Conference of Central China iGEM Consortium

From September 2nd to 4th, Conference of Central China iGEM Consortium (CCiC) was held in SYSU, Guangzhou. Four members of our team attended the conference. Our instructor, Zhang Haoqian gave the keynote speech to 26 iGEM teams from different cities of China at the opening ceremony of CCiC. With the help of this platform for Chinese iGEM teams to communicate, all the teams got numerous feedbacks from others, including suggestions on the of experiments, heated discussions on circuit design, and reflections on safety and application. Peking performed well during the presentation and poster section and provided many useful suggestions for other iGEM teams during communication. Also, we recognized the limitations and inadequacy of our project which motivated us to make more effort.

Colloquium of four teams at Peking University

In August, we invited three other iGEM teams to attend the meetup in the School of Life Sciences of Peking University, where we met and exchanged ideas with members from Tianjin, BIT-China and UCAS. We introduced our projects and built up mutual facilitation among teams. As one of the first teams in China to attend iGEM, Peking take the responsibility for guiding and helping other first-time contestants, such as UCAS. Additionally, we suggested the members of Tianjin use Golden Gate Assembly methods considering their low efficiency of assembling.

Visiting BIT-China for academic exchange

In the end of July, we visited the iGEM team BIT-China. We shared our project design and gained some feedbacks which might promote us. Zhang Yihao, our instructor, shared with them his iGEM experience and insight into synthetic biology.

The process of BIT-China was hindered because of the problem in RFP expression and asked us for help. By consulting literature and doing experiment, we suggested them to wait for a period to make the color displaying complete or have the protein exposed under UV light.

Communicating with OUC-China

Back to the beginning of July, iGEM team OUC-China visited our team. Zhang Haoqian, our advisor, emphasized the significance of our project, also pointed out the problems and disadvantages of our projects. Then he gave us some advice on how to promote our project and enhance team building.

Offering help to other teams

We assisted several iGEM teams of China by offering them plasmids and other experimental materials.

For instance, our team assisted Jilin-China with Interlab Measurement Study Kit by sending them the plasmid J23117+I13504.

In addition, we mentored a high-school team: BHU_China from July to October. We offered them not only the guidance of fundamental molecular laboratory operating but the experimental materials such as expression vector pET28a and corresponding primers, as well as all enzymes and laboratory equipments.

We also share our signal peptides with BNU-China, including LTIIB, PhoA, OmpA and PelB.