Meets Up
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:
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 |
Meets Up
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.
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.Meets Up
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.
Fig.4 The audience are listening.
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.
