Collaborations

Collaboration with CJUH-JLU-China

First Meeting

Through the statistics of the research directions of each team in the iGEM group in China, BUCT-China initially found a team with a similar direction. We believe that by communicating and discussing with them, we will surely achieve win-win cooperation. On the beautiful night of May 19th, we were honored to have an in-depth communication with the CJUH-JLU-China on the Human Practice work plan and the current progress.

For a few days before the online meeting, BUCT-China had a basic understanding of the experimental objectives and preliminary solutions of each other's project through document communication.

Figure.1 First Online Meeting with CJUH-JLU-China team

Entering the online meeting, we first introduced our mind map of HP work and shared our working ideas with various stakeholders.

It is glad that CJUH-JLU strongly agrees with us and shares with us the progress of the HP work and the next step. Their HP work has gradually started from brainstorming.
Through the communication with them, we learned a lot of HP early work tips and also got a lot of creative and practical inspiration. In short, this communication enabled us to have a clearer plan for HP work. Thanks to CJUH-JLU-China for sharing, we will make progress together in the communication.

Second Meeting

Before this, we had been in close contact on WeChat.

A table of comparison and contrast of our teams' projects is shown below (updated on 6th September 2023).

	BUCT-China team	CJUH-JLU-China team
Portability	Require PCR amplification Require skillful technicians Require PCR machine & fluroscene testing machine	(x) require PCP amplification Only need to add a droplet of sample on the testing paper
Require protein expression?	Large fragment of Bst DNA polymerase (still hadn’t conducted molecular cloning)	Cas13a (already expressed)
Core biotech	polymerase-enabled molecular computing	CRISPR/Cas13a systems
Presentation of product	Testing kit	Testing kit
Number of target substance(s)	Multiple (Not only for detection, but also able to perform molecular calculation which cab be applied for integrated analysis )	Single
Selection of target substances	Bioinformatics analysis	Bioinformatics analysis
Disease	Focus on building a universal and accurate detection system. The disease detection was aimed for proving the universality of our product. Phase I: Distinguish bacterial and viral infection Phase II: Early detection of lung cancer	Early screening for breast cancer
Current testing concentration	pM	nM
Experiment content	Purify DNA expression Design DNA-based molecular probe (quite complicated) Improve LATE-PCR primer Fluroscence test	Purify DNA expression Design crRNA sequence Fluroscene test
Modeling	1. Find lung-cancer-specific miRNA as biomarkers 2. Simulation of reaction kinetics (Stability of the designed DNA-based molecular probes also needed to be evaluated by using NUPACK)	1. Find breast-cancer-specific miRNA as biomarker 2. Evaluate the effectiveness of the designed crRNA sequences 3. Stimulation of crRNA-cas13a complex formation 4. Simulation of reaction kinetics
Testing sample	Blood	Blood

As both teams worked on nucleic acid detection, we had the second meeting to discuss any possible partnership on 6th September 2023. Leader of the BUCT-China, Jiong Huang suggested combining polymerase-enabled molecular computing with their CRISPR/Cas13a system in order to enhance the reliability and accuracy of the system.Click to know more about CJUH-JLU-China

Collaboration with BUCT

In addition to the cooperation with Jilin University, BUCT-China have also conducted close project cooperation with BUCT, another iGEM team at the university. First, we have shared most of our experience and information in raising money from the university.

Through many offline communications, we first agreed on the future of human practice planning and expected results.
The next time, we always maintained communication and cooperation and completed the interview with Dr. Cai Yi from Chinese PLA General Hospital,
We carried out a popularization of synthetic biology through the way of online and offline combination in Beijing University of Chemical University, BUCT-China as the main planner of the school support and won recognition.