Team:SCU-China/Collaborations

Collaborations

Nowadays, collaboration between researchers plays a critical role in the process of making important breakthroughs in scientific fields. It is more and more difficult to finish a research project by individual group of researchers. That is why most recent Nobel prizes are shared by 3 different scientists. Similarly, for iGEM projects, the successes of we iGEM teams are also highly rely on the collaboration between different teams, although the level of our projects are far lower than those deserve Nobel prizes.

This year, there are totally 4 iGEM teams, FAFU-CHINA, IngenuityLab_Canada, SCUT-China_A and TMMU_China collaborated with SCU-China, either through one directional help or mutual collaboration between each other. The formats of our collaboration are variable. The details of our collaboration are listed below:

Teams we helped:

1. FAFU-CHINA

In 2016 iGEM competition, iGEM team FAFU-CHINA aimed to use Bt protein family to kill the larva of mosquito, in order to decrease the transition of mosquito borne diseases such as Malaria and Zika. 2A peptide was used to co-express Cry and Cyt toxin (Bt toxin protein family) simultaneously. At the beginning, they cannot express those two proteins, or achieve protein’s function successfully.

After we had a discussion with FAFU-China, we thought it is the 2A peptide residue remained at the end of Cry toxin that affected its function. In order to help them calculate the conservation level of Cry toxin-2A residue protein, our team used Swiss-Model to build a protein model. For Cry4Aa-2A and Cry10Aa-2A, we used homologous model of sequence to predict their functions and activities. Because of the lack of the PDB structure of template Cry11Aa, the homologous model of Cry11Aa-2A is not reliable. Then we used threading method to predict the structure of Cry11Aa-2A. The result shows that we have three reliable model (two homologous model for Cry4Aa-2A and Cry10Aa-2A, and one hidden Markov model for Cry11Aa-2A) to predict their functions.

1) Cry4Aa-2A Homologous Model

Fig.1. 3D homologous model of Cry4Aa-2A

Fig.2. The results of homologous model are reliable because of GMQE and QMEAN.

Fig.3. Local quality estimate of Cry4Aa-2A

Fig.4. GMQE is between 0 and 1, and |Z|score <4, so this homologous model is reliable.

2) Cry11Aa-2A Hidden Markov Model

Fig.5. The hidden 3D Markov model of Cry11Aa-2A.

Fig.6. Secondary structure and disorder prediction

Fig.7. Predicted transmembrane helices

These results proved our hypothesis, and drove FAFU-China to find a new way to realize their purpose.

2. SCUT-China_A (In Wet Lab Experiment)

This year, team SCUT-China_A constructed a pathway for high efficient degradation of organic sulfur in soil in the bacteria, which leads to the odor problem of the sulfur-containing organic component. Similar to our goal about our insole, they also need a proper odor-itself-reduced E. coli strain In the project for the industrialized production. Based on this point, they requested for the tnaA knockout gene E. coli JM109 strain in our project for the optimization in their project.

3. IngenuityLab_Canada (In Human Practice)

This year, team IngenuityLab_Canada explored attaching Photosystem II (PSII) protein to the DNA nanowire to generate a usable current and act as a nanoscale battery. Similar with our goal about our insole, their final goal is to put their nanoscale battery on the market, even on the international market. When it comes to international entrepreneurship, the difference of copyrights and intellectual property between different countries really deserves our considerations.

Based on this point, our international collaboration is a mutual exchange of knowledge and understanding of the policies regarding commercialization of science between China and Canada. The format of our exchange is making a handbook introducing the laws on intellectual property rights protection in our home countries, in order to improve our understanding of the differences on related laws between China and Canada.

The handbook introducing the laws on intellectual property rights protection in China made by our team member Luyu Jia contains the following contents: General Definition and Classification, Patent Law, Trademark Law, Copyright Law, and Trade Secrets. For the full handbook, click me.

Teams helped us:

1. TMMU_China

The assistance provided by TMMU_China mainly focused on the inhibition zone test. The inhibition test towards target microbes Staphylococcus aureus (Foot odor pathogen), Bacillus subtilis (Foot odor pathogen), Klebsiella pnuemoniae (Quality control strain), Escherichia coli (Quality control strain), Enterococcus faecalis (Quality control strain), Microsporum canis (Tinea Pedis pathogen) and Trichophyton rubrum (Tinea Pedis pathogen) were performed by TMMU_China. Unfortunately, they failed at the process of protein purification, which means the test was failed, but we still appreciate their effort on helping us.

2. IngenuityLab_Canada

In correspondence with the handbook introducing the laws on intellectual property rights protection in China made by us, iGEM team IngenuityLab_Canada designed a similar handbook introducing related laws in Canada, which broaden our internationalized horizon on intellectual property laws. For the full handbook made by them, click me.

3. SCUT-China_A

In order to help us while we were trapped at the bottleneck of the process of CecropinXJ prokaryotic expression, they provided us three specialized E.coli BL21 strain (RIPL, Rosetta and pGr07).

RIRL and Rosetta contain rare tRNA in the strain and pGr07 contains plasmid coding molecular chaperones for protein folding. pGr07 is applied in the CecropinXJ expression part in our project.

However, even we used three specialized E.coli BL21 strain (RIPL, Rosetta and pGr07) provided by SCUT-China_A, the results are still not ideal. Further experiments are required.