Team:PKU Beijing/Team/Collaboration

Being one part of the iGEM society is a wonderful way to learn about what is going on in the field of synthetic biology, how to share your fancy ideas with people and work collaboratively with team members. Besides, it provides fantastic opportunities to make friends with people in other teams and EVEN collaborate internationally. Since the PKU iGEM team was founded in 2007, we have been cooperating with other iGEM teams from different countries and continents. This year we followed this tradition and developed collaboration relationship with 4 iGEM teams.

Exchange Program collaborated with UCSF team

This program started in 2008 and allows the two teams exchanging 1 student with each other. Last year, we had Eric Meltzer from San Francisco and sent Dan Lu to UCSF. This year, Tiffany Saw, a lovely ABC girl who was in UCSF iGEM2008 team, came to Beijing and worked with us for the entire summer. In the lab, she loves mini-preping, drawing cartoons for everybody and taking care of our lab pets. When free of work, she carried her camera around and tried different cuisines in Beijing and then took picture of them. She loves almost everything here in Beijing, including the people, food, historical attractions--but not the cars. Now she has been back to United States and begun her college life at the University of California, San Diego.

Visit to SJTU-BioX-Shanghai team

In the middle of this summer vacation, we paid a visit to Shanghai to meet our new friends, the SJTU-BioX-Shanghai team. Before that, we had already got contact through emails and discussed a lot about the development of iGEM in China. We first arrived in Xuhui Campus and visited labs in SJTU BioX center which sponsors the team. Then we went to the beautiful Minhang Campus (and very huge!) and held a meeting together. Since it is their 1st year in the iGEM family, we shared with them our experience of participating iGEM competition and working on synthetic biology projects. And they told us what they have learned from the workshop at Imperial College. After the meeting, our Shanghai friends guided us to some famous places, such as the Nanjing Road, the Bund and Yu Park, which are typical symbols of Shanghai. We really appreciate their hospitality and cannot wait to see them again at the Jamboree.

Help NTU-Singapore and Valencia teams with their surveys

Survey is a valuable approach to obtain public opinions and tendency about specific issues on human practice of synthetic biology. This year, a lot of iGEM teams focus on human practice and some of them invited us to help. We filled out surveys for NTU-Singapore and Valencia teams. Besides, we built up a google group with NTU-Singapore team in order to help each other with experimental problems.

Interaction with Paris team

In June, Prof. Ariel Lindner (supervisor of Paris team) and some French students visited the Center for Theoretical Biology at Peking University. He, Camill and Yann (PhD candidates) attended our team meeting and gave us many beneficial suggestions. The two PhD boys are very friendly and humorous, and as fascinated with football as we do. We played football together and planned for another game at the Jamboree!

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