Team:WHU-China/Team

We have joy, we have fun, we are WHU-iGEMers in the sun!

Welcome to Wuhan University iGEM 2012 project !

Our project, E.coslim, is aimed at groping an effective way for people to enjoy wolfing delicacies while not worry about gaining weight.

Working day and night, we finally submited 66 biobricks. As the saying goes, Rome was no built in one day. Every step to the MIT and every biobrick used to construct E. coslim are soaked with inspiration and perspiration of every teammate. While several weeks of sleepless night exhausted our body, our spirit sparkled with each other.

Do you want to be a slim glutton? Do you dream to enjoy food without worrying about becoming overweight? Now we WHU iGEMers sincerely invite you to come with us to explore the magic of E. coslim.

Jiawei Huang

I succeeded Xuepeng Huang as the team leader of WHU-iGEM in March 2012, when the whole team fell into chaos and confusion.

With the help of some active members, I managed to coordinate the team and keep all things in order. I want to give thanks to all my teammates for their remarkable devotion and the great assistance they had given me.

Now I am taking efforts every moment and hoping for a good result, I really enjoy the great happiness of thinking, working and teamwork in iGEM.

IGEM, hooray!

Kuanwei Sheng

Designer of the project, senior student in College of Life Sciences of WHU.

He always wears a smiling face. He loves to tell all kinds of jokes though others seldom laugh. All the team members think he is kind of Sheldon except himself. Bazinga!!! He is actually a man of principle, passion and dedication. As the major designer of this year’s project, he really appreciate iGEM for providing him the chance of freely brainstorming and designing a project without any restriction. Also, he thinks he is extremely fortunate to have a bunch of wonderful and versatile teammates with whom he can strive, share his dreams and ideas. He is truly proud of becoming a member in WHU-iGEM team.

GUYS, I LOVE YOU ALL!!

Xian Xia

Xian Xia is a senior student of College of Life Science ,Wuhan University.

In our project, Xian Xia not only made great contributions to team construction, but also played an important role in conducting the whole cellulose system. As one of the most respected team leaders, he lived up to the expectations of his teammates as well as the responsibilities of his own. Xia’s interests about biology include expression and purification of membrane proteins and the mechanisms of processes that cytoskeletal proteins participate in.

Apart from biology, Xia enjoys reading and ping-pong.

Long Mei

Long Mei, a senior student from College of Life sciences, Wuhan University.

Mei is determined to be a top scientist and do some research to benefit human health.

In iGEM, under Mei’s leadership, his group members have made extraodinary efforts and successfully completed their task of biobricks construction. This sunny and smart boy seems to have nothing to worry about at this time, except for one thing--his body weight. He really wants to put on some weight. Now, maybe he is savoring snacks somewhere, who knows?

Fan Cheng

Fan Cheng, a year 4 student majoring in biology, just like an undifferentiated stem cell, now hesitates about which direction to differentiate to satisfy her inner interest. However, one thing that she is 100 percent sure is that being both a good scholar and a good educator is her permanent goal. Because in eyes of her, those two are true romantic careers considering the current society which worships wealth and fame.

First drawn to iGEM by the dream of a respected graduate, and the wish to help one determined classmate to make his idea come true, now she found that the best part of the whole thing turns out to be the sense of the identity in the process. In this project , Fan Cheng is responsible for the construction of the system of the designed probiotic bacteria which can metabolite the fatty acids much faster and related methodological work about detecting fatty acids. Beyond biology, Cheng loves literature, especially those classical Chinese poems. If not being a biologist, she thinks that being a writer for example, a column writer to make science more accessible to the public, is a good option.

Wenxiong Zhou

Wenxiong Zhou is a reliable man who has a wide interest from cell biology, differential equations, computer programming to classical music and drama. In a free sunny afternoon he is sometimes in a daze and wonder how to find the mathematical laws in harmonics and apply it to the modeling of cell signal transduction. Though reliable, talented and handsome, he is still in single.

Boxiang Wang

The art director of WHU-CHINA team, Core experimenter of the cellulose synthesis group.

Born in March 12, Boxiang Wang is a typical Pisces boy. He is not only the master of painting and acting but also a genius in writing stories. He always wears a smile on his face and shows a great sense of humor. In iGEM, Wang is a fast learner as well as a good technician. Sometimes he may be exhausted and fell in the dead end of some philosophical questions. But when Wang got high spirits, he can be extraordinary creative and undefeated. He regards these people working in the team as the treasure in his life.

Tong Wang

I’m Tina, a senior student from College of Life Science, Wuhan University.

I come from Qianjiang, a beautiful and affluent town in Hubei province,which is famous for lobster, especially the cuisine of braised prawns. By the time you come to QianJiang,I’ll treat you with braised prawns. Since I’m a slightly fat girl, I really hope that our project will finally succeed and be put into practice.

Jiani Hu

Hello, world! I’m Jiani Hu, a sophomore student of College of Life Sciences, Wuhan University.

I love nature and animals. Last year, a friend gave a Golden Retriever to me. I have a lot of sweet memory with him and regard him as one of my family members. In my leisure time, I will draw some traditional Chinese paintings and play wei chi with my father. iGEM widened my horizon and l cherished our precious friendship during this year. In our project, I try my best to finish the experiment and share our ideas with those who know little about synthetic biology. I do have fun in this Working Experience!

Shiwei Gao

Hi, I'm Shiwei Gao, a senior student of College of Life Sciences, Wuhan University. My field of study is in bacterial etiology. I think that the idea collection and human practice are two wonderful parts in our project. As for myself ,I enjoy playing tennis, making western dishes, travelling etc. Brownie, hotdog in Costco, and Beijing Luzhuhuoshao are all my favorites . Wish I can learn fencing some day！

Jing Zhang

Hello! I'm an energetic girl who loves biological science, loves computers and loves all the interesting things full of mysteries and innovations. Though there are setbacks and adversity on my way, I still believe sunshine will disperse all the frog and gloom as long as I hold to my dream and never give up.

PengchengZhou

Pengcheng Zhou is a critical thinker in our team. Besides his sunny smile, he always thinks further and deeper than others, giving impressive ideas and advices. He played one of the central roles at the beginning of our project, who firstly raised the idea of weight-losing. When we were hovering in chaos in this March, his determination and decisions make us proceed. For individual reasons, he did not continue being the hero in following episodes. For now, he has left us to Australia, starting his life as an exchange student. We cherish the memory of the days we attempting together with him, and thank his contribution to WHU-China.

Yuan Feng

Brian Feng is from School of Mathematics and Statistics.

He is interested in finding the 'subtle accuracy' in qualitative questions, which is always a headache for biology student. For him, the iGEM 2012 is a best opportunity to practice his words. By taking a careful look at WHU-China 2012's program, Brian and his group members suggest to build a competition model concerning various resources and predators. At the moment, they are working really hard trying to answer the question whether it is possible to create our ideal E.coli.

Chang Liu

Hi! This is Chang Liu, Shelly, a Year 3 undergraduate student at WHU majoring in Biology. My research is mainly about obesity and diabetes.

It is written that you reap what you sow, then I must have got a bumper harvest in iGEM.

Bringing me into synthetic biology and handing me the key to creative thinking ,iGEM really benefits me a lot . More importantly,this competition brought me a lot of good friends. Best wishes to all my dear teammates, to those who worked days and nights ,to those who stayed up late and got up early .Thank you all for the scientific spirits you guys have cultured in me, thank you for the laughter and tears we once shared. Let’s pull together and fight till the end!

Min Ye

Min Ye is a junior student of College of Life Science, Wuhan University. He is a good problem solver, having participated in several connections of genes. As a competent team player, his sense of humor often makes others laugh aloud. What’s more, his sense of responsibility helps us to finish the project rapidly and precisely.

Xuepeng Huang

Hello, everyone! My name is Xuepeng Huang, or you can call me Xuepeng or pengpeng. I’m happy to join the team, the iGEM team of Wuhan University of China. Taking part in discussion and experimenting, we can make friends and promote ourselves. In the spare time, I prefer to listening music, get together with friends, walk in the beautiful campus , reading history books and something else. Hope to make friends with you and wish the world would be better and better in our efforts.

Yancheng Liu

Hello! I’m Yancheng Liu, a student in Wuhan University. I am interested in programming and using them to solve problems in life science. I can also make three-dimensional animations using 3ds Max or Maya. I joined iGEM team by chance and I learned a lot during these days. My work is realizing visualization of our project’s biological process and making post-processing of the movies. And I made many friends in our team. I like it!

Cheng Zhao

Who is the man? Cheng Zhao or, also called Gent.

I joined in our team because the elites of our college get together here. Fighting all the night, lively discussions and brain storms are at anytime and anyplace. This is where creativity births.

My job mainly focuses on protein expression, improving protein identity system and checking the efficiency of other people’s work. Full of curiosity in my brain, I may keep on asking question until other teammates become crazy. As member of this great team, a belief rooted in my heart is that constructive suggestions are never too many to be needed in a team. I always emphasize observation, skepticism and results analysis to avoid our team deviated from its route.

GOD BLESS WHU, GOD BLESS OUR TEAM!!

Chao Huang

I’m the only one here from school of Public Health.

My favourite two hobbies are eating and doing experiments on organisms.Like others,it’s really confused for me how to keep in shape while don’t have to neglect whatever delicious.The project attracted me the moment I knew it, for its aim to free the worries of gluttons and involvement of many bacterial experiments as well.That was primarily why I joined the team.I have been looking forward to be the first one to take the engineering bacteria we synthesized.

Yutian Zhang

Hello, I’m Yutian Zhang, a junior student of College of Life Science, Wuhan University. I fell in love with biology When I was a high school student. I was ravished by the mystic reactions in human body. I almost like playing all sorts of ball games that I could contact, such as basketball, tennis , table tennis, football and so on. IGEM gave a precious opportunity to get on with a lot of outstanding schoolmates and get closed contact with the advancing synthetic biology. For my personal reason, I didn’t finish my job as expected. But I really enjoyed the experiences when we discussed and conducted the experiments.

Wei Hong

As far as I see, Science is the only thing that rules the world. Since my 5-year-old birthday, I have kept trying my best to learn science ,and that becomes one of the reasons why I chose to be a scientist.

To be a scientist! That is my dream and I have been working hard on it for almost 20 years.

That’s me! Wei Hong ,a person who is keen on science .I joined this team to get myself an opportunity to do my own design and turn it into reality.

There’s an old saying in China, A true warrior would never be afraid and he will overcome every obstacle on his way to victory. I believed in this and I know, practice makes perfect. And my dream will come true!

Liuyi Hu

Liuyi Hu is a senior student studying Statistics in Wuhan University.

She participated in iGEM not only because she is excited about the amazing biomedical applications of synthetic biology but also wants to evaluate synthetic biology against her own mathematical and statistical interests and abilities. She wants to see more ways for the two fields to reinforce each other. Previously she took part in the Mathematical Modeling Contest and has already gained a lot of experiences in the application of the mathematical methods. Now she is studying more advanced statistical software as an exchange student in Utrecht University.

Jin Liu

I am Jin Liu, a senior student from School of Mathematics and Statistics of Wuhan University. I like reading, listening to music and travelling. I am in charge of the mathematical modeling in our iGEM team. I didn't know much about biology before , but now I find a lot of beauty in biology and biostatistics.

Jianbo Wang

Professor Wang, our instructor, seems far from being amicable on first impression. He is a tall, thin man with glasses, showing extraordinary seriousness and rigidity in his eyes. For all this and the fact that he is the dean, there seems to be a great distance between him and the fellow students. After just a few conversations with him, however, we soon found out that, though strict as he is with our team, he shows great geniality and resourcefulness when communicating with us, and often provides us with all sorts of information that we need. It’s him who helped us prepare for our thesis defense, in which we won many professors’ approval. It’s him who offered to fund us with this project, so that we can do it without being hamstrung by financial problems. It’s still him who encourages us, offers valuable advices and his own experience, and acknowledges the progresses we have got. We want to thank him here for all the support he gives to us. Without him, we can’t be going this far.

Zhixiong Xie

Our instructor, Dr. Xie, is remembered by us for his symbolic smile on his face with a little baby fat. One can easily judge from his photo that he is that kind of nice teacher who keeps a close relationship with his students. He did indeed. During this graduation season, we were surprised to find that he joyfully companied his two phD students taking photos around the campus, even more excited than his students, as if the one who just got the phD degree was him. And he regards us just as the students in his lab. He never tries to hide his proud of us. When he leaded the freshmen to do the wild field training in the summer, he cannot help but talking about our creative work with them. The enthusiastic praise even makes us a little bit embarrassed. However, cautious and cool-minded as his major microbiology required, he is quite critical about our idea. While we were fascinated by our plan that our new probiotic can help us reducing weight by magnificently increasing the metabolic rate of the fatty acids, he pointed that we were over optimistic before we have collected complete data, for example, the percentage of the lipid in every day diet and the estimated maximum metabolic rate after overexpression of related genes. It proved later that these calculations were vital in the plausibility of the project and the successive experimental design. As the instructor responding for the project running, he guarantees every freedom for us to think and to realize our design, whereas he is always ready to hear our goals, progresses, questions, difficulties, and then gives his ingenious suggestions. In a word, those who need help will always get help from Dr. Xie, both on academic and in personal life.

Yu Chen

Yu Chen, associate professor of virology at Wuhan University. Doctor Chen’s research interests extends from SARS Coronavirus Nonstructural Protein nsp16 ,si RNA to the mechanism of RNA virus replication and transcription .Doctor Chen is a responsible and approachable teacher and he offered us a lot of constructive suggestions based on his rich experience in molecule cloning.

Well, it’s time for the start of a new journey of a new IGEM team. IGEM seemed to have magic power to attract a number of students to participate in it. At the beginning of November,2011, with the guidance of the members from the precedent team, 18 juniors stood out of 80 applicants to become the vanguard of the new team. Also at the same time, the new journey started.

During the November, 2011, members of the team were divided into three groups each of which is guided by one group leader, respectively. And every week each group was expected to meet 2-3 times to view and discuss the outstanding works of previous IGEM competitions. And at the end of week, a feast full of innovative ideas and interesting opinions brought by each group to all the team members. Delving into various excellent ideas and works from other universities and colleges, we began to have a more intensive understanding of IGEM and embarked on our own project.

At the beginning of December, 2011, all of three groups had their origin but undeveloped ideas and introduced their ideas to all the members at the team meeting. Of course, we never stopped there despite of the coming of the final examinations of the semester. At the end of the semester, January, each group determined their project and started to collect information and consult relevant documents to device their ways to achieve their targets during winter vacation.

Although during winter vacation, members of the team got separate and celebrated festivals with their family at their homes, they still tried to communicate with each other online. Everyday, new information are provided and new progress is made. And thanks to this long vacation, members do not only have a good rest but also develop their ideas.

After vacation came a new academic semester and also a new beginning. Each group came up with their well-established ideas and details of their plans and presented them to each other. Decision was made by all of the members that which idea or project is the best one for the team. And “ E. colsim” captured everyone’s attention and won as the best idea. And so at the late February, the team determined their project and focused all their power and energy to work it out. In addition, to register the competition officially and at the same time acquire financial support from the department, the team had to prepare for the oral defence of the thesis in the department. To get support from the department, between late February and early March, everyday the team got together, discussed, enriched our plans and perfect our project. Fortunately, as an old Chinese phrase goes that KONG FU people live, the team successfully demonstrated their competency and received the financial support from the department.

After the oral defense, the team successfully registered competition and finally started the experiments and researches. Whether it’s day or night, whether it’s weekend or weekdays, there are members in the laboratory enjoying the happiness or overcoming the difficulties in the programs. Until now, six months has passed by, they still on their way to make their projects work well and still on their way to realize their dreams. Though there are tear and failures, setbacks and anxiety, the team still holds on. And on 3rd, October, 2012, the Asian qualifier, it’s time for the team to tell their ideas and dreams to the world.

Hello, iGEM!

Hello, Hong Kong!

Hello, MIT!

Hello, World!

Wuhan University is a prestigious university in China. It is a key university directly under the administration of the Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China. It is regarded as one of the best and most selective universities in China. Its history dates back to 1893, making it one of the oldest higher learning institutions in China. It became the first modern Chinese university in the early 1920s.

Seated at Wuchang luojia Hill,WHU is also famous for its beautiful natural scenery, hill and lake. The distinguishing early architecture of Wuhan University and the beautiful natural scenery match well. The early architecture of palatial style at Wuhan University, which mixes the eastern and the western architectural styles, is in exquisite layout.

1.The Library

The library is the highest building on Lion Hill. It’s the landmark and spiritual symbol of Wuhan University. The integrate appearance of the library is of traditional Chinese palatial architecture. It is designed by an American architect, Mr. F.H.Kales. What a surprise! On the top is erected seven-ring tripod, with heating chimney installed on the roof. The reinforced concrete framed structure and combined steel rack for the bearing was adopted in structural technology. On the ridge, ring corridor, and eaves are delicate ornaments of entwining dragons, cloudings, bucket arches, fairies and animals. It’s the knowledge treasury and academic status as well as a significant site for visitors.

2.Wuhan university administrative building

One of the distinctive characteristics of the buildings on Luojia campus is that they are built according to the topography of the hill and groping variation in order. There are more hills and less land on Luojia campus. Kales, architect and designer of the campus, solved the problem.

The sculpture is given to Wuhan University as a present by the 81st and 82nd students graduated from this university. Kunpeng is an animal in Chinese fairly tale. In the North Sea, there’s a huge fish called “Kun”. As it swims, the water under its fin splashes 3,000 miles high. When it changes into a bird, it is called “Peng”, which can fly in the cloud of 90,000 miles high.

3.The Cherry Castle

In 1938, Wuhan was occupied by the Japanese invaders. Luojia Hill became the central headquarter and field hospital of Japanese army in Central China. It is not until eight years later that Anti-Japanese War ended in victory for us. The first cherry blossom was planted by the Japanese. However, as the florescence of cherry blossom is twenty to thirty years, the cherry blossoms now are absolutely not the original ones. A professor of Wuhan University has kept a record of the various data of cherry blossom for 60 years, which is even earlier than Japanese.

Are your used to a tidy and well-equipped laboratory? Are you often troubled by the lack of equipment and reagents? Yes we are. We do not even have an aspetic operating board functioning well. Sometimes we were scared by the loud voice emitted by the clapped-out centrifuge with broken lid. The fact that depressed us was that our PCR machine always went wrong. So to avoid being impeded by these problems, sometimes we had to ask for help from other laboratories.

Another difficulty depressed us was the terrible environment. The dustbins emitted a disgusting smell, hand washing basin was surrounded by a swarm of mosquitoes, laboratory tables were scratched out and rag and mop were also nauseating.

Fortunately, the terrible environment of the laboratory does not extinguish the passion of us. Everyday, team members came, did experiments and discussed their success or failures in experiments. On everyone’s face, there was big smile. Carefully and energetic, we progressively conduct our experiments and researches. And finally, our dream comes true.

Acknowledgement & Attribution

Acknowledgement


We thank Professor Zhixiong Xie, and Jianbo Wang for leading us.



We thank Dr. Xiangdong Gao, Mengxiang Sun, Ling Zheng, Xiaofeng Tang, Tiangang Liu, Yulan Wang, Lijia Li, Hongbin Shu, Xiaodong Zhang, Wentao Ma, Lin Guo, Daisuke Kiga and John Cronan for advices and kind instruction.

We thank University of Dundee iGEM team and Tokyo tech iGEM team for providing us cDNA and plasmids.

We thank Professor Yan Zhou, Yan Wu, Fang Peng, and Xiangdong Chen for their kindness to provide research equipments and reagents.

We thank Yan Long, Jing Che, and Xiaoyan Li for ordering reagents and providing equipment.

Attribution

We got the genome DNA of Salmonella enterica subsp. enterica serovar Typhimurium str. LT2 from Dundee iGEM team.

The design of fatty acid degradation mainly referenced the works of John E. Cronan and his colleagues. We got much of our knowledge on the Fad gene family from his outstanding work. The disign of promoter PfadR was also enlightened by Cronan's kind advice.
Referenced works:
Characterization of the Fatty Acid-responsive Transcription Factor FadR. Narayan Raman, Paul N. Black, and Concetta C. DiRusso. THEJOURNAL OFBIOLOGICAL CHEMISTRY. Vol. 272, No. 49, pp. 30645–30650, 1997.
The β-Oxidation Systems of Escherichia coli and Salmonella enterica Are Not Functionally Equivalent. Surtaj Hussain Iram and John E. Cronan. JOURNAL OFBACTERIOLOGY, Vol. 188, No. 2, p. 599–608, 2006.
Unexpected Functional Diversity among FadR Fatty Acid Transcriptional Regulatory Proteins. Surtaj Hussain Iram and John E. Cronan. THE JOURNAL OF BIOLOGICAL CHEMISTRY. Vol. 280, NO. 37, pp. 32148–32156, 2005.
Fatty Acid Degradation in Escherichia coli and Salmonella enterica Serovar Typhimurium. Surtaj Hussain Iram. Doctor Degree Thesis, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Directed by John E. Cronan, pp1-24, 2005.
A new Escherichia colimetabolic competency: growth on fatty acids by a novel anaerobic β-oxidation pathway. John W. Campbell, Rachael M. Morgan-Kiss and John E. Cronan. Molecular Microbiology Vol. 47, Issue. 3, pp793–805, 2003.

The design of cellulose synthesis device mainly referenced these articles:
GGDEF and EAL domains inversely regulate cyclic di-GMP levels and transition from sessility to motility. Roger Simm, Michael Morr, Abdul Kader, Manfred Nimtz and Ute R?mling. Molecular Microbiology Vol. 53, Issue 4, pp1123-1134, 2004.

FimX, a Multidomain Protein Connecting Environmental Signals to
Twitching Motility in Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Bixing Huang, Cynthia B. Whitchurch, and John S. Mattick. JOURNAL OF BACTERIOLOGY, Vol. 185, No. 24, pp 7068-7076, 2003.

A CsgD-Independent Pathway for Cellulose Production and Biofilm
Formation inEscherichia coli. Sandra Da Re and Jean-Marc Ghigo. JOURNAL OF BACTERIOLOGY, Vol. 188, No. 8, pp 3073–3087, 2006. Molecular biology of cellulose production in bacteria. Ute R?mling, Research in Microbiology 153, 205–212, 2002.

The cupric soap reaction is based on the paper of Dae Y. Kwon and Joon S. Rhee. We revised their protocol mainly on the reaction volume and the detail of extraction.
Referenced work:
A Simple and Rapid Colorimetric Method for Determination
of Free Fatty Acids for Lipase Assay. Dae Y. Kwon and Joon S. Rhee, Journal of the American Oil Chemists' Society, Vol. 63, No. 1, 89-92, 1986.

The cell-free assay of fatty acid degradation is advised by Dr. Tiangang Liu. We read his exellent papers but finally employed another protocol from Salih J. Wakil, considering the minimal detectable quantitive and the sensitivity of cupric soap reaction.
Referenced works:
Control of Fatty Acid Metabolism. Gerald Weeks, Martin Sharpino, R.O. Burns, and Salih J. Wakil. JOURNAL OF BACTERIOLOGY, Vol. 97, No. 2, pp 827-836, 1969.
Quantitative analysis and engineering of fatty acid biosynthesis in E. coli. Tiangang Liu, Harmit Vora, Chaitan Khosla, Metabolic Engineering, 12, 378–386, 2010.

The plate-reading method for fluorescence measurement is revised from the method of iGEM08_Edinburgh.

In the modeling portion, Dr. Chao Tang' informed us how to build differential equations involving transcription inhibition. And we also benefit a lot from his research method of searching random parameters to detect properties of a complex biological system.

Dispite above attributions, other possible contributions, as our biobrick parts (both physical DNA and information on partregistry), and as presented on our wiki, our jamboree presentation and poster are made by us, WHU-China, Team of iGEM 2012.

Specially, we must declare that we get and develop the idea of designing promoter PfadR independently of Jay D. Keasling or any member of his lablatory. Although his article on Nature Biotechnology was published online on the day just after our project passing the review of school of life sciences.
Referenced works:
Design of a dynamic sensor-regulator system for production of chemicals and fuels derived from fatty acids. Fuzhong Zhang, James M. Carothers and Jay D Keasling