Team:WHU-China/Collaborations
UM_Macau
Tsinghua
UCAS-China
Tongji-China
SUSTech_Shenzhen
DUT_China
HK_HCY
XHD-Wuhan-China
TJUSLS_China
SCUT_China
HZAU-China
Southern China Meetup
CCiC
Collaborations between teams have long been cherished among iGEM community, and in this exceptionally tough iGEM season, with the dangerous coronaviruses spreading all over the world, iGEMers must strive together for accomplishing their projects. We, WHU-China, are glad to discover and share similarities of our project with other projects (e.g. engineered probiotics, biofilms, etc.), when participating in our 10th iGEM season, and work reciprocally in a long period to achieve greatness.
Overall, in this year, we collaborated with twelve teams in multiple aspects and attended in two regional meetings to tell our own stories and experiences, in return, our project ‘the negotiator’ benefited greatly from these initiative interactions.
We kept a good relationship with SZU-China since 2019 iGEM, and this year we co-founded Anti-Biofilm Community with UM_Macau. Despite no subsequent collaboration after SZU-China changed their project, we sincerely appreciated their contributions in ABC as a creative proposer and in the 4th Southern China Meetup as a generous host. Good luck!
UM_Macau is the co-founder of ABC. In the 1st workshop, we two teams got better understanding of each other. Both aimed at LuxI/LuxR quorum sensing systems of gram-negative bacteria, we offered UM_Macau suggestions on their project design. UM_Macau was one of the most active members in ABC, always prepared for coming tasks, and responsible for pursuing oversea interactions for ABC. Most notably, ABC members fully engaged in UM_Macau’s social media activity #FindBiofilms.
Tsinghua joined ABC during CCiC. Both aimed at quorum sensing systems of Pseudomonas aeruginosa, we offered them several well-organized reviews and useful research papers on hierarchical quorum sensing networks of this opportunistic pathogen bacteria. As we learned that Tsinghua united several teams to deliver a 6-day-long online course at Bilibili and reached phenomenal effects in China iGEMer community, we invited them to introduce experiences on holding a big education event in the 2nd workshop of ABC. Both interested in developing hardwares to improve the project, we suggested microfluidic chips as an option for them to realize fluidic environment. Furthermore, Tsinghua also summarized different analysis methods to quantify biofilm formation and reduction for ABC.
UCAS-China joined our partnership of engineered probiotics, and formed China Synthetic Biotic Delta. We’re impressed by their more-than-biology perspectives, as they proposed a universal and promising model with potential for further collaborations. It is a pity that the model didn’t reach the expectations, however, it illuminated us to develop a model to describe quorum sensing and quorum quenching from a spatial perspective. In addition to regular CSBD human practices cooperations, they also gave us beneficial suggestions on distributing questionnaires online.
We have established a long-time collaboration with Tongji-China since the 4th Southern China Meetup. Our cooperations included: (i) Our projects sharing the chassis E. coli Nissle 1917, we sent this strain to them; (ii) We exchanged ideas about the design of microfluidic chips simulating different human organs; (iii) Safety measurements to be designed in the genetic circuits, when applying engineered probiotics in the human body; (iv) About the dose pattern: Tongji-China suggested spray inhalation for our project and we consulted several experts for verification; (v) The business prospects of novel probiotic therapies implemented in first-tier and second-tier cities in China; (vi) Human practices work like questionnaires promotion. Together, we founded the partnership to promote the ideas of engineered probiotics, and UCAS-China joined in later to develop CSBD.
SUSTech_Shenzhen joined ABC during CCiC. In the 2nd and 3rd workshop, the team introduced to us amazing ideas about modelling. They also participated in producing the ABC handbook.
DUT-China joined ABC during CCiC. In the 2nd and 3rd workshop, the team shared with us their human practices experiences, e.g. their communications with intensive care units for understanding biofilm problems during ventilation. Besides, they illustrated adorable project-related characters in the ABC handbook, which helped complete the brochure.
HK_HCY joined ABC after UM_Macau advertised our partnership in social media. We’re delighted to collaborate with this high school team, and their curiosity and energy impressed us in the 3rd workshop.
High school teams are always bold and energetic, XHD-Wuhan-China deeply impressed us in the collaboration. To help this freshman team better and faster understand this multidisciplinary competition, we mentored the team and participated in several meetings to introduce our iGEM experiences, especially in human practices. Additionally, we gave advice on their questionnaires and promoted their popular science articles in our social media platforms.
TJUSLS_China is one of those iGEM pioneers in China. We’re delighted for the opportunities to exchange ideas of project design and other related topics online with each other, which helped both teams improve the questionnaires and wiki pages.
SCUT-China reached us for communications after ABC released the handbook. Inspired by the handbook, SCUT_China designed similar promotion pages for educational goals.
We very much thank HZAU-China for offering us needed parts mainly in the 2019 iGEM distribution kit (C0179 Plate3 5M, E0040 Plate6 13K, C0171 Plate3 5K, C0160 Plate2 2L, pSB3T5 Plate6 8C, I746361 Plate3 7G, pSB4A5 Plate6 2I, J23100 Plate6 17C, B0010 Plate4 16G(2018)).
Hosted by SZU-China, the 4th Southern China Meetup offered great chances for participants to enhance understanding of iGEM and facilitate further collaborations. For instance, we found that the project of Tongji-China was similar to us in some points. We then generally talked about the possibilities of future teamwork on the use of microfluidic devices, which subsequently contributed to CSBD. After the meetup, SZU-China (they aimed for RNAi-guided biofilm eradication at that time) contacted us and formed Anti-Biofilm Community in alliance with UM_Macau.
Conference of China iGEMer Community (CCiC) is a synthetic biology festival renowned for specialty and interactivity. In this special iGEM season, CCiC turned to an online forum, while those qualities remained. To guide and instruct iGEM teams in China, CCiC invited iGEM committee members to officially answer the questions about the competition, including our doubts regarding safety. In addition, Anti-Biofilm Community and China Synthetic Biotic Delta grew bigger after the conference (with UCAS-China into CSBD; Tsinghua, DUT-China, SUSTech_Shenzhen and HK_HCY into ABC), since the merits of these partnerships shown in our presentation motivated more teams to join in.
Driven by the major idea ‘from LAB (laboratory) to FAB (fabrication)’, we focused more on entrepreneurship after the 7th CCiC. Notably, our work on entrepreneurship had benefited significantly from the schedule of CCiC, which provided freshmen in synthetic biology precious opportunities to communicate with experienced industrial practitioners.
