Collabration

1. Teaching Workshop: iGEM and Innovation Talent Cultivation

On March 12, 2024, Nanjing-China in collaboration with the NJU-China team and the ShanghaiTech-China team from ShanghaiTech University, held an academic activity named "Teaching Workshop: iGEM and Innovation Talent Cultivation". The core theme of this workshop was to discuss how to cultivate innovative talents through the iGEM competition, enhance the strength of the academic disciplines, in order to support the further development of the iGEM teams.

2. Collaboration on picture books

On April 13, 2024, Nanjing-China had an online meeting with the Fudan iGEM team, SJTU-bioX-Shanghai, NUDT-CHINA, ZJU-China team. We have preliminarily discussed and determined to collaborate on creating a synthetic biology-themed picture book design to promote the popularization of synthetic biology in education and further expand its influence. And till now, we have successfully finished this work together.

3. IGEM teams meeting up

In June 2024, our iGEM Nanjing-China team was invited to participate in the iGEM team exchange meeting held at Nanjing Agricultural University. The exchange meeting brought together six teams, including HUBU, NAU, NJTech-China-A, NJTech-China, WHU, and our team, aiming to provide a platform for each team to share project progress, learn from each other, and discuss solutions to technical problems.

4. With NJU-China and the Nature Society of Nanjing University

Nanjing-China have good relationships with the iGEM NJU-China team and the Nature Society of Nanjing University. This year, we three organizations have organized two events together, starlight fair and World Environment Day activity.

On May 18, 2024, we cooperated with the Nature Society of Nanjing University and the NJU-China team to jointly set up a booth, holding a synthetic biology game night.Our demonstration at the booth helped to spread awareness about synthetic biology, the iGEM competition, and our project.

On June 5, 2024, we three organizations collabrated again and organized a theme publicity campaign on World Environment Day, greatly increasing awareness among teachers and students about environmental protection and sustainable development. The event also received recognition from the United Nations Environment Programme.

5. With ZJU-China Team

Nanjing-China learned that the School of Life Sciences at Zhejiang University, led by Professor Yu Luyang, established the Space Biology Research Center at the beginning of 2024 and its main research content and key tasks include a series of metabolic regulation changes and molecular mechanisms of cells and other living organisms under radiation and microgravity environments. These are the things that we were quite interested in and that were very associated with our project.

So we contacted the ZJU-China iGEM team through the Chinese iGEM community and had an exchange meeting on the campus of Zhejiang University on July 2, 2024. And they sincerely offered us help to try to contact Professor Yu Luyang, though failed finally. However, taking this opportunity, both teams had further discussions on their respective projects, plans, implementation, and current progress, and expressed the intention of future HP-related cooperation.

6. With Changshu National Agricultural Science Park

On July 3, 2024, the iGEM 2024 Nanjing-China team arrived at the Changshu National Agricultural Science Park in Changshu City, Jiangsu Province, to conduct a one-day visit to explore advanced technologies and facilities such as soilless cultivation techniques and space agriculture laboratories.

Through communication with Researcher Mr. Lu from the Changshu National Agricultural Science Park, the Nanjing-China team gained a deeper understanding of the application status of modern agricultural science and technology such as soilless cultivation in the park, and had more thoughts on the challenges and solutions of space agriculture. Besides, we realized that establishing a space agriculture system is not just about providing an excellent microorganism, but about establishing a complete set of solutions.

7.Discussion with SINO PRO LAW FIRM in Beijing

On 11 July 2024, the Nanjing-China team visited SINO PRO LAW FIRM for an interview and in-depth discussion on "Carbon Related Policies and the Achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals". The activity was aimed at exploring how government policies and social interactions can work together to promote the process of sustainable development.

Through discussions, we realized that the government can promote the development of industries through formulating policies reasonably, leading to a positive impact on the environment,which inspired us to improve the project and promote it by cooperating with the local government.

8. Conference of China iGEMer Community (CCiC)

From July 12th to 14th, the eleventh Conference of China iGEMer Community (CCiC) for the International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competition was held at Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University. Nearly one thousand people attended the conference, including 89 teams from universities and 35 teams from high schools, sharing and showcasing their iGEM competition projects. Nanjing-China had also participated in this conference. We engaged in deep exchanges with experts from academia and industry, sparking innovative ideas.

9. Visit to Space Science and Technology Institute (Shenzhen)

The research content of the Space Science and Technology Institute (Shenzhen) coincides with the content of Nanjing-China's project this year, and it has a more mature and complete research system. Therefore, in-depth exchanges with the institute may provide great help for our project.

On July 24, 2024, we arrived there and had a close discussion with Mr. Wen RuCong, the person in charge of the aerospace engineering department of the institute. He gave us a detailed introduction to their work and gave advices to our project. This trip made us realize that the current important issue was to carry out a calculation and analysis of the circulation supply and demand of various material flows, including the supply and demand of feces, the circulation of oxygen and other gases in the system, water circulation, and the supply level of crops as food, to ultimately present the feasibility of the project. In this regard, after the meeting, Mr. Wen also provided a copy of the internal material flow circulation analysis data of the institute for our reference, which we were greatly appreciated.

10. Trip to Modern Agricultural Science and Technology Park

On 20 August 2024, the Nanjing-China team went to the Modern Agricultural Science and Technology Park in Xiaogi Town, Jiangdu District, Yangzhou City, Jiangsu Province, to conduct interviews and research centred on the agricultural model being implemented there. Through a field visit to the base, we gained an intuitive understanding of the operation of the park. Afterwards, we discussed with the person in charge of the park on the current foreseeable problems and introduced the main contents of the Nanjing-China project to him. Apart from their advice to our project, we recognised the inherent limitations of technology and the fact that technological developments continue to struggle to address a range of issues that are influenced by the market price.

11. Changzheng Engineering Technology Co., Ltd.

Changzheng Engineering Technology Co., Ltd. is a subsidiary of the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology of China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation. We wanted to know the current method of handling garbage in space, and further understand whether our project can effectively handle space garbage, thereby making space cleaner and energy utilization more efficient. Therefore, we are honored to invite Aerospace Engineer Li Honghai to have an online discussion with him.

Engineer Li affirmed our project's recovery of phosphorus in garbage, which can make up for the inability of traditional incineration to recover materials. In charge of our project's limitation of low power generation, Engineer Li said that every project and every application has its most appropriate application scenario, and we need to find its most appropriate application scenario to maximize its use, which also inspired us to start thinking and exploring the application scenarios of our space technology in the field of domestic waste treatment on the ground.

12. iGEM-Space MUN

Our team participated in a Model United Nations (MUN) launched by SZ-SHD on revising the existing space treaties, aimed at discussing and developing new space treaties to address the challenges of future space exploration and resource preservation. The theme was "Revising the Existing Space Treaty", with objectives including protecting limited space resources and discussing how microbiology could impact space exploration.

13. 2024 Space Village Meet-up

On August 30, 2024, we joined the space village meet-up launched by Lucas Boldrini, the head of the iGEM Space Network. It provided valuable opportunities for communication between space village teams. Every team proposed their diverse and remarkable solutions for the future of space exploration. Meanwhile, we deeply recognized that while exploring space, we must not forget that there are still numerous issues on Earth that need to be addressed.