Our Parts

Our Judging Criteria

Bronze

1. We have registered our team, spent a full summer, and plan to enjoy a feast of knowledge and culture at the Giant Jamboree.
2. We have successfully completed and submitted the iGEM 2015 Judging form.
3. Our story of Synthetic Intelligent Ranger E. coli for Nematodes (SIRENS) are described using the iGEM wiki. And we have designed, built and characterized several new functional standard biobricks including:
Parts
4. We made a poster and presentation, which is going to be presented at the Giant Jamboree.
5. The attributions of our work is clearly, and we have distinguished the work done by us and work down by others in the wiki.

Silver

1. We have designed, built and experimentally validated four new functional biobricks and submitted characterization data to the Registry of Standard Biological Parts.
2. Three new parts that we designed have been submitted to the Registry of Standard Biological Parts.
3. Safety
   1. Laboratory safety: All of our laboratory members did the safety training before. We must fill out the log sheet of the laboratory safety after the inspection tour.
   2. Environmental safety: Firstly, we have evaluated the project feasibility and its relating security issue. In order to ensure that “Sirens” will work efficiently in the condition as we expect, we construct a photo-induction reverse promoter which can reverse to regulate the time that the toxin release. In addition we designed a suicide switch designed for E. coli depending on quorum sensing. After E.coli attracts and kills the nematodes, it will not spread into the environment. Finally we also built a device which can restrict the spread of the nematodes.
   3. Proper usage of pesticide: We did a survey aiming at the application of the pesticide in Ceyu village, Hebei province. The investigation object includes government staff, pesticide individual dealers, farmers and so on.

Gold

1. Policy&Practice
   1. Interview the specialist of nematodes research to improve our project: We interviewed prof. Liu Xingzhong and communicated with him to improve our design. We improved the method of verifying if compounds can attract nematodes under the suggestion of prof. Liu
   2. Consult specialist about laws and regulations: We interviewed Dr. Yan Houfu, from school of law, Beijing Normal University. We consult him about the laws and regulation of bio-safety in China, the laws about protection of peasants’ rights and interests, governmental measures about popularizing agricultural technology.
   3. Survey about safety mechanism in different teams: We sent an e-mail to different teams in this track to get a general knowledge about safety mechanism in each team. We also summarized how to establish a safety mechanism according to the replies from different teams.
   4. The research in the country of Heibei province: We did a research which lasted 2 days in Jingxian in Heibei province. We interviewed some Rural safety officers, Pesticide sellers and farmers in order to acknowledge whether Agricultural workers at the local level have knowledge of myth about the Nematode pests.
   5. Soil nematodes screening and proposal: We tested the soil sample collecting from Hebei Province during our survey. We identified and count the nematodes in the sample. We also table a proposal to Chinese government for precaution nematode pests according to the results of our survey.
   6. Voluntary educational service: We provided rural schools students with voluntary educational service during the survey and scientific propaganda, aiming at offering a scientific perspective for students there through our words and deeds.
   7. Conference: We took part in NCTU conference and CCiC and gave a presentation in these conferences. We also improved our project during our communication in the conferences.
   8. Communication: We communicated and exchanged our ideas with BIT-CHINA, FAFU-China and ZJU-China. Through the collaboration with each other, we all got improvement.
   9. Public scientific propaganda: we established our weChat public platform, gave scientific lectures for rural schools students and organized an open day of our BNU lab. Public engagement can let people make better understanding about our project.
2. We offered BIT-China meticulous help in the expression of the membrane protein, NhaA and NhaB, and the modeling.
3. We have characterized a previously existing BioBrick Part——the light senser system( BBa_I15008, BBa_I15009, BBa_K592000 and BBa_R0082), see the improvement page for more information.
4. We have demonstrated a functional prototype of our project. We built a device based on the experiment and the data from modeling and wet lab. And we simulated the way of using our device in the laboratory.