Team:XMU-China/Content5

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LinkUp - Multipurpose HTML Template

Content

1 Circuit Construction

  • 1. Material
  • 2. PCR Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR)
  • 3. Digestion
  • 4. Ligation
  • 5. Transformation
  • 2 SDS-PAGE

  • 1. Preparation
  • 2. Bacteria culture
  • 3. Protein electrophoresis
  • 3 Microfluidic Protocol

  • 1. Pre-procession of Dh5a
  • 2. Pre-procession of LB
  • 3. Wetting the chip & Capturing images
  • 4 SDS-PAGE

  • 1. Preparation
  • 2. Bacteria culture
  • 3. Protein electrophoresis
  • Circuit Construction

    Material


    1.1 Culture medium: LB (Luria-Bertani)

    LB medium: 5g Yeast Extract, 10g Tryptone and 10g NaCl, add ddH2O to 1L.
    LB solid medium: 5g Yeast Extract, 10g Tryptone, 10g NaCl and 15 g agar, add ddH2O to 1L.


    1.2 Antibiotic
    Antibiotic Stock conc. Final conc. Solvent Sterilization
    Ampicillin 100 mg/ml 50 ug/ml ddH2O filtration
    Chloramphenicol 25 mg/ml 25 ug/ml Absolute ethyl alcohol  
    Tetracycline 40 mg/ml 20 ug/ml 75% absolute ethyl alcohol  
    Kanamycin 25 mg/ml 25 ug/ml ddH2O filtration

    Stock in -20°C

    1.3 Plasmid (Biobrick)
    Part Backbone Type Location Size (bp)
    BBa_K546000 pSB1C3 Signaling 2013-P1-12D 1964 2070
    BBa_I763020 pSB1C3 Intermediate RBS-GFP-TT 2013-P3-11H 914 2070
    BBa_F2621 pSB1A2 Signaling 2013-P2-21F 1158 2079
    BBa_K546001 pSB1C3 Device 2013-P1-12F 2135 2070
    Ba_J04450 pSB4K5 Reporter 2013-P5-5G 1429 3409
    BBa_J04450 pSB3T5 Reporter 2013-P5-7C 1429 3241
    BBa_J04450 pSB3T5 Reporter 2013-P3-3H 1429 3241
    1.4 Strain
    Strain Application Source
    E. coli DH5a cloning Lab stock
    E. coli BL21(DE3)   Lab stock
    E. coli BL21   From Taiwan
    E. coli MG1655    
    1.5 Primer

    Part

    Backbone

    Type

    Location

    Size (bp)

    part

    backbone

    BBa_K546000

    pSB1C3

    Signaling

    2013-P1-12D

    1964

    2070

    BBa_I763020

    pSB1C3

    Intermediate

    RBS-GFP-TT

    2013-P3-11H

    914

    2070

    BBa_F2621

    pSB1A2

    Signaling

    2013-P2-21F

    1158

    2079

    BBa_K546001

    pSB1C3

    Device

    2013-P1-12F

    2135

    2070

    Ba_J04450

    pSB4K5

    Reporter

    2013-P5-5G

    1429

    3409

    BBa_J04450

    pSB3T5

    Reporter

    2013-P5-7C

    1429

    3241

     

     

     

    2013-P3-3H

     

     

    2. PCR Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR)


    2.1 General PCR

    Reaction system:

    Template1

    1 μl

    Forward Primer

    2 μl

    Reverse Primer

    2 μl

    dNTP Mixture

    8 μl

    10*Ex Buffer

    5 μl

    Ex Taq

    0.5 μl

    ddH2O

    31.5 μl

    Total Volume

    50 μl


    Reaction condition:

    94 oC

    4 min

     

    94 oC

    1 min

    30 cycles

    55 oC2

    0.5 min

    72 oC

    1.5 min3

    72 oC

    10 min

     

    4 oC

     

    Campus Fair

    We held a garden party and related exhibition with the theme of synthetic biology and iGEM in the Gui Huashan Building, Xiamen University on July 17th afternoon. The whole activity included three parts——synthetic biology exhibition, game and the Killers of Three Kingdoms cards presentation. To help the participants learn synthetic biology is a challenging but attractive process. These high school students could enjoy the interests in science and technology, know the knowledge about biology and think over ethics in life science through our activities.

    We ushered the students to our conference theatre, having them participate in any activities they are interested in and giving them attracting presents. We also gave every participant our badge.

    The synthetic biology exhibition was composed by some display boards including knowledge of synthetic biology, program display on iGEM, biological safety and genetic engineering. Some information and pictures were from iGEM wiki. We made this exhibition following the lecture to improve our HP effects.

    Garden party game was the most important parts in order to enhance the interest. It was composed with three parts—Riddles written on lanterns,Foldit computer games and finding the differences between DNA molecules. In the first game, we find some riddles related to gene and biology and wrote them on lanterns. If the participant could find the answer then he would win a prize. Foldit, a computer game liked by the high school students since they can learn from entertainment, folds proteins and tests their stabilities with four people competing in it. Finding the differences between DNA molecules, is to find two or three differences between two analogous DNA pictures. From this game participants could be aware of DNA structure more deeply and practice their precision. We accumulated every students’ points and the final top 10 won the prize.

    Our special prize is the cards——Killers of Three Kingdoms, very popular in China. There are abundant role-relationship and mutual promotion and restraint between every cards, just like Bong in America!!!Our team designed this kind of cards particularly for the HP, combining synthetic biology with the cards. Some high school students even play the cards with our plain guidance, making us think it’s an interesting and enjoyable game. Participants hoped that we could send to them more cards and give them designing pictures. From this game we had a better interaction.

    Finally our team organized a special link for these high school students. We show them our culture strains so that they can get an access to germiculture.

    After the garden party as well as the exhibition, these senior high school students signed on our whiteboard and had a group photo taken with us at our request. We made informal interviews with some of them and get a satisfactory feedback. They wished we could hold the activities next year and they would try their best to popularize synthetic biology and iGEM. A student, from Shaowu No.1 Middle School Of Fujian, expressed his hope that we could come to their hometown to help people in the countryside to get a correct understanding of genetic engineering. As I know, some people even regard transgenosis as poisons. This is also our hope that more and more people can learn something about transgenic products via this competition and have a better understanding of genetic engineering. After all, we, as iGEMers, not only need to do experiments in laboratory, but also help synthetic biology understood by the public.

    BioBang

    It’s a great honor for me to introduce our attractive “byproduct”——Bio Bang. We designed these special card for these high school students who were the top ten on our scoring list. These sets of cards——we called them Bio Bang——were inspired by War Within Three Kingdoms, which are very popular in China,just like Bang! in America. It consists of abundant role-relationship and mutual promotion and restraint between every cards. The Bio Bang is themed with synthetic biology, including genetic engineering experiments, biological materials and equipment. We’ve also assimilate knowledge of biosafety into these set of cards in order to popularize knowledge of biosafety in lab, public and environment. This kind of propaganda tool is very useful to make different knowledge about genetic engineering and biology get across to high school students. Some example of them are shown as follows:

    We’ve dreamed about perfecting the rules and designing and sold it out to raise money for our project. But it didn’t come true owing to our tight schedule. However, we decided to make a English version Bio Bang as presents for other iGEMers. Just wait for us coming!

    Surveys

    Surveys on The Popularization of Synthetic Biology and iGEM in high school students of Fujian Province


    Our team conducted a synthetic biology survey before our lecture entitled "Contemporary introduction to synthetic biology". hWe wanted to compare how much they knew about synthetic biology and iGEM before the lecture with what their knowledge about them after our presentation in order to assess our work. We’ve prepared 300 questionnaires and handed out 227 of them. Among these drew-back questionnaires, 180 of them are valid. We put 12 questions on the questionnaire as below.

    1. Have you ever heard about synthetic biology before our lecture?
    2. If you have, in which way it was accessible to you?
    3. Which parts do you think are the most intriguing about synthetic biology after our lecture?
    4. Have you ever heard about iGEM before our lecture?
    5. If you have, in which way it was accessible to you?
    6. Are you willing to participate in iGEM after our lecture?
    7. If your answer is no, why?
    8. What’s your reason for participation, why?
    9. If you participate in iGEM in which aspects do to want to get supports?
    10. How much time can you spend on iGEM?
    11. If you participate, you and your family are willing to afford in which aspects? Some survey results are shown as below:

    Discussion
    Two major findings have been obtained from this analysis.

    First of all, we drew a conclusion that almost everyone learned a lot from our lecture although they tended to be unfamiliar about the details of synthetic biology. Comparing the number of people who know about iGEM and the number of people who are willing to participate in iGEM we think the number of people who are interested in iGEM increases nearly 60%. Just look at the reasons why they don’t want to participate, most people chose no time and no supports. Only few people claimed that they were not interested in it and far less people said they didn’t like biology at all. Considering that our high school students are under so much pressure from National College Entrance Examination and some high school are too poor to afford technologies and apparatus, our results indicated a really good reality that almost everyone was willing to accept this new science and technology.

    Second, as for how to popularize iGEM and synthetic biology, we summarize two points.

    On the one hand, popularizing iGEM and synthetic biology via internet can reach a good effect because nearly half of these high school students said they heard iGEM and synthetic biology from the internet. We all think wiki is really a good platform to popularize synthetic biology and communicate with other iGEMers. What’s more, publishing more books relating to synthetic biology and iGEM is also a good conduit to let synthetic biology and iGEM known by other people, especially the young.

    On the other hand, teacher and parents seem to have difficulties in accepting a new technology in China or in the whole world so that students can’t learn some interesting and impressive new science and technologies from adults. It’s very common in China but we, as a new generation, should try our best to realize the rapid changing of our society.

    Future plans

    Finally we drew some conclusion to improve our survey next time. In order to obtain results that are more valid we should launch a more widely circulated survey. In addition, perhaps more copies can be distributed at random to the general public. On the other hand, it’s really important to make an effective and smart questionnaire to get a more cogent result. Maybe we can make two kinds of questionnaire to hand out before and after the lecture to compare to get a better conclusion.

    Theme Fresco

    Besides those activities related to synthetic biology we’ve mentioned above, we assisted XMU_Software in finishing a theme fresco in Furong Tunnel.



    Furong Tunnel can be said to be the most attractive scenery of Xiamen University, visited by more than 30,000 people per day statistically. We made this work in consideration of its attractiveness, which can greatly help us to popularize not only synthetic biology and iGEM but also our team. In fact, many students witnessed the fresco, maybe called doodles more appropriately, made by iGEMers from Xiamen University. Some of them took photos and asked us about iGEM. It improved a good interaction between our team and these students and tourists to popularize iGEM competition and synthetic biology.

    Collaborations

    First

    We collaborated with Purdue iGEM team to create a definitive characterization standard for the parts registry. All the teams participated required to fill out a survey which about the important items in the registry page. Purdue iGEM team worked out a standard protocol which contains all of the details. The other teams need to complete it better or put forward some questions and problems. To make this work easy, we had a video meeting with the Purdue iGEM team and USP Brazil team though the GOOGLE HANGOUTS. It really helped us to exchange the opinions just like face to face.

    As we know, the members of this collaboration are currently over 50 teams so that it is the biggest collaboration in the iGEM history. We feel awesome about what we did!

    Second

    On April 5th, 2013, Haoqian Zhang, advisors of Peking University iGEM team, a famous iGEMer who is keeping on develop synthetic biology and iGEM in China, come to XIAMEN University in purpose of strengthening collaborations our two universities. During his visiting, Mr. Zhang took part in discussions between our two teams, XMU_ Software and XMU-China2013 and gave some good advice focusing on the feasibility,security,advantages and disadvantages of ideas raised by our team members. His words about teamwork was very impressive and educational. Finally, Mr. Zhang simply showed some interesting projects in the past as well as encouraged us all to try our best to perform this year's iGEM projects, which greatly encouraged us.

    Third

    From June 24th to June29th, We provided parts BBa_C0061 and BBa_I0462 to the Toulouse iGEM team due to the high transform difficulty they described using this year’s distribution. Toulouse could directly use them for their cloning ,while we got some valuable feedback about our parts.

    Fourth

    In the summer vacation, we drew a doodle about 2013 iGEM in Furong tunnel in the camp with the member of software team of our university. This tunnel is not only a main stem but also a famous scenic spots, so that more than 30,000 people per day will pass by and look our doodle. In addition, the doodle is a quite novel approach to introduce synthetic biology and we believe that no team did it before.

    We also held a garden party with software team where introduced iGEM and synthetic biology to 200 students of senior high school from the whole Fujian Province. Go to page…to see more

    In the wet lab, we helped them to structure their plasmids, such as teaching how to ligation and digestion.

    Fifth

    We’ve also had a really good communication with the iGEM team of Peking University. From August 11th to August 19th ,one of our team members went to Peking University to get a deep cooperation with them. Firstly we introduced our own project in this year and exchanged the opinions .They gave us some good suggestions in experiments and models. What’s more, they gave us one BioBrick of sfGFP (BBa_...), which gave a great help to our structure. This sfGFP allowed our circuit to generated a brighter fluorescence and made easier to obverse in the microfluidics.

    Sixth

    We had a short meeting with 4 members of NJU iGEM team visiting us on June24th, 2013. We welcome all other visitors as well. During the meeting, we introduced our project this year to these visitors and exchanged some opinions with them. It can improve the connection and collaboration between different iGEM team in China.

    Acknowledgement

    We would like to extend our sincere gratitude to all those who helped XMU-China2013 during this year. Without your help we wouldn’t have completed this project successfully. Some pieces of our appreciation are as follows.

    Team XMU-Software, the dry lab team of our university. Thank you for giving us so much help on wiki and modeling.

    Graduates in Lab 571,Lab 580 and Lab 117, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering , especially Chiming Ye, Tingting Wu, Yu Zhang, Nan Wang and Jing Guo. Without your experimental guidance we wouldn't have managed to finish the whole project.

    Prof. Hasty and his student Arthur Prindle, Department of Bioengineering, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California. Thank you for your patient and warm reply to our questions.

    Prof. Ningshao Xia and his graduates, School of Life Sciences, Xiamen University, for providing us equipment and experimental guidance on electroporation.

    Prof. Shoufa Han, Department of Chemistry, Xiamen University, for providing us fluorescence microplate reader and his students for experimental and equipment guidance.

    Institute of Urban Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences for providing us MALDI-TOF-MS.

    Fujian Chemical Society and Prof. Yihui Chen. It's very kind of you to give us great support in Human Practice.

    College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering. You've got our six.

    Xiamen University Academic Administration. Thank you for supporting us.

    High school students from all over Fujian Province taking part in our Human Practice. Without your great support we couldn't make a successful Human Practice.

    Peking iGEM 2013. Thanks for your sfGFP and some pieces of advice. If not we couldn't finish our work.

    Finally, again we’d like to express my heartfelt appreciation to all these kindness and enthusiasm. Thank you. Thanks for your self-giving helps.