Team Collaboration
iGEM at Jiangsu Normal University
![](https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2016/7/7b/Stu_%281%29.png)
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
![](https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2016/7/74/Stu_%282%29.png)
![](https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2016/e/ec/Stu_%283%29.png)
This year, our team launched the collaboration with the iGEM team at Tsinghua University.
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.Questionnaire
A questionnaire about the energy issue was designed and then distributed through the internet. All 37 questions were asked, and here, we performed the core analysis of the questionnaire. We have finally in all collected 231 samples, 15 of which were canceled as invalid samples due to their short answering time (less than 180 seconds). The rest of 216 samples were regarded as valid responds that qualified for further analysis.
1.Respondents’ Backgrounds
A variety of respondents from different age groups, different education backgrounds, and different occupations participated in our questionnaire research. Age distributions can be viewed from the following figure. Among all, the biggest two age groups participating in the questionnaire are 18-25 and 41-50. About 39% of the respondents were from 18 to 25. 13% aged between 31 to 40. More than 35% were aged between 41 to 50. The diagram shows an ideal age distribution aged from 18 to 50, while there were few respondents under 18 or over 50. Based on the survey on education background, over 77% of the participants were well-educated with at least a bachelor degree who surely share sufficient social experience and intellects. These statistics here demonstrate and ensure the statistical significance underlying this questionnaire.2. Awareness of the Energy Issue
When investigated on public awareness the energy issue, most respondents as 78% laid strong emphasis on the problem. They considered the energy issue as an extremely urgent social problem that needed to be solved, which strongly illustrates the huge potential value and promise for our project.![](https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2016/9/96/Stu_%284%29.png)