HUMAN PRACTICE
       

Human Practice

UT-Tokyo team set 2 goals for Human Practice in this year;

1. To make better circumstances of Japanese teams’ experiments and management

2. To familiarize Synthetic Biology more in general public

The motivations of these goals are as follows;/p>

1.In the present condition, some Japanese teams do not have enough support from universities orcompanies and it directly links to the quality of projects. In order to develop Japanese teams’projects, we thought it is necessary to make circumstances in which Japanese teams can have moresupport./p>

2.In Japan, the word, ‘synthetic biology’, ‘genetic transformation’ is not broadly accepted with favorand not understood fully. For future development of synthetic biology, we thought it is important toeducate general public.

In order to achieve these goals, we did the following;

1.Foundation of iGEM-JapanUT-Tokyo founded iGEM-Japan with other seven Japanese teams (HokkaidoU_Japan, Tokyo-Tech,TMU-Tokyo, Tokyo-NoKoGen, KAIT-Japan, Osaka, Kyoto) and cooperated each other. As the result, weare offered a lot of reagents for free from Promega Corporation and also aided by IKEDA SCIENTIFICCo., Ltd. These results were great help for us. We think it led to make the basement where iGEM isbroadly accepted as the number of companies supporting us increased

2-1. Educational Activity for general publicIn order to familiarize synthetic biology and iGEM to general public, UT-Tokyo joined many eventsand did poster sessions or presentations. For example, we explained about our projects andsynthetic biology in school festivals at the University of Tokyo, and spoke on the future of syntheticbiology in Career Discovery Seminar, which was held by Leave a Nest Co., Ltd.

2-2. Educational Activity for high school studentsIt is also important to educate high school students, So, we joined Science Castle, which was the poster session of scientific research by high school students. We also supported Fuji MetropolitanHigh School in 2 ways; we helped their self study twice a month and instructed students whoparticipated in a scientific competition as mentors./p>

2-3. Feedback from experts for educational activityIn order to confirm the quality of our human practice, we tried to have the opportunity to be givenadvice from experts. We joined Japanese Society for Cell Synthesis Research and we were provided withsome useful feedbacks such as what kind of explanation is easier to understand.

Collaborations

To simulate the cell-cell communication system, we developed a delayed differential equation model. The equation used in the model are followings. The variables are described in the following table.

In our cell-cell communication system, the major kinetic events are: mCherry synthesis and degradation, LuxI synthesis and degradation, TetR synthesis and degradation, AHL synthesis and degradation. These kinetic events are contained in the equations. The following describes how the equations are developed.

• mCherry synthesis and degradation
• LuxI synthesis and degradation
• TetR synthesis and degradation
• AHL synthesis and degradation

RNA Silencing