Overview

Collaboration and win-win situation is the philosophy of our team in this project. We believe that it is through cooperation that we and our collaborators can continue to move forward in our research. Our current collaboration partners are divided into two main parts—collaboration with bio-companies and with teams participating in the IGEM competition.

Collaboration with Lab in Tsinghua University

We got in touch with researcher Lei Qin from Tsinghua University. Researcher Qin Lei's direction happens to be similar to ours, also engaged in the system modification of industrial microbial resistance and robustness, and we had an in-depth discussion to understand each other's research on the field. He was very interested in our saline-resistant gene fragments and took the initiative to want to test our components, so he sent the gene fragments we obtained to complete the verification of the resistance ability, with good results.

Collaboration with iGEM teams

CCiC

We are actively contacting various iGEM competition related organizations in China.We got in touch with the China Regional iGEM Exchange (CCiC) and participated in the exchange as an online program in July. We met many teams in the exchange and also met teams who are also working on improving microbial resistance. We exchanged ideas and progress of each other's projects and achieved good communication.

the Northwester China iGEM Meetup

We also participated in the Northwester China iGEM Meetup in August by remote participation. With fewer teams in Northwester China, our small exchange of 7 teams allowed us to communicate more deeply and establish cooperation. Besides improving our projects together, we also exchanged confusion and difficulties in our projects. All in all, we established a deep cooperative relationship.

Cooperation with biological companies

First of all, we have established cooperative relationships with biological companies. Based in Northwest China, we have established deep ties with Angie's Yeast and Fufeng Company. At the beginning of our research, we investigated the needs of these two companies for strains to carry out production, and learned that strain resistance to salinity can reduce production costs and improve production efficiency in industrialized production.

After we discovered the saline-resistant strains, during our communication with these two companies, they showed great interest in having our team work on genes that regulate saline resistance and apply them to their production.

During the course of the study, we kept mailing the gene fragments we obtained to the factory labs of both companies so that they could test whether our components could help improve the resistance of their strains. During this time we maintained communication and kept listening to the factories to give us feedback on how to improve them.

We anticipate that in the future, our genes could successfully provide the salinity resistance that plants need to help them achieve better production.

Conference Communication

In August 2023, Xinjiang University held the sixth Youth Science and Technology Forum, inviting experts from all walks of life to launch a lecture synthetic biology exchange.The conference is committed to building a platform for the exchange and cooperation of experts and scholars in the field of bioengineering and industry, academia and research, to provide communication and cooperation opportunities for academia and industry, and to jointly promote the innovation and development of bioengineering and synthetic biomanufacturing.

The pictures below are the invitation to the conference and a picture of our team member Kun Zhang with Prof Chen Guoqiang. He asked Prof. Chen about our project "genetic shield". Prof. Chen expressed his approval of our project and thought that these gene elements have a good application value. This is a great encouragement to our members!