Collaborations

Rice University Collaboration

The UT-Austin team reached out to the Rice team early in the Summer of 2018 to determine if our teams could help each other. We decided to meet at the Rice campus and share our project ideas.

At the meet-up, we presented our project ideas to each other and discussed ways in which we could integrate our projects. Rice’s project revolved around modifying the T7 Expression system to be more broad host range, which fit with our goal of creating a broad host range plasmid kit to easily and efficiently transform non-model organisms. They suggested they could benefit from using some of the promoter part plasmids we created to test transcription independent of translation.

We also gave them a one tube reaction with a protocol to test to act as a prototype of the complete kit. Once they transformed the one tube containing our assemblies into their organisms of interest, they could determine which origin of replication functioned and utilize that information.

Albert Truong, of the Rice 2018 iGEM Team, provided their results and feedback when transforming our assemblies into E. coli in their lab. The Rice team also provided us with valuable insight and suggestions on how we could improve our kit protocol.

(See Integrated Human Practices)

Texas Tech University Collaboration

In order to strengthen our partnership and continue our collaboration efforts with Texas Tech, we hosted two of their members, as well as two students from Austin’s Liberal Arts and Science Academy, at the Fall Undergraduate Research Symposium hosted by UT’s Molecular Biosciences Student Association in September of this year. Here, we discussed our projects and helped each other try to achieve various medal requirements. This was the third consecutive year we hosted Texas Tech, and we hope to continue this tradition for the foreseeable future.

Our relationship this year could be best described as a mutualistically beneficial mentorship. Primarily, we helped Texas Tech overhaul their methods for plasmid assembly from BioBrick Assembly to Golden Gate Assembly (GGA) by providing them with our protocols and experienced benefits from GGA. Ryan Bailey of the UT Austin team has and is continuing to work with Brandon Palomo of the Texas Tech team to give them advice and protocols as they pertain to Golden Gate Assembly. We also introduced Texas Tech to Phytobricks and how they could help them in lab. These improvements helped Texas Tech speed up their assemblies and improve their overall efficiency in lab.