Team Collaboration

iGEM at Jiangsu Normal University

For this year’s competition, our team collaborated with the iGEM Team at Jiangsu Normal University.

JSNU’s project aims at applying anthocyan to a potential cancer therapy. Their early experiments were conducted based on the (cell type) where (gives a reason why use that cell type). To better test their idea, cancer cells were required for the further explorations. However, in September when they turned to work on the cancer cells, they just realized that those commercialized cancer cell clones were not ideal materials for the experiments, because the pioneer cell generations soon after the reviving were usually not in good condition for the experiments. Only those later cell generations (normally after the fifth generation), could be applied in the test. Additionally, due to the high expense of the cell clone as well as the long time period of the cell culture, it seemed impossible for the team to conducted their further experiments in cancer cells within the time frame necessary.

Thankfully, our team just had the hela cell clone (the ninth generation) in stock which was originally prepared for our previous idea for the iGEM competition. Also, benefiting from some of the group members’ professional skills in cell culture, the cell clone demonstrated good viability. In response to the emergency request from the iGEM at JSNU, we very soon prepared the cell samples according to their needs, and sent the materials immediately.

Meanwhile, the wiki-design team at JSNU provided us assistance in creating avatars, where they drew a serious of cartoon bacteria characters based on the real photos of our team members. These avatars are used and also can be seen at the Team session on our wiki page.

iGEM at Tsinghua University

This year, our team launched the collaboration with the iGEM team at Tsinghua University. (Lechen is going to ask Tsinghua Team to composite this portion.)

To better illustrate our biofilm-based platform strategy, the wiki-design team at Tsinghua University helped us to depict the brief mechanism of our project in a cartoon style. This figure are used and also can be seen at the (where do we use the picture) on our wiki page.

Social Research on the Energy Issue

As we described in the introduction and background session, the importance and urgency to work on the energy issue is obvious. The energy issue is neither just a regional nor national problems, but instead a global. In response to the urgent need, lots of scientific researches have devoted vast efforts and time to those relevant studies, however, only few of which are really able to be put into real usage. Therefore, the key issue for the energy issue is not only the technological advancements, but also the awareness to integrate the scientific results into industrial application to yield concrete social values. With this idea in mind that also accord with the requirements for iGEM Human Practice, this year our team conducted the social research on the energy issue, along with our biofilm based artificial photosynthesis platform.

The main objectives of this social research aim at socially figuring out the background information of the energy issue as well as getting prepared for the further industrialization of our project. To understand the situation more comprehensively, we want to hear various point of views from different aspects, the public, the academic, the industrial, and also the authority. Only when opinions from all these parties are heard, could we fully understand the issue in reality and then figure out a series of feasible solutions to contribute to our society.

This social research were performed briefly in two parts, public questionnaire and interviews. A public questionnaire was firstly implemented to collect general information from the public. Then, we carefully analyzed the data collected. And according to the main concerns and opinions we found through the questionnaire, experts from different walk of life were invited to participate in the interview. Our interviewees included scientists working at the cutting-edge in the field, industrial representatives dedicating to the energy conservation, as well as from the administrative government. With the participation of not only the public and the academic, but also the industrial and the authority, we deeply explored the social background to prepare to integrate and industrialize our project as well as built up necessary social connections for the future supports.