Team:Nanjing-China/HP/Gold part A
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.
