National Cheng Kung University (NCKU) has always been encouraging students to develop their learning and research potential. Last year, National Cheng Kung University’s Research and Development Office held the first-ever "Undergraduate Research Day", and invited iGEM NCKU Tainan to share about our research experience to stimulate more students to explore the world of research. This year, Undergraduate Research Day was held again - this time at a much bigger scale. We were honored to be given a chance to present again this year. Not only did we talk about iGEM and our project, we also shared about how and why we chose glaucoma as our project. Then, we had a chance to promote our upcoming special event, Into the Darkness. After our presentation, numerous people contacted us to ask about iGEM. We hoped that through our experience sharing, we are able to increase college students’ interest in iGEM, as well as academic and interdisciplinary research.

Another new academic year, another club festival. NCKU club festival is an annual event where all the clubs association in NCKU will introduce and promote their club to the students, especially to the freshmen. We registered for a stall in the festival, where we introduced ourselves and our project this year. Not only that, we also approached them directly and roamed around the festival area to pass flyers. At the same time, we promoted our upcoming events, which were the final topic presentation and contact lens recycling movement. Not only did we want to promote contact lens recycling, we also wanted to collect ideas on what to do with the recycled lenses from the students. Thus, we also asked them how to recycle the contact lens? We got many creative ideas, such as melting the contact lens, then pouring it into a mold, or making the contact lens into art. From this event, we received a lot of positive feedback regarding our project and we were also able to increase student’s awareness and interest about iGEM as quite a number of students contacted our facebook fanpage, asking about iGEM and how to join it.

Despite the pandemic, we were thankful that we were still able to join the iGEM Taiwan Meet-up conference in person. Held by National Chung Hsing University in Taichung, this two days event allowed the Taiwanese iGEM teams to meet each other and shared about their project through the presentation and the poster session. After the presentation, there was a Q&A session, where we could obtain a lot of constructive feedback from the teachers and other students regarding our project. We also learned to improve our presentation style and the way to answer the questions. There were also several guest speakers, including a previous iGEMer who had managed to turn their iGEM project into a startup - which inspired us to keep developing our project to eventually be realized one day. More than that, we also got to know each of the team’s superb projects and network with each other. Simultaneously, we took this opportunity to promote our partnership event, "I've Gotta PhD" with iGEM CSMU Taiwan.

Before we voted for Eye kNOw as our final project, we held a topic presentation. After our brainstorming, we were separated into three groups to propose their topics, which were, targeting iron as a treatment for cellulitis, sense plant's nitrogen status to solve over-fertilization, and expressing nitric oxide as a treatment for glaucoma. After a couple months of progress and development, we then presented our topics to the teachers and the students at our university. We also gave them an opportunity to vote for a topic that interested them the most and write a review. Each group had a 20 minutes presentation and 10 minutes of QA session. It allowed us to find the problems in our projects and improve them before deciding on our final project.

Some members of iGEM Mingdao came to Tainan, and also visited us in NCKU. We had lunch together and exchanged both team’s projects. Through this meal, both teams received many feedback regarding both projects. As both our teams are working on therapeutics track, we were able to discuss how we dealt with biosafety.

We were delighted to have a video call with iGEM NCTU Formosa. We talked about our project and gave feedback to each other. During this video call, we were asked multiple questions, especially about the biosafety of our contact lens. This allowed us to pay attention to our biosafety more. Beside our project, we also talked about the experiments and plans for human practices.

We were honored to have lunch with the president of NCKU, Dr. Huey-Jen Jenny Su. She has been very supportive of iGEM NCKU Tainan since the very beginning. We introduced ourselves and what we want to achieve for the competition. The president gave us a lot of encouragement and valuable advice, such as how to improve as a team. We are thankful for the massive support from the school.

GenScript is a global leading biotech company which has been supporting iGEM since 2009. This year, they offer a grant for GenScript products and services through the MolecularCloud platform. Through joining this grant scholarship opportunity, we had the chance to be interviewed by MolecularCloud through Instagram Live. We talked about the mechanism of our project, how did COVID-19 affect our lab work and raise glaucoma awareness. This live interview was a new experience for us. We hoped that through this interview, we are able to widen our platform and let more people understand about glaucoma, and also what we are trying to do.

Due to COVID-19 pandemic, everything is happening online - including iGEM meetups. This gave us the opportunity to join the many overseas iGEM meetups that we might not have the chance to join in normal circumstances. Due to this, we are able to network with many other iGEM teams that are on the other side of the world.

We joined these meetups:

1. 2nd Annual iGEM Meetup – Asia by iGEM iBowu China (August 15)

2. iGEMeetParis - Worldwide Virtual Meetup hosted by Parisian teams by iGEM IONIS Paris, iGEM Sorbonne, iGEM Paris Saclay, iGEM Evry, iGEM Paris Bettencourt (September 5-6)

3. cGEM (Canadian Genetically Engineered Machine) Conference by Amy Yeung, Jehoshua Sharma, Luana Langlois (former iGEM team presidents from Toronto, Guelph, and Western, respectively) (October 3-4)

Most of the meetups provided opportunities for teams to give a short pitch on their project. This opportunity allowed us to find some bugs and issues in our projects that we have never thought of before, such as how we can ensure our bacteria’s metabolic products won’t harm our eyes. In addition to the presentations, there are also many other interesting events, such as workshops and socializing events. We were very excited to meet other iGEMers, and we had a lovely time communicating with them.

While in the process of developing our project, we realized that raising awareness about glaucoma and blindness plays an important role in realizing the potential of our project. When it comes to many eye diseases, including glaucoma, a little preventive care can prevent the afflictions in the first place. But, people are just not aware of the importance of eye care. Hence, we decided to spur people’s awareness by letting them experience what blindness is like, hoping that this experience can encourage them to take care of their eyes.

We first thought of launching our own ‘Dining in the Dark’ experience, a culinary experience in which people will try to eat a full meal in the dark. However, in order to appeal to the college students, we planned to include more sensory-engaging activities in the dark other than just eating. Eventually, we combined this with live-action role-playing, or better known as LARP, where players portray a character and embark on a role-playing adventure. With an intriguing storyline and interesting hints, we launched our very first LARP game, Into the Darkness.

We simulated a dark environment by covering any source of light in a room and used low budget DIY equipment for the hints. Not only will players be able to experience the life of the visually impaired through the sensory-engaging activities, they are also able to learn about synthetic biology through this new and fresh approach. More than that, they will have a chance to use their critical thinking and problem-solving skills to solve the hints and win the game. Deprived of their sense of vision, players will need to rely on their other senses in order to succeed in this LARP game.

Into the Darkness was held in the Department of System and Naval Mechatronic Engineering in our university for a limited two-days event. Since its unveiling, Into the Darkness was played by a total of 11 teams, with a total of over 60 players. We received many positive responses, and thus proved that Into the Darkness was a massive hit!

“Dr. X’s biological weapon research was successful! Everyone gathered in the laboratory to get a glimpse of the results. Suddenly, the biological weapon containing the APEX virus was destroyed! It will cause blindness immediately to anyone that is exposed to it. Can you find the antidote to restore your eyesight? And find out who destroyed the weapon?”

We made use of two separate classrooms that have been specially decorated to help players immerse themselves in the experience - a conference room and Dr. X’s laboratory. Into the Darkness consists of three stages, with a total playtime of 60 minutes. The three stages will use up around 18 minutes, 35 minutes and 7 minutes respectively.

Here, we provided a map of the game, as well as a short description of the three stages to get a visual representation of our Into the Darkness special event.

Stage 1: Find the antidote

The players will first choose or draw the roles they will be playing, before gathering in the conference room and reading about their character's guide to understand about their characters, and they are allowed to communicate with other characters. To signal the start of the game, a bomb sound effect is played, indicating that the biological weapon has been destroyed. This is when the lights will be turned off, turning the whole room dark, indicating that the players have lost their eyesight because of the virus. To restore their eyesight, the players must find the keys hanging on the wall, there are 4 keys in total. After obtaining the correct key, they can open the box beside the table. However, inside the box, there are packages of snacks and a locked box containing the antidote. To open the box, the players must eat the packages of snacks with different flavors. The code for the key is according to the number of packages, sour-sweet-spicy-salty. After breaking the code, the lights will turn on, indicating the players have regained their eyesight and they can now move to the second stage.

Stage 2: Find the hints

All of the hints are located in Dr. X's laboratory. But, before searching for the hints, players must stop the ventilation system and prevent the virus from spreading out of the lab. To stop it they have to enter a password into the laptop. After solving the problem, players are then allowed to search for the hints. Players are also allowed to hide the hints that might disadvantage them.

Stage 3: Find the culprit

After finding the hints, the players will go back to the conference room and discuss who might be the culprit with the hints they founded. After that, we ask each player to vote for 2 people who they think might be the culprit, then they are allowed to defend themselves. Finally, the players will vote who is the final culprit.

We also provided a guidebook on how to reproduce Into the Darkness, so please be sure to check it out! (pdf file)