucleic acid lateral flow assay. Seeing that both team’s project shares the similar goal of trying to develop an isothermal, nucleic-acid-amplification based detection kit, we discussed the ways that we can help each other.
As we were facing difficulties in protein purification, we asked team Vilnius for suggestions. After talking through our protein purification process, team Vilnius provided us with a list of possible causes for our purification process and the ways to fix them, such as changing the buffer pH and NaCl concentration and using an alternative protein tag. We tried out their suggestions for our protein purification, and we were able to successfully run the process!
In addition, team Vilnius helped us spread our survey regarding public view on home test kits around Leiden. We got a total of 22 responses from them. While the number is not enough for us to do significant statistical analysis, it is really interesting for us to see how views on test kits differ in different countries.
For our end, we helped spread the synthetic biology game that team Vilnius created in our school’s synthetic biology class and gave them some feedback on how to improve the game. As our synthetic biology students have just learned the principles of central dogma, the game served as a fun way for them to review the different parts of the gene while having a lot of fun!
Team Leiden 8/6 and 8/12
From attending the Benelux Meetup on July 24th, we learned that team Leiden is also working on developing a rapid test kit. We excitedly reached out to the team to foster a conversation between the two teams.
In our first meeting, we shared with each other more about each team’s project. Although both teams were working on a very similar project, we took on different approaches for our project not just experimentally but also human-practice-wise. We saw this as a great opportunity for both teams to help supplement each team’s human practices research. Thus, in our second meeting, we each discussed our team’s human practices strategies. To gain more information about the context of test kits, our team conducted a public survey to understand the general public’s inclination toward test kits. Team Leiden, on the other hand, interviewed several biologists as well as stakeholders and experts in various other fields related to kit design, production, use and disposal to define their project direction. With the information they acquired from their expert interview, team Leiden gave us advice on our survey. We also talked about collaborating in terms of sharing with each other about each country’s testing policy. However, due to each team’s busy schedule, we were not able to complete this portion of the collaboration.
We appreciate all the valuable advice that team Leiden has given us on survey design. In addition, our discussions about test kit policy and the public view towards test kits in The Netherlands helped us understand the complexity of test kit implementation. This helped to inform our HP research as well as our marketing plan.
Team Mingdao 9/17
In mid-September, team Mingdao reached out to us, as their project this year is inspired by our 2018 iGEM project, Say No To Glow. We talked to team Mingdao and provided them with a probiotic strain, E. coli Nissle, which we used in Say No to Glow. In our Zoom call, our team advisor, Mr. Clapper, informed them on how we used the E.coli Nissle was used in our 2018 project. He also gave them some more advice on judging clarification and strategy and general Human Practices information based on past experiences. We hope that our meeting was helpful to team Mingdao.
