Team:HUST-China/Collaborations
Collaboration
1. Hold the 5th iGEM Central China Regional Conference
From July 10th to 11th, 2018, the iGEM HUST-China team successfully held the 5th iGEM Central China Regional Conference. The event aimed at promoting the understanding of each team in their competition projects, improving the project content, and giving opportunities for communication and mutual learning between different teams. The teams invited to participate in the conference were the 2018 iGEM team from Huazhong Agricultural University, Taiwan University-Taiwan Jiaotong University, Wuhan University, Taiwan Zhongxing University and Huazhong University of Science and Technology. At the meeting on July 11th, each team will make a 20-minute English presentation time to introduce the project content and current progress of their competition projects, while other teams listened cand raised questions and shared their opinions. Each team presented a number of constructive issues related to project feasibility, safety, experimental protocols, modeling methods, economic costs and application prospects. During the period, delegates also had a lively and in-depth discussion on some of these issues. Many of the questions and suggestions raised in the conference have effectively pointed out the possible disappointments of the project and provided feasible solutions to these problems.
2. Safe Lab Work
Our team also pay special attention to safety issues during the experimental operation. New members are required to undergo experimental training from Principle Investigators, graduate students and previous team members in our lab before conducting experiments. Experimental training includes standard experiment operations, safety regulations of equipment usage and good practice rules in the polluted area. In addition, undergraduates have to use secondary equipment with company of a graduate student. In our project, microbial co-culture used to generate electricity must be sterilized at 121 ℃ for 25 minutes before disposal. Based on previous experience, we highlight the following points in experimental safety:
1.polluted area must be isolated from the nomal bench. Experimenters are required to wear lab coat and polyvinyl chloride plastic gloves before entering.
2.Toxic reagents must be collected specially.
3.Volatile chemicals involved experiment must be operated in the fuming cupboard.
4.Laboratory appliance must be sterilized before and after use.
5.Maintaing of complex equipment must be in the charge of staff.
3. Safe Shipment
Safety is also important when sending parts to the registry. All materials sent must be frozen dried and the sealed 96-well plate must wrapped with enough bubble paper to prevent breaking. Sometimes the DNA delivery will be checked by customs, so we have prepared safety certification to ensure that the materials are harmless. Packaging and delivery are done in accordance with the requirements of the courier company and iGEM HQ.
Reference
[1] Xiang Xiao, Xiao-Bo Ma, Hang Yuan. Peng-Cheng Liu, Yu-Bin Kei, Hui Xu, Dao-Lin Du, Jian-Fan Sun, Yu-Jie Feng. Photocatalytic properties of zinc sulfide nanocrystals biofabricated by metal-reducing bacterium Shewanella oneidensis MR-1. Journal of Hazardous Materials. 2015, 288: 134~139.
