COLLABORATION

Tokyo Tech Meetup
August 8, 2018
During the summer, iGEM teams from across Japan attended a meetup held by Tokyo Tech University. The teams attending were KAIT, Bochan lab, Gifu University, Tokyo Tech, and ASIJ. Each team gave a presentation about the progress they had made on their project so far. Each team's presentation was wrapped up by a Q&A, where other teams were often able to give many good suggestions. After all the teams presented, we were able to further interact and follow up on various suggestions. Our team received a helpful comment from the Tokyo Tech and Gifu teams, suggesting we use of a histidine tag to simplify and speed up the protein purification process and get more accurate results.

i-GEM Pakistan Video Call
June 2018
During the summer portion of our lab work, we participated in a Skype call with a Pakistani high school iGEM team, known as LACAS Biobots. We explained our projects to each other, took virtual lab tours, and got to know another HS team and the different ways in which various teams work.

Survey to other iGEM teams
We also worked on gathering advice from other iGEM teams using SurveyMonkey. In our survey, we asked a number of questions regarding the use of genetic engineering for medical therapy. From SurveyMonkey, we were able to obtain a wide variety of insight from other countries, including Pakistan and Mexico. Most countries had similar responses, that as long as genetic engineering was not used for aesthetics and was solely used for therapy that their culture and ethics agreed with the practice.