Team:IPN-UNAM-Mexico/Collaboration

Turing meets synthetic biology:

self-emerging patterns in an activator-inhibitor network

[[Image:Month-icon.png | 50px]]LCG-UNAM-MEXICO & IPN-UNAM-MEXICO teams working together
When we heard that there was another iGEM team within our alma mater we started trying to contact them because we knew we could help each other to make better projects and produce better results.

This is how we found  LCG-UNAM-Mexico iGEM team and since the early stages of our projects our team has been closely collaborating with them  by exchanging ideas and discussing about experimental and theoretical issues we could have had in the future.

Before we started to implement our projects we had some meetings where we finally met them. In this meetings we exposed to each other the general ideas we had and the way we were planning to model and implement them. We recieved a valuable advice from them on our project, specially on the way we were planning to regulate our system using IPTG and aTc inversors and we mentioned them some theoretical issues they cuold have on the modelling of their system, and we offered to help them. We also kept an active online communication with them and we were always curious to know what the other team was working on.

When we were about to start implementing our system we had some bureaucratical issues on the customes with the current iGEM Kit Plate, and we needed some BioBricks of this Kit. Fortunately they already had it, so they kindly extracted, eluted, transformed, purified and sent them to us so we wouldn't lose more time. Certainly they saved us a lot of time, and we could started to work with a very little delay in comparison to the time we would have to wait for the arrival of the Kit. They also advised us in some technical details and tricks on the handling of the BioBricks, with good results in the wetlab.

When they were modelling they found some difficulties on describing the dynamics of the diffussion component of their system, so we assesed them on what finally would be their cellular automaton with discrete diffusion. Since they had some troubles with a continuous model we proposed them to use a discrete version of what they were trying to do: the discrete Laplace operator, or well a partial differential equations system. Finally they chose to use a discrete version of Flick's law to solve this problem, with good results on their drylab.

The collaboration between our team and LCG-UNAM was a very good idea, since it made things a lot easier for both teams and made possible to achieve better results. But definitely the best part of it was the creativity of our mutual contributions, since our teams together cover a very broad range of fields and we could complement each other very well. Two teams thinking together is better than one working alone.



[[Image:Month-icon.png | 50px]]Valencia survey
Our team help Valencia team answering some questions about synthetic biology. It was a great experience and an excelent idea from the members of Valencia team to gather this kind of information. We want to congratulate them for this iniciative.