Team:UNSW Australia/Medals

BRONZE

Criteria Description
Competition Deliverables Our competition deliverables consist of the 1. Wiki, 2. Poster which we present at the Virtual Jamboree, the 3. Presentation Video, the 4. Promotion Video and the 5. Judging form. Click on each word to see how we successfully completed all the required deliverables.
Attributions To read about the humans who have supported us through this project click here.
Project Description The project description summarises the reasons why we chose our project and our main project goals. To read more about them click here.
Contributions Contributions to future wiki teams include the WikiChecker tool which allows teams to verify that they have all the ‘required URLs’ needed for judges to determine they have achieved all bronze, silver and gold pages. Our team has also successfully added documentation (through information learned from literature) to an existing part (bifunctional glutathione synthetase). To read more about our contributions click here.

SILVER

Criteria Description
Engineering Success Our team was successful in expressing and purifying small heat shock proteins from C. reinhardtii in E. coli in order to characterise these novel chaperones. Utilising the design, build and test cycle at plasmid design, cloning, purification and assaying steps, HSP22E and HSP22F were shown to successfully reduce the rate of protein aggregation at elevated temperatures. To read more about our engineering process, click here.
Collaborations Our team collaborated with many other iGEM teams during the course of the year by various means and purposes. These include collaboration with Exeter, St. Andrews, Hainan, Newcastle, Duesseldorf, and Uppsala iGEM teams. The Exeter and St. Andrews iGEM teams were also invited to present in the symposium hosted by our team. To read more about how our collaborations went, click here.
Human Practices The consideration of major stakeholder groups (such as the traditional owners of the land) that are affected by coral bleaching have paved the way in which we have structured our human practices framework. We have also taken the time to communicate with experts such as ethicists and social scientists in the field, as well as our sponsor Revive and Restore. To read more about what we have learnt by speaking to our stakeholders click here.
Proposed Implementation To ensure that our project is safe to be implemented into the world, our team took the time to speak to several experts who advised us on the possible and realistic pathways which we can consider. To understand the plans to implement our solution into the GBR and how we ensured that the diversity of the reef is maintained click here.

GOLD

Criteria Description
Integrated Human Practices Through our silver HP work, the consultation of our main stakeholder groups and experts in the field of social science has led us to manipulate our project based on the values of these stakeholders. In our integrated human practices work, we demonstrate the way in which we empathise with the needs and wants of the people who are concerned about the reef’s health. Additional academics who looked through the workflow of our wet lab and dry lab methodology allowed us to achieve our present goals as well as advised us on our future goals. By consulting with a number of academics and stakeholders through our silver HP work, we were able to identify the ‘issues’ in the direction of our project and adapt accordingly. Therefore, by doing this our team was able to focus on the values that stakeholders deemed the most important. To read more on the specific values and issues we addressed in our HP and lab work, click here.
Project Modelling To gain insight into how our proposed engineered heat shock and ROS response system in Symbiodinium would work, the dry lab team created both structural and mathematical models to supplement the wet lab assays. In the structural modelling, the components of our system investigated were the monomers, dimers and the 12mer complex that the recombinant HSP22 complex was known to exist as. Fold recognition, docking and molecular dynamic simulations were run. In mathematical modelling, models of the new engineered system were compared to the wild type to predict the transcriptomic/metabolomic changes on level of the cell. Both stochastic and deterministic models were implemented using the PySB library.
Science Communication Our team has created different components to communicate synthetic biology and our project to a wide range of target audiences from various backgrounds. These components include a children’s book, an education package, a virtual escape room, the MolecularCloud interview and a presentation to the public. Check them out here.

SPECIAL AWARDS

Criteria Description
Best Education (WON) Our team has created various educational components targeting a wide range of audiences, including children, adolescents and the general public. We aimed to educate individuals who may be affiliated with each target audience simultaneously. For example, while the children’s activity book and the educational package were intended for children and high school students, it may also impact others involved, such as educators and parents/guardians. Furthermore, while physical activities were minimised due to the pandemic, our team created a virtual escape room game as an innovative way to reach and expose university students to synthetic biology, and to allow for open discussion in a fun way. We have planned future collaborations to distribute these materials to more individuals in order to continue inspiring them about the application of the science of synthetic biology in the real world through the lens of our project.
Best Integrated HP (WON) Integrated HP, to the UNSW iGEM 2020 team, is understanding the mutualistic relationship between people and science. Our human-centred design began by consulting ethicists and social-scientists to understand the complex dynamic between society and synthetic-biology. From there, our research and development was driven by the values and needs of the diverse stakeholders we spoke with, including Traditional Owners, Biodiversity, Bioprospecting, Coastal Protection and Tourism & Commercial and Recreational Fishing. These conversations were sustained and meaningful in every part of our HP journey. With this insight, we reached out to coral experts who informed the technical aspects of our solution. Together, our conversations resulted in an approach that accounted for nuanced values, in order to create a good and responsible solution to coral bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef.
Best New Basic Part (Nominated) Considering the impact of rising water temperatures on coral bleaching, introducing engineered symbiodinium into the coral tissue is a promising solution. Through extensive research and laboratory experimentation, our team was successful in demonstrating the effect of small heat shock proteins 22E and 22F in reducing protein aggregation, when compared to citrate synthase. Being aware of the high transcription rate of small heat shock proteins as holdases, these molecular chaperones are capable of reversing coral bleaching by preventing vulnerable proteins from becoming insoluble and hence, dysfunctional. Since coral reefs are a source of food for millions of sea organisms, our engineered part has the potential to protect this important ecosystem.
Best Presentation (Nominated)
Best Environment Project (Nominated)