Team:Nanjing-China/HP/Gold
Overview
Up to now, we have investigated the public opinion about current energy issues and our project by questionnaires, propagated our project to the community by social activities and promoted education among primary school students, as is illustrated in Human Practice Silver. In order to get more ideas and information about our project and tailor it to the current development, we conducted counselling with experts in hydrogen production who gave us significant guidelines to our projects. We also attended as many as conferences as possible to communicate our ideas with students from other universities and establish collaborations with other teams. These wonderful human practice experiences indeed benefit our project and we also spread the principles and ideas of our project to iGEMers all around China. Therefore, we think we are qualified for the human practices gold medal.
Counselling
1. Christopher Chang
In May, we were very lucky to meet with Christopher Chang from UC-Berkeley and discussed our project with him. He showed us amazing ways to mimic hydrogenase using chemical methods and gave us important suggestions about the background knowledge. After the discussion, we took him to tour around the campus.
2. Xinghua Xia
On the afternoon of July 19th, we interviewed with Prof. Zou from state key laboratory of biochemistry in NJU who is an expert in hydrogen production. He introduced to us new methods for hydrogen production such as biomimetic catalysts for hydrogen production. We also got inspired about some chemistry problems in our project. First, the function of S2- in CdS is to change the energy state of Cd. The S2- that we added in our experiment is different from Cys. Thus we should add the control experiment: no S in the solution, add S2-, add Cys. He also advised us to test the size of bandgap for utilization of visible light. Second, he suggested that we should consider the interactions between S2- and protein PbrR. Third, there are two ways for transmembrane electron transduction. Last but not least, we should consider the choice and optimization of reductants. The interview with him was indeed inspiring because Prof. Zou showed us a broader way to think about problems. (Click here to get detailed interview contents.)
3. Zhigang Zou
On September 15th, we are honored to interview Mr.Zou (Zhigang Zou) from Nanjing University. Professor Zhigang Zou is a famous Academician of Chinese Academy of Sciences, researching into photocatalytic material. As a physicist and material scientist, he applied the technology of crystallography to catalyzing the hydrogen production by water electrolysis, and this work was published on Nature in 2001 and simultaneously commented by Science to mark its profound significance.
The biggest question Professors proposed is the reason why we choose E.coli instead of photosynthetic organisms such as algae. Next, Professor Zou’s laboratory has cast light on bio-hydrogen, as Xiong Wei from Zhejiang University would also join the lab after graduation. He planned to perform experiments on hydrogen produced by algae thus Professor Zou would love to establish cooperation with us. Professor Zou suggests that they can propose new thoughts and ideas about our iGEM project and bio-produced hydrogen from subjects of physics and materials. At last we owe our great thanks to Professor Zou Zhigang, Professor Yao Yingfang and Professor Yu Zhentao for their participation and support.
In conclusion, we did learn a lot from the interview. Firstly, we obtained more knowledge about the background of producing hydrogen, and thus, we have a much clearer concept of the current hydrogen-producing situation in China. Secondly, we knew more detailed advantages and disadvantages about hydrogen production catalyzed by nanomaterials. No doubt we received precious encouragements for our project. (Click here to get detailed interview contents.)
Conferences
1. CCiC (Conference of China iGEMer Committee)
On 2nd-4th September, our team was invited by Sun Yat-sen University to attend CCiC (Conference of China iGEMer Committee). The summit was a rehearsal of the Giant Jamboree in September. All the 26 teams invited to the summit were asked to give presentations about their project. The audience can ask questions about them. Besides, previous captains of Peking-iGEM were also invited to give speeches about the development of synthetic biology in China. We also brought our posters with us and discussed our projects with teams all around China.
During CCiC, our posters and presentations were very popular among all of the teams. Some of the iGEM teams that had great interests in our project came up with lots of suggestions and advice, which were of great help to improve our project. We owe great thanks to Mr. Haoqian Zhang, who gave us important suggestions about how to present our project in a logical order. He said that our photosynthetic system could be applied to other model organisms as long as we change the cell surface display protein, which is very inspiring.
The precious experience not only enlightened us about the design of our experiment, but also provided us with new ideas about synthetic biology. The presenters in our team also got more familiar with the presentation.
2. Conferences in Huazhong University of Science and Technology
On July 6th, we collected very precious suggestions from the conference in Huazhong University of Science and Technology. First, team Shanghai Tech A is also doing experiments about constructing a photosynthetic system with CdS, but they are using a special species called Moorella Thermoacetica. There are current seven kinds of bacteria that can transmit electrons. Secondly, a team from Taiwan last year has focused on the protein OmpA, but with low efficiency. We don’t meet this difficulty this year fortunately. Third, a teacher from Taiwan was curious about how to transform such a long gene HyaABCDEF into E.coli. Last, A teacher from Taiwan suggested that the experiments should be done under well-controlled conditions. There are possibilities of false positive and false negative results because of the low concentration of hydrogen. The teacher also suggested that we can either change the contents of the media to reduce loss of hydrogen or add a negative pressure to suck out all the hydrogen.
3. Conferences with five iGEM teams in Zhejiang University
In summer, we got the chance to communicate our projects with other five iGEM teams from Zhejiang University, Tsinghua University, Sun Yet-Sen University and Fudan University. Students from other universities are very interested about our project and come up with many doubts and suggestions. One student from ZJU is interested about the formation of CdS precipitation. He also had his explanations about why red fluorescence intensity becomes darker upon silicon encapsulation. Another student from ZJU suggested that if electrons can’t be conducted across the cell membrane of E.coli, we can try to culture shewanella spp. with E.coli to increase electron transduction efficiency because the flagella of shewanella spp. can help to aggregate E.coli.
This conference indeed helped us familiarize with our project as well as deepen the friendship between different teams in China.
Brochures
To propagate iGEM and make our human practice easier, we also made a beautiful brochure which contains detailed explanations of the iGEM competition. (Click here to get the PDF file.)
Collaborations
Apart from collecting information of our own project during the process this year, we also helped many iGEM teams this year. The iGEMers are a group of young people who have passion about synthetic biology and are representatives of the synthetic biology community. Our close collaborations with each other not only helps us know many friends, but assists in propagating our ideas and projects to the science community all over China.
Collaborations with other iGEM teams
1. Team Tianjin
At the beginning of the summer vocation, team Tianjin contacted us for help and support. They wanted a kind of bacteria called Rhodococcus jostii RHA1. We eagerly contacted Prof. Aijun Liao in our university asking for this species, cultivating it and then mailed Rhodococcus jostii RHA1 timely. After that, when they encountered some difficulties cultivating this species, we assisted them to get technical support about the conditions for culturing this kind of bacteria.
Later, in CCiC conference, we are pleased to know that team Tianjin managed to use Rhodococcus jostii RHA1 successfully and achieved crucial experiment results based on this species. Therefore, we took a picture with each other’s posters together to witness this collaborations. Besides, some of the team members in team Tianjin or team Nanjing-China made great friends and team Tianjin gave special gifts to us during CCiC to express their thanks.
2. Team NEFU-China
We got in touch with NEFU-CHINA during the CCiC conference by asking questions after their presentations. Most of our team members were really interested in their project so we meet them after the Q&A time of the presentation. In this meeting, our team members came up with some great ideas to improve their project. What’s more, when advisors in team NEFU-China put forward their difficulties of proceeding experiments, we offered to share some equipment with them and invited them to our lab. All of the teachers and students in team NEFU-China are excited about this invitation and expressed intense interests in collaboration. Therefore, about one month later, they invited us to their lab for a visit. Team members of our team gave presentations in their lab and both of the teams had a great team communication about iGEM and experiments. However, because of the long distance and the big expenses, they cancelled the plan to come to our lab proceed experiments. Nevertheless, we are communicating through emails and we have supported them with experiment materials as well as suggestions on their experimental design.
3. Team UCAS
We formed collaborations with team UCAS during CCiC’s poster time. We are impressed about their hard work and great courage because they are the youngest team and the oldest students of their school (UCAS has been established three years ago). During the conversation between two teams, they put forward their future plan to use a kind of reusable materials to adhere bacteria, which is exactly the same as we tried last year. The adviser of our team realized immediately that they might have chosen the wrong reusable material. Therefore, we gave them suggestions about choices of reusable materials. Students of their team were grateful hearing this useful suggestion. Moreover, we also provided them with materials shown in the picture, which is used for bacteria aggregation in solution. No doubt that we saved them a lot of time choosing the reusable material and building the right equipment.
Establishment of New iGEM Teams
1. Southeast University
Students from Southeast University are interested to use DNA to manipulate gate control circuit. However, they are not familiar with characteristics of DNA. They are also unaware of iGEM. They came to us for suggestions about how to use DNA to manipulate gate control circuits and expressed their interests in participating iGEM in 2017. Thus we assigned one of our team members, Zhen Li to help them with their project design as well as give them information about the iGEM competition. From then on, we formed intimate collaboration relationship with them and discussed with them every week to track their progress. We even specially designed a brochure containing detailed explanation of iGEM competition to them. (Click here to get the PDF file.) The collaboration goes smoothly and they have already formed ideas about the project in next year’s competition. They will establish a new iGEM team next year with our help!
2. TMMU-China
This year we also cooperated with team TMMU-China, which is a team participating in iGEM for the first time. For starters, we offered timely help to them around May on how to establish a team by sending basic plasmids and answering questions through social media. After many rounds of discussions, we invited them to Nanjing University to have a face-to-face communication about each other’s project on June 9th. In return for this little conference, on September 24th, some of our team members and our team leader joined the meeting up with TMMU-China along with a few other teams. It is indeed a wonderful collaboration experience and both of us benefited a lot from each other by regular discussions. We sincerely hope that we can hear good news from each other in Boston!
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CONTACT
Address
- Life Science Department
- #163 Xianlin Blvd, Qixia District
- Nanjing University
- Nanjing, Jiangsu Province
- P.R. of China
- Zip: 210046
- nanjing_china@163.com
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SPONSORS
南京大学
生命科学学院
SCHOOL OF LIFE SCIENCES
NANJING UNIVERSITY
南京大学
NANJING UNIVERSITY
南京大学
化学化工学院
SCHOOL OF CHEMISTRY AND CHEMICAL ENGINEERING
NANJING UNIVERSITY
