Human Practice

1. Meetup at Huazhong Agricultural University

On 23rd and 24th of August, we participated in a sharing conference established by Huazhong Agricultural University. Zhou Yu, Qin Zhen, Rong Hui and Zhang Qiuhao from our team went to Wuhan and met up with students from Peking University, Sun Yat-Sen University, Wuhan University and some other universities. We gave a presentation about our project and also got to know what other teams were busy with. An internet-based group was set up for further discussion. Another team from Wuhan focuses on the fatty acid as well, thus our two teams shared experience for a mutual progress. Although some of the team’s project is quite different from ours, their experience about problems solving is still valuable to us.

2. Internship in Qingdao Institute of Bioenergy and Bioprocess Technology, CAS

In late August, 3 members of our team, Zhou Yu, Rao Bing and Zhu Ruichi, went to Qingdao Institute of Bioenergy and Bioprocess Technology for the function test of the plasmids we built. They conducted a few experiments there including extracting fatty acids and examine the species of fatty acids under the guidance of the PhD students there. One of the significant experiment they did there was they applied fermenter to cultivate a huge amount of E.coli for more quantity of fatty acids.

3. Small-scale Industrialization

After the experiments in Qingdao Institute of Bioenergy and Bioprocess Technology, Zhou Yu went to the factory in Qingdao with our project. He tried to apply what we studied to practice. The technician taught him some experience on fermentation. At the same time, he also learned something from the industry and managed to apply to our project. Huge fermenters were used for fermentation in a large scale.

4. Establishment of an iGEM Club in Nanjing University

A club named iGEM was formed in Nanjing University by our team and another team 'Nanjing-China’. We can publicize the idea of the iGEM competition to other students and thus it can attract more students to join this competition. Furthermore, this club intends to recruit some members from other departments and our team can therefore be more versatile. Anyway, the establishment of this club will enable the iGEM competition to continue at our university in the future.