Team:OUC-China/Attributions
MEMBER'S ATTRIBUTION
From the beginning of 2018, OUC-China have brand new members for this competition season. With the help of experienced team leaders before, we build a team consists of 8 undergraduate students from different majors and three grades. And by sharing happiness and woe this season, now we become close friends and have the tacit understanding. All the members in 2018 OUC-China devoted the best of themselves to develop the project. At the same time, we would have gone nowhere without the help from many other people from our school, other institutions and the society. We sincerely appreciate all the help!
Project design
Being responsible for our earth and ourselves is our attitude towards every experiment. In our project, all the parts we have utilized are selected from Risk Group 1, none of which are with a Red Flag. What’s more, nonpathogenic bacteria, E.coli DH5α is employed as the main chassis for our prior design on the DNA sequence, stem-loop and enzyme. As a matter of fact, when using hairpins and csy4 enzyme to tune the expression of genes, it is relatively safe for industrialized applications and scientific research. Based on this, We designed more variants of csy4 enzymes and hairpins. (See more details in xxx and xxx about the variants of csy4 enzymes and hairpins.）So we used these to create a toolkit named miniToe family for synthetic biology which can control the expression of the target gene gradient. What’s more, we used the motA gene, one of the genes regulating the motility of E.coli, to verify the feasibility and effectiveness of the toolkit. For the sake of environment, all the chassis organisms will be sterilized before being abandoned to prevent the genes from leaking.
Safe lab work
We works at a neat lab named “Lab for Microinnovation and Enterprise”, which is a BSL-2 laboratory. Before working in the lab, we are supposed to be trained by the skillful hands, not only for the general lab safety rules, but also for the standard experimental operation avoiding unnecessary damage. No experiment carries no risk to the experimenters, hence we are properly equipped with facilities, such as latex gloves, nitrile gloves, goggles, lab coats to protect us from biotic and abiotic hazards.
Fig.1 Our laboratory and personal safety precautions
Fig.2 Table for routine inspection
For us, lab safety is a hot topic and we have come up with a practical lab safety manual which normalizes our lovely lab.
Practical lab safety manual
1.Routine inspections must perform between 6:30-8:00pm and 9:30-11:00pm.
2.Lab cleaning must be done twice a week with disinfectant moping the floor for at least 3times.
3.Well prepared experiment plans should be written before you start.
4.Lab coats and gloves must be worn when conducting experiments.
5.Short skirts, shorts, and open shoes must not be worn.
6.If you see a colleague doing something dangerous, point it out to him or her.
7.Lab coats must not be worn outside laboratories and in public areas.
8.Know where safety equipment (eyewash, shower and extinguisher) is located.
9.Food/drink is not allowed in laboratories where chemicals are used stored.
10.Know how to clean up spills of common chemicals and specific chemicals you see, for spilling ethidium bromide dealt with sodium hydroxide.
11.Always read the directions before using instruments and read MSDS before handling new chemicals carefully.
12.When post-stain gel electrophoresis, we must wear the gloves that are on the left two and right three.
Safe shipment
For submitting our parts to igem HQ, we first took the initiative to consult Chinese entry-exit inspection and quarantine laws and regulations about shipping DNA from China to the USA, which is forbidden without tedious red tape. Fortunately, GenScript cooperated with igem HQ forward our part sample to the USA. Ergo, we sealed dried DNA and sent it in the submission kit to GenScript, which clearly labelled as DNA without disguise. Our kit poses no risks and is perfectly safe for shipment.
Safety form
Click here to check our safety form.
MEMBER'S ATTRIBUTION
From the beginning of 2018, OUC-China have brand new members for this competition season. With the help of experienced team leaders before, we build a team consists of 8 undergraduate students from different majors and three grades. And by sharing happiness and woe this season, now we become close friends and have the tacit understanding. All the members in 2018 OUC-China devoted the best of themselves to develop the project. At the same time, we would have gone nowhere without the help from many other people from our school, other institutions and the society. We sincerely appreciate all the help!
Yunqian Zhang, captain of OUC-China iGEM 2018 and general affair supervisor, was responsible for designing our project and experiment. She designed and checked all the circuit as well as the primers used in PCR and part standardization. She provided basic experimental scheme for lab administrator. She was responsible for construct and test by microplate reader of polycistron circuit. She is also responsible for submitting parts and document the experimental characterization.
Yanju Chen, vice-captain of our team, pushed the preceding of human practice and communication with other teams. She kept connection with all the professors who helped us. She played main role of all the work about human practice and collaboration.
Jiacheng Huang, vice-captain of our team and he build all the models. He was in charge of modeling and excavated deeply in theory who also is one of wiki designer. He selected all the Csy4 mutants and hairpin mutants to meet our goal. He usually stay up late for our experiments!
Qinbo Qiao, lab administrator and arranged the journal to get visa. Her major work was part standardization and extracted a mount of DNA. She also connected with all the foreign teams who helped us to translate our comic book! At the same time, she kept connection with them about further collaboration!
Xudong Liu, lab administrator, was in charge of construct circuits by using 3A assembly and detected the expression of proteins. Also he was responsible for the measurement of the growth rate of E.coli, providing experimental limits for model. He changed our experimental scheme with need at any moment.
Qingjie Li, the financial manager of our team and designer for our computer game——Csy4 Go! She was also responsible for our motA test system. She designed the experiment for this system and finished all the lab work for this part by herself. She helped us with a lot of biological order for biotechnology companies.
Kai Sun, the web designer who established the structure of our wiki, poster, team uniform and many other designing works. At the same time, he also take the task of Interlab measurement and primers design.
Anyi Li, was responsible for primers design and plan for human practice, took other members of the team to investigate and communicate with many biological enterprises. At the same time, she tested the second system which contain many Csy4 mutants and hairpin mutants by flow cytometry. And she wrote our notebook and took part in some lab work. She is also responsible for submitting parts and document the experimental characterization.
Luoqin Liu, the art designer who draw and created our wiki, poster and many other designing works. She was the little princess of our whole team who is really creative and give us a lot of fun by her paintbrush.
Hang jiang, the art designer who draw all the element of our computer game”Csy4 Go!”, and the brochure of our project. At the same time, she also created the cartoon figure for our project.
Acknowledgement for support
Every member in 2017 OUC-China iGEM gave us practical suggestions.Yang Liu, the Captain of OUC-China 2011 and Li Kang, the Captain of OUC-China 2012 helped improve the synthetic conception of our project.
Our PI Prof. Chenguang Liu and Prof. Xingguo Liang offered us constructive advice over our project and gave us long-term technical consulting support through the procedure.
Prof Chunbo Lou and Pei Du, from Institute of Microbiology, provided us with original idea by their work and also taught us with some details about experiment and lab work.
Our PI Prof.Xingguo Liang offered us experimental lab.
Prof. Xianghong Wang kindly offered us experimental lab and restroom.
Our PI Prof.Zhe Chi helped us with gene synthesis and financial problems, at the same time, he also provided us with unique advice about project.
Prof. Xiaohua Zhang, from College of Marine Life, Ocean University of China, provided us instrument (Thermo Scientific NanoDrop) to measure the concentration of nucleic acid.
Prof. Prof Mingzhuang Zhu and Wei Yang provided us the flow cytometry which was really helpful for our second system.
Zhenghong Sui and Chengtian Zhao provided us with fluorescence microscope so we can record the expression of sfGFP in plate.
Xuan Wang & Haoqian Guo offered us constructive advice over our project.
Mingjie Shen is the designer of our computer game——“Csy4 Go！”