Collaborations

Apart from working on our project, our team also respect the “iGEM values” very much. We believe that through co-operating with other iGEM teams, we can share our passion and assist each other to create better results.

(1) Lab Work and Modelling Collaborations with City University of Hong Kong

For this collaboration, our team members visited each other’s university and presented our projects with the team members and professors. During the visit, we have reached an agreement on collaboration of which we would help them to do characterization on the expression of the lacZY gene. And they helped us to do a part of the modeling for the application part of our project.

CityU team provided us 2 plasmids for the characterization:

1. Pro LacZY

2. Pro LacZ(control)

Theoretically, only the E. coli containing LacZY would absorb ortho-Nitrophenyl-β-galactoside (OPNG) which is a lactose analogue. Then the beta-galactosidase produced by the LacZY E. coli would convert the OPNG into galactose and ortho-nitrophenol, which is yellow in colour and absorbs at 420 nm. Therefore we can measure OD₄₂₀ to monitor the expression of LacZY.

Procedures:

1. Prepare an overnight culture of LacZ and LacZY in E. coli.

2. Measure the OD₄₂₀ of the overnight culture and dilute it into ~0.5 OD.

3. Add OPNG solution into the sample.

4. Measure OD₄₂₀ at 20 min intervals.

(2) International Questionnaire with 10 Different Universities Worldwide

CUHK was honoured to be in cooperation with 10 various different universities to conduct an international questionnaire on synthetic biology and on our respective projects. The universities which participated were Technische Universität Berlin, Beijing Institute of Technology, Universidade de São Paulo, Chang Gung University, University of Leicester, Université de Toulouse, TianjinUniversity, Kungliga Tekniska högskolan, Karolinska Institutet and University College London. Responses were collected from the location where the universities are located. This helped to collect opinions from around the world, not only confined to Hong Kong. We can distinguish the importance and acceptance of our project in a much larger scale of different places worldwide.

(3) UCSF iGEM Team WikiFlicks

For collaboration and to enable people worldwide to further understand synthetic biology and our project, we also worked with the UCSF iGEM Team. Which is a team that includes students from UC Berkeley, San Francisco State University, and recent graduates from Lincoln High School in San Francisco. Through this collaboration, we were able to present our videos on the UCSF iGEM Team’s WikiFlicks. This enable us to spread the message to a much greater number of audience.