Difference between revisions of "Team:Nanjing-China/Collaborations"

Collaboration is always important in the science community, let alone the iGEM competition. It is important for different teams to exchange ideas with each other, as well as help each other to deal with difficulties and solve problems. The iGEMers from all over the world are in a big family and there is no doubt to give each other a hand. Besides, it is also important to propagate iGEM to new people and help them establish a new team.

This year, our team Nanjing-China formed close collaborations with three iGEM teams and helped to establish two new undergraduate 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.

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) 点击这里出来那个Igem propagation brochure的pdf文件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!