With SZU-China

This year, we found that our interlab study kit had some problems, so we again asked our “old neighbor”, Shenzhen University for help. They have decided that they would not do interlab study experiment, so they kindly give us their interlab study kit.

It has already became a custom for ous to work with SZU-China iGEM team. It is not easy for anybody to attend the iGEM competition as well as organizing every event well. There will always be unpredictable challenges waiting for everyone. It is quite comforting to have a reliable ally battling by your side through the toughest days.

In September, when we were all busy with our parts construction work, they found that their pSB1C3 backbone provided by the iGEM kit was not working. As a result, their target gene could not be expressed successfully. After changing their antibiotics, LB agar plate, and all kinds of genes inserted, they came to us for help.

We provided them with the original backbone and pSB1C3 with one of our chromoprotein biobrick, which had been constructed with red pigment coding sequence eforRed. It is our favorite design because it could express strong crimson color. It is very suited to be used as a reporter indicating whether a ligation process is correct. Our plasmids played a great role in their following experiments.

With TCU_Taiwan

This year TCU_Taiwan came up with a great idea to use chromoprotein as a reporter to detecting diabetes. As a diagnostic tool, the bacterial indicators were expected to synthesize pigment as fast as possible when detecting glucose level in blood samples or urine samples.

By chance, our team was building our chromoprotein biobricks. With our experience, we reminded them the long expression time of chromoprotein and gave them some suggestions about the probable substitute, such as R-GECO which could respond instantaneously. We really hoped our advice could help them to improve their design and make it perfect.

Special Thanks

We have to mention a special group that help us a lot. That is the whole family of iGEM-China. Chinese students are now making up a significant part in iGEM competition. However, due to the Internet barrier, annoying time zone, and the language difference, many challenges occurred during the whole competition. So we established a social media group to help each other. Each and every one of us benefit from this group a lot. It is the greatest cooperation that can ever come to our doors.

We also want to thank the team from NCKU. They organized a wonderful conference to give the teams in the Asia-pacific area a time to discuss their projects together. We received the warmest welcome from the hospitable team members of NCKU and had a great time during those days. It was a really good opportunity to practice our presentation, and, most importantly, make friends with various persons.