COLLABORATION
CORNELL MEETING
July 7, 2019
August 4, 2019
On July 7th 2019, we held a Skype meeting with the Cornell iGEM team. The meeting was mainly about the iGEM competition: logistics about the giant jamboree, expectations for the poster session, ideas for different public engagement activities, and the criteria of the judges during the iGEM competition. Since the Cornell team had prior experience with the competition, their suggestions and tips were constructive as we prepared for our giant jamboree and poster presentation.
On August 4th, 2019, we had a second Skype meeting with the Cornell team. During this meeting, we mainly focused on the direction our team should take in creating the model for our project. The Cornell team went in-depth on their motivation and approach behind the creation of their model last year. From their advice, our team realized that we could learn more about our system by implementing a computer model composed of a series of mathematical equations. Furthermore, the Cornell team recommended us to keep a weekly documentation of all our activities and progress as we proceed with our project so that we can easily organize and manage our Wiki later on.
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Overall, through the meaningful mentoring by the Cornell team, we gained further insight in regards to the iGEM giant jamboree, medal criteria, and inspiration for our modeling. We greatly appreciate their time and effort in advising us for the iGEM competition!
NCKU MEETING
June 27, 2019
July 21, 2019
During our first conference on June 27th, we introduced our team and topic and the NCKU_Tainan team introduced theirs. Following the brief introduction, we asked each other questions regarding our topics. We also asked general questions about the iGEM competition, such as the medal criteria, giant jamboree, and poster presentation, and received suggestions for our lab. Firstly, we wanted to clarify the criteria for the bronze medal measurement section, and we learned that we had to characterize iGEM parts. For example, the NCKU Team told us that they characterized the 2013 anaerobic promotor from iGEM. iGEM has anaerobic promotor inside E.coli, and they tried to repeat the experiment they did in 2013. With the anaerobic promotor, they wanted to characterize the precise condition of our human gut. The next clarification that we needed was the “Improving previous parts” section in the gold medal criteria. They gave us an example saying that if 30% of the cell-penetrating peptide goes into the cell and we increase this efficiency by 50% through a point mutation, this would be an improvement. This Skype session was very valuable to our team because it helped us clarify the medal criteria of the iGEM competition.
On July 21st, we had our next Skype meeting, and during this time, all of our team members gathered together and further asked questions to the NCKU team and received their suggestions. For public engagement, we asked the NCKU team the appropriate age for asking questions about antibodies and antigens. They replied, “The age doesn’t matter! You only need to be able to handle the kids.” Specifically, the NCKU team told us that they gathered survey results from elementary and high school students. Additionally, on our Wiki site, we were unsure on how to present our experiments and data. Specifically, we were wondering if we had to simplify the website so that the readers could understand our project. However, we learned that because the audience will mostly be professionals and experts, we only needed to clearly outline the experiment protocols and include pictures of them. Finally, the major concern our team had was that our CPP-conjugated antibody targeted lysozymes but not a specific cell. Our project was limited due to the scFv that only targeted lysozymes since the antibody had to be small enough to penetrate the cell, and the lysozyme-targeting antibody was our only known intracellular antibody. We wanted to ask if it was acceptable to develop a proof of concept that demonstrates the use of CPP to put the antibody into the cell. In response, we received a confirmation that even if our project was merely a proof of concept, it is acceptable and abiding by the iGEM guidelines.
Ultimately, the NCKU team presented highly meaningful collaboration sessions to us. We greatly appreciate their fruitful feedback regarding our project experiment and activities!
KOREA MEETUP
July 28, 2019
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On July 28, we hosted the first Korea iGEM Meetup in Seoul. During this meetup, our team (KOREA_HS), Team SIS_Korea, and Team KOREA came together to share our project ideas, discuss our current progress in labs and activities, and overcome challenges we have met. First, our team presented our research topic, lab progress, human practice activities, and collaboration events to the two teams. Afterwards, Team SIS_Korea presented their project, which was about inserting recombinant DNA into E.coli’s plasmid so that the E.coli would gain the ability to digest and dissolve plastic. Then, Team KOREA presented their two-part project regarding photoactivatable dopamine receptor D2 fusion protein and photodimerizable transcriptional factor synthesized with CRISPR-dCas9. Following their presentation, we gathered in a circle to ask about each team’s project and general iGEM questions. For example, when Team SIS_Korea and KOREA asked us about team management, we gave us our insights from experience and advised them to divide their team into subgroups (human practice, collaboration, Wiki) and arrange monthly meetings. Furthermore, we asked Team KOREA how they were able to execute crowdfunding, and they advised us to use GoFundMe. Finally, before the end of our meetup, we created a group chat composed of each team’s leaders so that we could ask each other questions. One of the ways our team utilized this meaningful platform was by sending our online survey to the teams so that more people could take part in our study. By hosting the Korea iGEM Meetup, Team KOREA_HS gained so much insight in various aspects of synthetic biology and also received creative solutions on how we could overcome our difficulties.
POSTCARD PROJECT
June 27, 2019
July 21, 2019
Our team participated in the postcard project with Team Duesseldorf. On the front side of the postcard, we included a captivating image of therapeutic antibodies and their intracellular target. We wrote a short description of our team’s project on the back of the postcard. We sent 60 hard copies of our postcards to the Duesseldorf team and received 60 postcards from other iGEM teams around the world. By being a part of a worldwide collaboration effort, the postcard project, we hope to raise awareness of therapeutic intracellular antibodies to different iGEM teams.
KUAS MEETING
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August 20, 2019
On August 20, we conducted a Skype meeting with Team KUAS_Korea. We shared our project ideas and were advised to elaborate on the aim of the project. We asked about KUAS’ project on game theory, which they used for the gold medal criteria. The meeting took 30 minutes.
KUAS had mentored our team specifically on the direction to the modeling criteria such as showing us their last year's work on making mathematical formulas and applying those on a virtual experiment. They suggested if the aim of our project was to resolve a social issue, the idea of the whole project would be less vague. We had to answer the same question from the previous meetings of why the CPP-conjugated antibody is targeting the lysozyme but not a specific cell. The limitations of the CPP-conjugating antibody that the lysozyme targeting antibody was the only CPP-conjugating antibody took further explanation and the response was that if the CPP-conjugating antibody, the scFv can target specific diseases of social issues, it would abide the IGEM guidelines.
The modeling theory was an interesting concept. The cooperator cell and cheater cell would compete against each other, and the cost would be calculated by the formula KUAS created.
They also advanced an existing formula to calculate the glucose absorption rate of the cooperator cell. This gave us insights into areas we could potentially develop. The KUAS team presented informative materials and we appreciate their feedback on our modeling part.
