The principle of open source is a principle we have always adhered in iGEM. In our iGEM journey, we not only hope to make progress and growth in our own projects, but also aspire to share our experience and achievements with other iGEMers and a wider audience. At the same time, we have gained valuable knowledge and experience from the previous iGEM team,such as iGEM2021_CSU_CHINA. We also hope that other iGEM teams will gain insights and inspiration from our work. In this page we demonstrate some of the most important contributions in our project that we believe could be useful for future iGEM teams.

The TetR-ELK1(BBa_K3734019) was originally desiged as a signal transducer rewiring the activation of MAPK signaling pathway to into the transcriptional activation of tetO7 promoters [1]. The team iGEM21_CSU_CHINA in 2021 have already shown the change of MAPK-ERK pathway with insulin stimulation, we hereby further chacterize the transcriptional activation of TetR-ELK1 in response of insulin stimulation.

Methods

HEK-293T cells were co-transfected with three plasmids (in 1:1:1 ratio) carrying either insulin receptor (INSR), TetR-ELK1 and TCE-SEAP cassette respectively. Cells were stimulated with either 0nM, 1nM, 10nM or 20nM insulin at 6 hours post transfection. SEAP level in the cell culture medium was measured 24h after stimulation.

Results

As shown in Figure 1, insulin stimulation resulted in an approximately 26-27-fold activation of SEAP production compared to the unstimulated cells. This result provided a quantitative characterization on how TetR-ELK1 could respond to insulin stimulation.

We are the first team to characterize melatonin receptors and construct a screening platform. We validated the effectiveness of the screening platform through different methods (Results). We have documented these parts in the Parts Registry, hoping to be helpful to the future IGEM teams.

We present a collection of parts that can be assemble to three mammalian cell-based screening platforms which can accurately characterize the status of three important signaling pathways: the cAMP/PKA/CREB signaling pathway , the MAPK/ERK pathway , and the Ca ²⁺ signaling pathway. For more detailed information about our parts, we highly recommend visiting the Parts pages (Parts Overview, Basic Parts, Composite Parts, Part Collection).

Education and guidance
We believe that making synthetic biology known to more people is one of the purposes of our iGEM team. Therefore, we promote our work to different audiences through various means. We introduced synthetic biology to elementary, middle, and high school students in interesting and simple ways. The students actively participated in the activities and gave us good feedback. At the same time, we collaborated with NUDT Library on National Science Popularization Day to carry out science popularization activities, integrating our project into campus questionnaire surveys, knowledge competitions, and biological scenario puzzle games. Through science popularization activities, we hope that more people can learn about iGEM and participate in the construction of future iGEM teams.