Difference between revisions of "Team:Nankai/Practices"

Revision as of 11:07, 18 September 2015

Medigo Blue, free responsive template

Home
Research & Lab
- Project
- Safety
- Measurements
- Parts
Member
Human Practices
Modeling
iShare

Human Practice: An Amazing Summer！！

As Peter Carr puts it, "Human Practices is the study of how your work affects the world, and how the world affects your work." This summer, Nankai iGEM team worked our best to put the spirits of collaboration and sharing into practice. Not only have we attended many important activities and conferences, but also a new information-sharing platform— iShare has become reality. Let’s see what our team did in this amazing summer!!

1. What is iShare?

During the summer, we ran into many problems when we were working on our experiments. The lack of materials for instance, is one major difficulty that occurred to us. To continue our project, we had to acquire those materials from other laboratories, which involved us into intellectual property issues..

Thanks to the current system of material transformation, we managed to put all the things we needed together. Most of the laboratories would share their resources with us if we sign the material transfer agreement with them. However a small community as Nankai University is, it still took us a long time to find the right materials we needed. We could imagine how difficult if an iGEM team seeks for information about certain materials among the hundreds of previous teams.

As far as we have concerned, iGEM has already established a functional platform for all the participators to share Bio-bricks that have been submitted since the birth of the event, which is absolutely an excellent work for resources sharing. But there is no information about other materials related to the Bio-bricks, such as bacteria strains, antibodies, enzymes and so on. So our suggestion is that iGEM design a special webpage or a section on wiki for iGEM teams to list the materials they use in their experiments. In addition, iGEM teams could label the materials which they are willing to share. And teams who are interested in those materials could contact the owner for more information or a way to acquire the materials. In this way, future teams could have more resources for similar work and may come up with more improvements, while all iGEM need to do is to provide an information platform like “iShare”.

A mature system of all-round resources sharing could definitely make iGEM a better community. Before it could be accomplished, let’s make the first step by setting up an information sharing platform to promote material sharing. Team Nankai has already designed a model for i-Share. See more information on our wiki, and join us to make iShare better and better!

2. iShare Survey

This Summer we have sent iShare Survey to more than 280 iGEM teams. Thanks to every team participating in the survey, we got precious data and many constructive advice on iShare. Here is the result!!.

If you want to participate in the survey, Click here.

5. How do we use γ-PGA?

This is our team!

Team Nankai 2015 is consist of 9 junior students, 11 senior students and 5 instructors. With our team established in March 2015, we are more than excited to join the big community of iGEM.

The idea of synthetic biology attracted us in a way that other fields of study never could, and our passion about science is the engine that has led us all the way through obstacles and setbacks. We are persevering and capable as a research team. However, at spare times, we are just a group of fun-loving young college students. There is always an atmosphere of anticipation that we could blend into iGEM community. So we are looking forward to seeing you at the Giant Jamboree! Want to know more about us? click here……

Do you know……?

What is “Pudding Health kit”? Pudding Health kit is actually a jelly-like unguent made of poly-γ-glutamic acid (γ-PGA) and wound healing medicines. It aims at mitigating prolonged inflammations during the process of tissue regeneration, and speeding up the healing process of chronic wounds like diabetic wounds.

What is Poly-γ-glutamic acid? Poly-γ-glutamic acid, i.e. γ-PGA, is an important, naturally occurring polyamide which exhibits excellent peculiarity in water retention and sustained drug release. How is γ-PGA produced? We used engineered Bacillus amyloliquefaciens LL3 for mass production of γ-PGA, yet the original B. amyloliquefaciens LL3 strain that we isolated from fermented food could only produce γ-PGA at a very low yield.

Wonder how we did it? Click here to learn more………

We prepared SOD loaded γ-PGA hydrogel for wound healing. SOD was loaded into hydrogels to scavenge the superoxide anion and γ-PGA was modified with taurine to load more SOD. γ-PGA hydrogel had high water absorption properties delivering the important moist environment. SOD released from the hydrogel maintained high enzyme activity and SOD-γ-PGA hydrogel could scavenge the superoxide anion effectively. In vivo results showed that SOD-γ-PGA hydrogel could promote collagen deposition, epithelialization, and accelerate the healing of moderately exuding wounds. Therefore, SOD-γ-PGA hydrogel would be a good candidate for wound healing applications. Learn more on Pudding Health Kit.

References

1. Ashiuchi, M., Misono, H., 2002. Biochemistry and molecular genetics of poly-γ-glutamate synthesis. Appl. Biochem. Biotechnol. 59, 9–14.
2. Kunioka, M., 1997. Biosynthesis and chemical reactions of poly(amino acid)s from microorganisms. Appl. Microbiol. Biotechnol. 47, 469–475.
3. Shih, I.L., Van, Y.T., 2001. The production of poly(γ-glutamic acid) from microorganism and its various applications. Bioresour. Technol. 79, 207–225.
4. Li, C., 2002. Poly(L-glutamic acid)--anticancer drug conjugates. Adv. Drug Deliver. Rev. 54, 695–713.
5. Liang, H.F., Chen, C.T., Chen, S.C., Kulkarni, A.R., Chiu, Y.L., Chen, M.C., Sung, H.W., 2006. Paclitaxel-loaded poly(γ-glutamic acid)-poly(lactide) nanoparticles as a targeted drug delivery system for the treatment of liver cancer. Biomaterials. 27, 2051–2059.
6. Richard, A., Margaritis, A., 2001. Poly (glutamic acid) for biomedical applications. Crit. Rev. Biotechnol. 21, 219–232.
7. Park, Y.J., Liang, J., Yang, Z., Yang, V.C., 2001. Controlled release of clot-dissolving tissue-type plasmmogen activator from a poly(L-glutamic acid) semi-interpenetrating polymer network hydrogel. J. Control. Release. 74, 243–247.
8. Cao, M.F., Geng, W.T., Liu, L., Song, C.J., Xie, H., Guo, W.B., Jin, Y.H., Wang, S.F., 2011. Glutamic acid independent production of poly-γ-glutamic acid by Bacillus amyloliquefaciens LL3 and cloning of pgsBCA genes. Bioresour. Technol. 102, 4251–4257.
9. Geng, W.T., Cao, M.F., Song, C.J., Xie, H., Liu, L., Yang, C., Feng, J., Zhang, W., Jin, Y.H., Du, Y., Wang, S.F., 2011. Complete genome sequence of Bacillus amyloliquefaciens LL3, which exhibits glutamic acid-independent production of poly-γ-glutamic acid. J. Bacteriol. 193, 3393–3394.
10. Feng, J., Gao, W.X., Gu, Y.Y., Zhang, W., Cao, M.F., Song, C.J., Zhang, P., Sun, M., Yang, C., Wang, S.F., 2014a. Functions of poly-gamma-glutamic acid (γ-PGA) degradation genes in γ-PGA synthesis and cell morphology maintenance. Appl. Microbiol. Biotechnol. 98, 6397–6407.
11. Uy, D., Delaunay S., Germain, P., Engasser, J.M., Goergen, J.L. 2003. Instability of glutamate production by Corynebacterium glutamicum 2262 in continuous culture using the temperature-triggered process. J. Biotech. 104, 173-184.