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| − | <h1 id="header"> HUMAN PRACTICES </h1> | + | <h1 id="header"> HUMAN PRACTICES OVERVIEW</h1> |
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| | <div id="intro"> <p> There are three aspects of human practices: integrated practices, collaboration with other iGEM teams, and educational outreach. | | <div id="intro"> <p> There are three aspects of human practices: integrated practices, collaboration with other iGEM teams, and educational outreach. |
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| | <p>Finally, we were able to implement educational outreach by leading a forensics lab during the ASIJ Summer Passport Camp program, holding a discussion with the GOA Medical Problem Solving Course regarding developments in genetic engineering, and presenting to ASIJ student parents during the High School Back-to-School Night. | | <p>Finally, we were able to implement educational outreach by leading a forensics lab during the ASIJ Summer Passport Camp program, holding a discussion with the GOA Medical Problem Solving Course regarding developments in genetic engineering, and presenting to ASIJ student parents during the High School Back-to-School Night. |
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| − | <h2 id="subtitle">Integrated Practice</h2>
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| − | <p> <u id="subsubtitle">Talking with Dr. Kagimoto</u>
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| − | June 4th, 2018
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| − | For our project, we had an opportunity to partner up with Healios, a biotech company in Japan that works in the field of stem cell regenerative medicine. The CEO of the company, Dr. Kagimoto, gave us insights on how we can integrate this new field of stem cells to our project. One idea of how this may work is to take patient derived stem cell, fix the gene, then place it back so that it would regenerate in the human body in the right location. Since this year, we were able to confirm that CRISPR Cas9 works on fixing the mutation of the disease in a living system, we are hoping to develop our project further in the future to ultimately apply CRISPR Cas9 on animal, and eventually human stem cells. In fact, there was a recent paper written by Chu-Qing Song and Dan Wang that was published in August this year that already demonstrated this proof of concept in a murine model, a mammalian system. Promising results like these further validate the potential of gene therapy in treating patients of A1AT Deficiency along with range of other mutational diseases.
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| − | <p> <u id="subsubtitle">Feedback from Dr. Seyama</u>
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| − | August 14, 2018
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| − | Another expert we were able to contact was Dr. Seyama, who is a researcher on A1AT Deficiency in Juntendo University in Japan. What he provided us was further insight on A1AT Deficiency itself especially regarding the mechanism and progression of the disease as well as the current clinical treatment applied to patients. This kind of insight helped us reinforce our understanding on why a treatment using CRISPR Cas9 and stem cell would be more beneficial compared to the treatment we have as of now.
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| − | <p> <u id="subsubtitle">Advice from Tokyo Tech and Gifu iGEM team </u>
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| − | August 14, 2018
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| − | During the summer, we had an opportunity to attend the Tokyo Tech meetup, where many iGEM teams from across Japan gathered to share each other's project. During this meetup, we were able to get helpful suggestions on ways to modify our constructs. Specifically, we told them about how we were struggling with protein purification process using column chromatography and in response, the members of the Tokyo Tech and Gifu team suggested that we could incorporate Histidine tag into our construct so that A1AT proteins would be secreted with Histidine attached and afterwards run it in a nickel lined column to purify the His-tagged proteins. By incorporating this suggestion, the protein purification process became more precise, smoother, and faster allowing us to get a result in our fluorescent analysis of purified proteins that showed His tag construct was our best construct in secretion of proteins. Because we got this advice and because we went to this meetup, we were able to create a construct that worked the best amongst the two other ones that we tested.
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| − | <h2 id="subtitle">Collaboration</h2>
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| − | <p> <u id="subsubtitle">iGEM Pakistan Video Call </u>
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| − | June 26, 2018
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| − | During the summer portion of our lab work, we participated in a Skype call with the Pakistan 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.
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| − | <p> <u id="subsubtitle">Tokyo Tech Meetup</u>
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| − | August 8, 2018
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| − | During the summer, iGEM teams from across Japan attended a meetup held by Tokyo Tech University. KAIT, Bochan lab, Gifu University, Tokyo Tech, and ASIJ. Our team presented, along with the other teams, the progress we have made throughout the year. After each presentation, we had a QnA where many good suggestions were made, which everybody followed up on after all the presentations over snacks. Our team received a helpful suggestion from the Tokyo Tech and Gifu team about the use of a histidine tag to simplify and speed up the protein purification process, also making a more accurate result.
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| − | <h2 id="subtitle">Educational Outreach</h2>
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| − | <p> <u id="subsubtitle">DNA Fingerprinting with ASIJ Summer Passport Program</u>
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| − | <br>June 21st, 2018:
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| − | At ASIJ summer school, iGEM students helped to educate middle school students taking a forensic science course about utilizing fingerprints for crime investigation. We talked about the use of gel electrophoresis and explained the function of restriction enzymes and electricity for the experiment. Finally, we let everyone in the group use the scientific procedure to discover their unique fingerprints.
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| − | <p> <u id="subsubtitle">GOA Online Presentation</u>
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| − | <br>September 17, 2018
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| − | iGEM students talked to Medical Problem Solving I students on Global Online Academy (GOA) about future treatments with immunotherapy, gene therapy, and cell therapy with iPS stem cells. GOA is a collection of online courses that are in schools in over 24 countries, allowing us to reach a broad and multinational group of students. In our presentation, we implemented a case study with A1AD Deficiency to showcase our use of CRISPR editing in our iGEM project and future use of organ buds.
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| − | <p> <u id="subsubtitle">Back to School Night</u>
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| − | <br>September 20, 2018
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| − | Back to School Night is a day where parents come to school to meet their child's teachers. On this day, the iGEM team presented to a group of parents who were interested in learning about what we do as a club. We explained about our project and things we learned by being on the team.
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There are three aspects of human practices: integrated practices, collaboration with other iGEM teams, and educational outreach.
For integrated human practices, we were able to get advice from various different sources. Dr. Kagimoto, a founder of a biotech company, helped us understand the recent developments in gene editing and stem cell research in Japan. He also gave us further insights on how such technology can be combined and applied to treat mutational diseases in the future in a way that would benefit the patients. Our conversations with him inspired us to choose this topic for our project this year. Dr. Seyama, a researcher at Jutendo University, enhanced our background knowledge on A1AT Deficiency, the specific disease we decided to target in our project. Furthermore, we received advice on our construct design by Tokyo Tech and Bochan Lab, who suggested us to use a histidine tag to improve our protein purification process.
Our team was able to reach out to other iGEM teams in order to share information and advice about our respective projects. We talked to Lacas Biobots through video chat and different iGEM teams in East Japan at a meetup. Through interactions with the other teams, we were able to gain insight on each others projects and learn how the other teams apply synthetic biology in different ways.
Finally, we were able to implement educational outreach by leading a forensics lab during the ASIJ Summer Passport Camp program, holding a discussion with the GOA Medical Problem Solving Course regarding developments in genetic engineering, and presenting to ASIJ student parents during the High School Back-to-School Night.
