Difference between revisions of "Team:WHU-China/Practices"

In Wuhan City, three universities, WHU-China, HUST-China and HZAU-China, have registered their iGEM teams. To enhance the communication and cooperation among iGEM teams in Wuhan, Wuhan University hosted the iGEM Exchange Conference. We focused on problems we faced in experiments, human practices, etc. and shared the experience in solving them. Moreover, a blueprint of establishing a league to improve our collaboration has been discussed. Time: July 29.2015 Location: College of Life Sciences, Wuhan University Fig.1 Group photo taken in lab. Schedule:

Time	Items	Remarks
09:30-09:40	Register
09:40-10:00	opening ceremony	Introduction & Keynote Speeches
10:00-10:30	presentation of HUST	20 min for speech; 10 min for Q&A
10:30-11:00	presentation of HZAU	20 min for speech; 10 min for Q&A
11:00-11:30	presentation of WHU	20 min for speech; 10 min for Q&A
11:30-12:30	Lunch	having a break; further discussion and communication
12:30-14:30	Experience Sharing	discussing about the problems existing during the preparation
14:30	Lab Visiting as an End	Group photo; Contact information exchange

Presentation: During the presentation, every team briefly introduced principles, methods and goals of their project. Everyone got to know the project of each other. Therefore, the audience could provide suggestions which might help improve the projects when speakers asked for suggestions at the end of the presentation. Some suggestions were further discussed latter and comparison of different idea was made for an optimized solution. Fig.2 Presentation of WHU-China,HUST-China and HZAU-China. Experience Sharing: Every team has its own way to overcome the difficulties throughout the project. Thus inspiration could be gained by listening to the stories and experience of each other. In the experience sharing section, we drew attention to difficulties in lab work, human practice, mathematic modeling and operation of the team. The following parts describe the conclusion we made that day in details: Fig.3 Discussion during the break.

1. lab work:

Key Problem: The unexpected failure of some experiments troubles all the teams a lot. On the one hand, even a single operation in the experiment could lead to such failure and thus experienced members are needed to give instructions at the critical time. On the other hand, the inadequacy of control tests makes it ambitious to reason the failure out. Inexperienced members don't know how to set adequate control test during molecular cloning experiments for too many details should be involved. Details include whether the enzymes or antibiotics work, the efficiency of competent cells, the purity of the DNA, etc. But generally speaking, most of team members lack experience because few of the experienced members from the team of last year would remain in the team this year and that's the point of the problem.

Solution: Seek for help more frequently! More face-to-face talk with professors in College of Life Sciences and senior students in the lab! Though seeking for help online is useful and convenient sometimes, but it's hard to make your problems clear by chatting online. Talking to those experienced lab workers face to face, you can not only convey your problems to them unambiguously and get the solution but also learn how they design their experiments and estimate an experiment.

2. Human Practices:

Key Problem: Some of our projects focused on putting forward some brand-new concepts to promote the development of a subject. Because the projects are a bit far away from daily life and cannot be put into use at once, how it would affect our future remains unknown and the importance of it would be hard to convey to the public. Therefore, we must think different when designing meaningful and feasible human practices for such projects. Solutions: Do some research related to your project and prepare for the future use of your project in this way. For example, chatting with scientists who might get interested in that emerging field and get idea about the role your project could play in that field. Cooperate with local science museums. Science museums are places where the public gains knowledge of science. Lectures or other activities held there might impress the public and change their mind about the field that your project is in. Getting familiar with that field, people would be willing to know more about your project. Combine the human practices with other social practices. Every summer, many universities in China require students to do some social practices. When some members of iGEM team do their own social practices, they can bring a piece of questionnaire or two with them and do the human practices of iGEM by the way, suggested by the HUST-China iGEM team. Fig.4 The audience are listening.

3. Mathematical Modeling

Key Problem: Students who major in biology are usually not familiar with functions needed for mathematical modeling. Many of us find it hard to learn by reading books ourselves. Students of mathematic could aid in modeling, but we find it hard to communicate with them fluently for we don't understand each other sometimes. Solution: Turn to students major in bioinformatic for help. Invite them to teach a class on modeling in biology. Moreover, they can help explain your project to students majoring in math. If there's no students of bioinformatics in your college, invite students of other universities in the league (shown below) to come and help!

4.Blueprint - the League

Three iGEM teams in Wuhan, China uniting into a league could bring great convenience. Closely attached to each other and contacting more frequently, we can make better use of our resources by sharing them. Experienced web site designer, mathematic model builder, human practice organizer, etc. are sometimes hard to find or cultivate. Hence, encouraging them to help other teams in the league would save each team lots of time. Furthermore, some devices or facility could be shared.