As a new team in iGEM, we participate in 2018’ s iGEM competition with enthusiasm to synthetic biology. In this season, we received a great amount of guidance and assistance from many experienced teams and mentors, and we learnt a lot from them. At the same time, we hold collaborations with many teams in experiment, modeling and human practices.

1. With OUC-China
    This year, it is our first time to participate in iGEM competition.
Interaction
    OUC-China is an experienced team that has been participating in iGEM competition for 8 years. They give us huge support. At the beginning, they explained the process of the iGEM competition to us in detail and remind us some important deadlines. For the project, they gave us some pertinent suggestions.

Public engagement
    For human practice activities, during the summer vacation, they invited us to hold a summer camp. We are very glad to collaborate with them and explained to the campers how to make insect specimens.

Experiment
    Apart from that, we also help them in return. We help them test the performance of miniToe, proving that their system has the same trend under our experimental conditions.

2.With SKLMT
Interaction
    SKLMT-China and us come from the same university, so it’s pretty convenient for our two teams to communicate with each other. Because we were both freshmen to iGEM, we helped each other with all kinds of issues during the iGEM season, from project design to experiment support and competition issues. From the beginning, the projects were polished by two teams together through holding some seminars.
Experiments
    What’s more, we did the interLab experiment together, experimental materials and equipment were shared together, besides, we analysed the data and discussed the consequence we got together. Recently, we gave them a favour in testing their new plasmid backbone for standardization, and it worked really well. In a word, thanks to our sister team for playing such a significant role in our growth!
https://2018.igem.org/Team:SKLMT-China/Collaborations

3. With BIT
    This year, we were happy to cooperate with BIT-China, we collaborate with each other in many aspects. Firstly, they did us a great favour in founding this new team. Secondly, we met each other and discussed about our project design in June. We explained the project idea and design to each other and we also discussed about doing modelling and hardware equipment. We offered some advice on modelling and they showed us some tips of making hardware in return. Besides, they showed us the labs around. Apart from this meeting, we shared the Interlab data with each other and analysed whether the consequence was proper together. We were truly thankful to be guided and cooperate with such a lovely team!
https://2018.igem.org/Team:BIT/Collaborations

3. With BIT
    The CcaS-CcaR TCS we applied to respond to green/red light was used by HZAU-China 2017 before. They have been working on improving this TCS for two years, which means they are more experienced than us to deal with the construction and usage of this system derived from cyanobacteria. They helped us with the approach where we could acquire plasmids containing the light-sensing components, and they also shared the experience on how they regulated the expression of CcaS and CcaR protein to control this optogenetic tools and what they achieved. Thanks for they guidance and their precious experience on CcaS-CcaR TCS.
https://2018.igem.org/Team:HZAU-China/Collaborations

    We developed friendship with many teams through iGEM and we really appreciate this opportunity!