Team:WHU-China/Partnership
It’s believed that the long-period and multi-theme partnership is more susceptible to catalyze ‘chemical reaction’ among teams than those occasional collaborations. This year, we co-founded and founded Anti-Biofilm Community and China Synthetic Biotic Delta, based on similarities shared by the participants, i.e. biofilm-related trouble shooting and medical applications of engineered probiotics respectively. Furthermore, the stable bonds also bestowed us with genuine friendships.
Graphical Design: The logo is designed by SZU-China. The central elements of ABC include clouds for online collaborations, sea for inclusivity, seagulls for freedom, etc. WHU-China suggested to call the partnership ‘Anti-Biofilm Community’ for two key reasons: the easy-to-remember abbreviation ‘ABC’ and the explicit meaning.
Members: WHU-China, UM_Macau, Tsinghua, DUT-China, SUSTech_Shenzhen, HK_HCY, (SZU-China).
Period: From June to October.
Right after the 4th southern China meetup, SZU-China contacted us for a partnership that highlighted synthetic biology measurements to tackle biofilms. The original members are SZU-China, WHU-China and UM_Macau. On July 31st, we established the first workshop for mutual understanding and ‘project debugging’. Several ideas about future multi-topic collaborations were also proposed, including a handbook of ABC.
Unfortunately, in mid-August, SZU-China changed their project to a non-biofilm-related one, and entrusted us, WHU-China, to run the Anti-Biofilm Community. During CCiC, Tsinghua, DUT-China and SUSTech_Shenzhen made their requests, and ABC expanded to a five-member partnership. On September 2nd, we hosted the 2nd workshop of ABC. Through two-hour enjoyable debates, five major directions for ABC to advance were recapitulated:
(i) To design biofilm experiments and share quantitative methods;
(ii) To share expert interview information, with the focus on biofilm issues in medical devices, environment, etc.;
(iii) To produce a handbook of ABC for educational aims;
(iv) To work together on biofilm-related hardware and modelling, considering interactions of microorganisms, biofilm quantification and fluidic environment;
(v) To promote ABC overseas.
On September 25th, we hosted the 3rd workshop of ABC. Also, UM_Macau invited the high school team HK_HCY to join. Together, we discussed the design of iGEM-required outcomes (promotion video, wiki, poster and presentation video), and continued to make progresses in the directions proposed in the 2nd workshop.
In summary, the partnership Anti-Biofilm Community ended up with diverse accomplishments:
(i) Deepened understanding of iGEM and biofilms, and improved project design through multiple rounds of ‘debugging’;
(ii) Successful troubleshooting in biofilm-related experiment design and implementation;
(iii) Beneficial mutual help on modelling and hardware;
(iv) Reciprocal human practices based on critical information sharing and educational materials promotion;
(v) An efficient platform for two or three teams to advance on specific similarities;
(vi) A meaningful popular science handbook to not only spread the scientific concept of biofilms, but record the stories of ABC.
Respects to all the ABC members!
Graphical Design: The logo is designed by WHU-China. The main triangle is depicted based on the positions of Beijing, Shanghai and Wuhan in the map, with three colors representative for these cities chosen (red for Beijing, blue for Shanghai, orange for Wuhan). Beijing, Shanghai and Wuhan are all great biotechnology cities in China, and our cooperations seek for engineered probiotic-related policies and commercial prospects, supported by abundant yet distinct city resources. The nomenclature ‘China Synthetic Biotic Delta’ is derived from the great concept ‘Synthetic Biotic Medicine™’ of Synlogic, from which our cooperations learned a lot.
Members: WHU-China, Tongji-China, UCAS-China.
Period: From June to October.
It’s lucky for us to make acquaintance with Tongji-China at the 4th Southern China Meetup, since lots of keywords are shared in our projects. In the group chat, we exchanged the methods and expectations of our projects in a relaxed mood. The initiatory attempts for collaborations went smoothly, which encompassed the sharing of strains and human practices results, and a little advance on organ-mimicking chips.
During CCiC, the probiotic-related questionnaire delivered by UCAS-China aroused our interest, and we invited them to strengthen our alliance. Coincidentally, members of the partnership were from three major cities with policy preferences on biotechnology industry, Beijing (UCAS-China), Shanghai (Tongji-China) and Wuhan (WHU-China), thus we named the partnership ‘China Synthetic Biotic Delta’. Through several discussions, we determined our future directions: (i) Surveying the development of engineered probiotics in three famous biotechnology cities; (ii) Demonstrating the feasibility of organ-simulating chips in our project, from theory to practice; (iii) Illustrating the biosafety of using GMOs inside human body by wet-lab or mathematical methods.
As the initiator, we provided a template for individualized business plan, called ‘a collaborative manuscript for engineered probiotic start-ups’, on the basis of knowledges gained from Synlogic, Seres Therapeutics, the McKinsey Report and government documents. To accomplish part ii, we contacted emulatebio, a professional chip company, and UCAS-China searched for researchers in relevant areas. In part iii, in one hand, a collection of safety parts was envisioned, in the other hand, the efforts to establish a universal model to calculate the lasting time of engineered probiotics in the mucosa of different positions of human body didn’t lead to success.
In summary, the partnership China Synthetic Biotic Delta ended up with diverse accomplishments:
(i) A comprehensive outlook on proposed implementation and entrepreneurship of engineered probiotics in three famous biotechnology cities, with business plans presented as the end product;
(ii) Different strategies to make sure the safety of engineered probiotics were summarized, including toxin-antitoxin system (WHU-China), temperature-dependent suicide switch (UCAS-China), arabinose-dependent suicide switch (Tongji-China);
(iii) The feasibility of implementing microfluidic chips that enable simulation of human organs to demonstrate our projects was discussed;
(iv) The idea of proposing a universal model to calculate the lasting time of engineered probiotics in the mucosa of different positions of human body, e.g. respiratory tract (WHU-China), stomach (UCAS-China), and gut (Tongji-China), was discussed, and later illuminated us to develop a spatial model;
(v) Reciprocal human practices based on critical information sharing and educational materials promotion.
Unforgettable memories for CSBD members!
