“Collaboration", which means "going both ways". iGEM teamwork is about providing a stronger force between us and our friend teams to help us solve each other’s problems, meet our own needs, and build deep friendships in the process! From different iGEM teams all over the world, our UM-Macau are honored to be able to work with each other to get a lot of feedback, ideas and to learn from each other's strengths and weaknesses.How those iGEM teams reached out to us for collaboration shows the importance and need for collaboration even more.

Organizing the “Synbio Rainbow” coloring book for education

Figures 3.3.1 UM-Macau, OUC-China

Our team contributes to the “Synbio Rainbow '' coloring book educational activity by giving the formal name of this event and adding our coloring pages story about our project with other 11 teams over the world. As a follow-up to the event, we also collaborated with the Macau Down Syndrome Association by providing them with the works of two other iGEM teams that also participated in this coloring book event, providing local Down Syndrome children in Macau with the opportunity to rely on drawing for their ability training.

Figures 3.3.2/3.3.3 UM-Macau Coloring book illustration in this Synbio Rainbow event.

Figures 3.3.4/3.3.5 In the UM-Macau part, the event was held together with the local Down Syndrome Association.

Synbio-rainbow coloring book collection

Figure 3.3.6 This is a list of the teams participating in the event

Organizing the 1st iGBA Forum

Figure 3.3.7/3.3.8/ 3.3.9/3.3.10
Logo of UM-Macau, BNUZH-China, SZU-China, HKUST.

This year, UM-Macau, together with the other three teams located in the Greater Bay Area, combined the characteristics of our region, which has a large number of iGEM teams and a dense distribution of biotechnology industries. Our four co-organizers innovated the traditional team-team exchange mode, and jointly opened up a new form of team-enterprise communication, based on the team-enterprise salon and enterprise factory tour, to help each team understand the social positioning and future development of their projects from the perspective of industry, academia and research. With the cooperation of our four teams, we put this forum into practice in just one month and held it successfully on 19-20 August.

Figures 3.3.11/3.3.12/3.3.13 The successful held 1st iGBA Forum during 19-20 August.

The forum brochure of 1st iGBA

Figure 3.3.14 This is a list of the teams as well as companies participating in the event

Organizing the iG20 for publication and education

Figure 3.3.15/3.3.16/3.3.17/3.3.18/3.3.19/3.3.20 The logo of Gut Alliance and the organizers’ logos

As a key organizer and facilitator of the Gut Alliance 2023, UM-Macau, together with the other teams of the Gut Alliance, organized and planned an educational project called "iG20". Drawing on the example of the G20, which united 20 countries to lead the world economy, we conceived the iG20 campaign to present the contents of synthetic biology and their respective projects to the public through the medium of video.

Figures 3.3.21 Gut Alliance Joint Questionnaire.

Figures 3.3.22 The publication brochure of Gut Alliance

Video. The iG20 Synbio public video project organized by Gut Alliance

This is a list of the teams as well as companies participating in the event

Participating in the Synbio & SDG Science Exhibition

Figure 3.3.23/3.3.24 Logo of UM-Macau and SCUT-China

At the end of September, as one of the participating teams in the Synbio & SDG Science Exhibition co-organised by SCUT-China and SCAU-China, UM-Macau together with more than 10 iGEM teams, attracted the visitors to the Guangdong Science Centre with exhibition boards, photo booths on KT boards, and a garden party to learn about the amazing power of synthetic biology and to enhance the impact of our own projects on society！

Figures 3.3.25/3.3.26 The photos of Synbio & SDG Science Exhibition

Figure 3.3.27 This is a list of the teams as well as companies participating in the event

Support on each other’s Modules construction

Figure 3.3.28/29/30/31/32. Team logos of UM-Macau, HNU-China, BNUZH-China, NWU-China, SUSTech-China and LZU-China.

During our project construction phase, we found out the common points of our project modules through mutual communication with the above-mentioned teams, so as to find out the direction of cooperation at the project construction level. In the UM-Macau GEIG project this year, for the module of bacterial adhesion, we found that HNU-China used a different promoter from ours in inducing the conversion of the tyrosine side-chain of Mefp-5 to the Dopa motif, so we shared the literature with HNU-China and looked for inspirations from each other's literature for our respective projects. At the same time, during our communication with BNUZH-China, as we were at the early stage of project construction, BNUZH-China found that even though our project involved the human body, there was no safety module for us. Therefore, under BNUZH-China's advice to us during the communication stage, we started to build the security module for our own project. After completing the construction of the safety module, in the course of communication with SUSTec-China, we found that its ability to kill intestinal infectious bacteria through Quorum quenching was very much in line with the direction of the construction of our safety module. Therefore, we also exchanged relevant literature with SUSTec-China to enrich UM-Macau's concept of how to build a safety module based on Quorum Sensing.

Support on each other’s dry-lab or wet-lab work

Figure 3.3.33/34/35/36 Logo of UM-Macau, BNUZH-China, HKUST, LZU-China

At the experimental level. During our previous communication with BNUZH-China, BNUZH-China told us that its laboratory did not have the technology of electrotransfer and anaerobic culture, then we enquired with the Faculty of Health Sciences of the University of Macau, we found that we have such technologies. We responded to BNUZH-China's request for help decisively. Unfortunately, BNUZH-China was unable to collaborate on these two technologies due to legal restrictions on cross-border transport of biological samples between Macau and China. During the summer, UM-Macau and HKUST had exchanged visits. During HKUST's return visit to UM-Macau, they requested us to exchange 2023 distribution kits in interlab. Therefore, UM-Macau decided to offer this help by sharing a portion of our DNA fragment samples with them.

Figure 3.3.37 The interlab materials exchange between our friend teams.

UM-Macau also has close contact with LZU at experimental level. After the communication between UM-Macau and LZU-China, both of our team realized that we have common module of safety module to control the growth of gut bacteria in intestine, then we proceeded with the collaboration on this module based on design and data sharing With the help of LZU-Chinadoing kill switch experiment using lysin in ourin in vivo safety module, and we got several relevant datas to improve our design. In return,we use our own materials and samples to test for them in our lab, because we don’t have the strain of EcN that LZU-China use in our own lab, so after discussing with LZU-China we decide to use E. coli DH5-alpha directly to test if dh5- alpha strain without any genetic modification can still stick to targets target material. Our discovery also help them to perfect their experiment design and result.

Support on each other’s education work

Figure 3.3.38/39 Logos of UM-Macau, LZU-China and BOKU-Vianna

This year, UM-Macau and LZU-China exchanged educational materials such as powerpoints and syllabus, and based on the conditions of both teams, we shared resources and used the exchanged materials to conduct educational activities with each other's communities for different school-age audiences. This collaboration has successfully reached primary, high school and undergraduate populations in Macau and Mainland China, and by leveraging LZU-China's local resources, the wisdom of the UM-Macau project has been able to successfully reach out across thousands of miles to teach synthetic biology to children in remote areas.

Figure 3.3.40/3.3.41 The educational collaboration events of UM-Macau and LZU-China.

Outside of China region, attracted by our Gut Alliance’s work on the public gut health brochure’s work, the team of BOKU-Vienna built a collaboration relationship between UM-Macau and UM-Macau worked as a bridge between BOKU-Vienna and Gut Alliance to help them prepare the content to join the booklet project and filling in the blank in our scientific publication of colon cancer this year. Meanwhile, during the public event of UM-Macau this year, UM-Macau also use our own platform to spread the social research questionnaire of BOKU-Vienna to general population.

Support on survey or social research of other teams.

By helping each other with questionnaire surveys, UM-Macau strives to achieve mutual success with other teams. While a survey by itself is not an effective co-operation, all of the surveys we participate in and encourage other teams to participate in can contribute to a large achievement of social research. As a result, our team helps others as much as possible and seeks out other teams for help with social research. The results are shown below.

Figure 3.3.42 The social research questionnaire face to abroad iGEM teams

Figure 3.3.43 The list of iGEM teams helped us to spread the questionnaire.