Three "C"s: Collaboration, Conference and Communication

1. Collaboration

(1)Peking University

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(2)Peanut Research Institute of Shandong Academy of Agricultural Sciences

Our team focused on leguminous plants, we contacted with professor Shan in order to have a better recognition of them. Professor Shan works in the peanut institute of Shandong, aiming at genetic breeding. He is warm-hearted and passionate, inviting us to visit the peanut institute of Shandong.

On July.28.2014, we arrived at the peanut institute of Shandong. Doctor. Zhao led us to visit different parts in the institute and in every lab there were several researchers introducing their project to us. Besides, we discussed some questions connected with our project and obtained a lot of guidance.

In the peanut institute, some labs contributed to the growth of peanut so they were familiar with the characteristics of peanut. In addition, there were many high-technic equipment and experimental methods. Luckily, these staff were kind to show them to us and explained in details. With their help, we knew more about peanut’s structure and living habitats in a micro and macro sight. At first, the mechanism of roots confused us, for example how roots deliver nutrition and the rate, so it was a little bit hard for us to set up a model to illustrate this question. One of the professors did research on the model building of roots. He gave us plenty of tips so we had much more enlightenment.

At last, we had a conversation with professor Shan. He talked with us a lot about how to deal with a scientific problem and emphasized the importance of building up a scientific way of thinking. He also encouraged us to overcome various problems which might occur during our project. Though it just was a short visiting, we learned a lot and it helped us improve our experiment.

Three "C"s: Collaboration, Conference and Communication

2. Conferences

(1) The 1st Central China iGEMers’ Meet Up in Wuhan

Communication is essential in researches, because it can inspire us and help us keep pace with the peer. In order to get more frontier news about iGEM, Wang Xuan and Liu Bing participated the The 1st Central China iGEMers’ Meet Up.

The 1st Central China iGEMers' Meet Up in Wuhan

The meeting started on August 23th and lasted for two days. In the afternoon of the first day, Wang Xuan gave a speech on BNU program this year. The highlights of our team were the Mo binding protein and our model work.

Free discussion was also enjoyable. We knew that tropism of E. Coli designed by Imperial College last year had aroused widely attention. Tropism is also a part of our program. Hence, we decided to improve the tropism biobricks besides our main work.

Three "C"s: Collaboration, Conference and Communication

3. Communication

(1) Peking University Health Science Center

(2) Ocean University of China

Communication with Ocean University of China.

During the summer vacation, we contacted with the team of Ocean University of China. And we went to their school by train on July. 28. 2014, visiting their lab and sharing different experience.

The team leader JIANG Ming warmly welcomed our coming. At the beginning, both of the team members introduced themselves and their work, we got familiar with each other quickly and chatted happily. Our talking covered project-design, lab-managing, and team-building. They introduced their project to us briefly and put forward their puzzles. At the same time, we also discussed with them about our questions. Then, they showed us around the lab. They had certain members in charge of the safety, material and equipment of lab. And they divided the working parts clearly. We were impressed that they made a form to clarify every individual’s work so everyone could understand their duty and improve the efficiency. They had a rule that everyone could have a two weeks’ holiday in the summer holiday, therefore researchers can take a rest and better work. Because our team was newly built, we searched for the reasonable management and learned from our mistakes and others’ experience.

Here, thanks for the accompany and communication of ocean university of china.

In Ocean university of china's iGEM Lab

Heated discussion about safety issues

(3) Kyoto University, Janpan

On August 23th, one of BNU iGEM team member, Hou Yuelong, visited Kyoto iGEM team in Kyoto University, Japan. He introduced BNU’s Prometheus Project and Kyoto also shared their magneto tactic bacteria and DMS. We also shared our team building and lab managing stories.

Kyoto iGEM team Lab visit

Poster in front of Kyoto University Agriculture Department

The Story of E.coli Prometheus

BNU-China