Team:NTU-Taida/Human practice/NCTU Conference

International iGEM conference

What matters more than the results is the experience and knowledge gained throughout this competition. All of us who have participated in iGEM share sweet and bitter memories in common. We collaborate by giving advices and pointing out others drawbacks, which gives us a better preparation for the regional jamborees.

Compared to other teams, NTU_Taida still lacks a lot of experience. We thank NCTU and NYMU so much for providing experience about iGEM team management and functional testing techniques. iGEM is a competition that relies strong support from the school, for instance, NCTU provides a course for students to gain the essential techniques that are required in iGEM, such as understanding circuits and how to do cloning. After these training, students are then divided into groups to operate a portion of iGEM project; NYMU, on the other hand, encourages students to propose novel ideas- the more bizarre, the better. These are what our team lack the most-firm support from school and inspirational topics.

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The climax of this conference should be the project discussion part. After each presentation, we point out our concerns about the project while providing opinions about what kind of testing should be done. I remember we debated whether using yeast to produce heat is more efficient than burning the calories in liquid broth. To our project, we understand that there is still a long way to go before creating a quorum-sensing based array for enough receptors still need to be studied. We really learned a whole lot from these partners.

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Apart from the academic discussion, what matters more to me is the friendship we built during these 4 days. We come from different backgrounds, but we share the same kind of passion towards science. iGEM will come to an end, but our friendship will long last. May this conference lead us to realize our dreams and bring along friendship as well as achievements.

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