Activity

A Visit to BGI

  July 23, 2012, two iGEM competition teams of our university SUSTC visited BGI for communication and learning from each other .

  Before this, our iGEM team members have held several journal clubs during the past semester to learn basic knowledge of synthetic biology, just before the summer vocation we decided our project, BioSearch iPhone App development for ShenZhen-A team, Transcription Terminator Efficiency Calculator for ShenZhen-B team. After 10 days summer training and work, both two teams have basic achievement on their projects. The urgent need is to communicate with other matured teams to get valuable advices and experimental experiences. So we visited BGI.

  During trip to BGI, iGEM team members first visited the BGI Exhibition Hall to know the development of BGI and their research result, (photos).

  In BGI military school, we saw the training classroom for beginners, library and practicing labs, then we went to the laboratory of BGI researchers, our iGEM team instructor Jiankui He introduced the principles of the sophisticated gene sequencing instruments there and watched the researchers’ demonstration. After the visit, we met team members of BGI(SHENZHEN team),introduced work progress, discussed and gave recommendations to each other on several issues we came across.

A Visit to HKUST

  On July 28, two SUSTC iGEM team visited HKUST to exchange experiences, show work progress with HKUST iGEM team.

  Our team have basically developed the BioSearch iPhone App, the other team of SUSTC also have almost finished their software part. Both of us want to get some useful recommendations from a matured iGEM team like HKUST and BGI.

  At 10:00 we came to classrooms of HKUST, after three team instructor’s brief introduction, team leader of HKUST firstly introduced how they built their team and what they have done up to now, and of course their project: to facilitate the treatment of rectal cancer by identifying the cell wall. After that two teams of SUSTC introduced our work: Biosearch----- the perfect combination of iPhone and partsRegistery(sustc-shenzhen-A), transcriptional terminator efficiency calculator. Then members of BGI team introduced how they built special biochemical plant using yeast mitochondrial. Both BGI and HKUST team proposed valuable suggestions: 1. Adding function to support semantic search. 2 reserving the help for novice. 3. Increasing search conditions. 4.experience related documentation is very important. 4.offering drawing or analysis functions(like thinker cell) after search.

  After the simple but no shortage of intense discussion and active interactive seminar, we came to HKUST Tea Restaurant. During the lunch we can know each other and exchange ideas. After lunch, We visited HKUST Seascape place, and posed for pictures.

  In the afternoon,we left HKUST, our team members began a half-day tour in HongKong , visiting and shopping, very enjoyable.