In the competitive arena of iGEM, the advancement of a project is never just a lonely battle in the laboratory. The collision of ideas is often born from a late-night chat or an argument in front of the whiteboard; when the teams from different universities gather their own "sparks", only then can the prairie fire of synthetic biology be really ignited. On 25th May, OUC-China, PekingHSC-China, SUSTechOCEAN and Jiangnan-China teams joined hands on the stage and interpreted the infinite possibilities of synthetic biotechnology with four amazing stories of different styles, each page of the PPT is the exchange of ideas and data, and each Q&A is the resonance of inspiration and doubt. Every page of PPT is a meeting of brain and data, and every Q&A is a meeting of inspiration and doubt. The free exchange session was more like a "blind box of experience": everyone shared their experiences of competition, experiments and teamwork tips, and the atmosphere was relaxing and rewarding. Applause, laughter and keyboard sounds were heard one after another, and the team members of the four schools turned from "net friends" to "comrades in arms", which also sowed the seeds of the subsequent cross-school cooperation.
Figure1: Offline communication with CJUH-JLU-China
During the 2025 iGEM season, PekingHSC collaborated with CJUH-JLU-China and multiple other teams to co-author the white paper Innovative Applications of Functional Nucleic Acids in iGEM. This whitepaper focuses on pioneering applications of functional nucleic acids in both disease therapeutics and iGEM project design. Centering on riboswitch technology, the teams leveraged their respective expertise to develop comprehensive case studies based on actual project implementations. Throughout the collaboration, participants engaged in extensive online and offline exchanges to facilitate communication and consensus-building. These efforts were further strengthened through discussions and refinements conducted on the platform of the Conference of China iGEMer Community (CCiC). The core outcomes of this collaboration are documented in Chapter 3 of the whitepaper, while key discussion findings were formally presented at the Functional Nucleic Acids Symposium during the CCiC conference.
White Paper on Innovative Applications of Functional Nucleic Acids in iGEM▼
On 5 August 2025, PekingHsc team joined 28 iGEM teams from 24 top universities across China, with more than a hundred young scholars, to participate in the iGEM Engineered In Vivo Drugs Symposium. The three core issues facing engineered in vivo drugs from laboratory to application were discussed in depth: targeted delivery and environment sensing strategies, design and optimisation of therapeutic logic circuits, and safety and controllability challenges of in vivo drugs. At the meeting, there were experts and scholars facing the academic as well as industrial frontiers, delivering wonderful reports, and the opening speech of President Liu Chenli of Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (SIAT). As a predecessor and mentor in the field of synthetic biology, Liu Chenli analysed in depth the scientific gap and practical challenges that must be crossed for in vivo drugs to go from an "idea" to a "product", and in particular, he emphasized the challenges of "safety" and "controllability". In particular, it was emphasised that "safety" and "controllability" are the lifelines that determine whether this technology can be truly applied. Many iGEM teams participated in the presentations and poster presentations, and the PekingHsc team members used their own projects as the background, combined with the innovative design of nucleic acid aptamer screening platforms and safety considerations in their projects, and actively communicated with other teams, learning from communication, and growing in the process of problem solving and solving. This meeting enabled us to establish contacts with many iGEM teams from other universities, and then we continued to discuss and improve the details and design through the CCiC conference, realising the closed loop of raising problems - cooperating and progressing - solving problems - deepening the understanding of the problems.
From August 6th to August 8th, 2025, the 12th China Conference on iGEM (CCiC2025) and the 2nd Global Bio-Developer Conference successfully concluded at the Beijing Zhongguancun National Independent Innovation Demonstration Zone Conference Center. This conference attracted over a hundred teams from major universities and research institutions across the country. As the first co-organizing team, PekingHSC actively participated in and coordinated the organization of this grand event.
Figure3: PekingHSC was involved in the conference affairs
As an annual exchange event for Chinese iGEMers, CCiC has been a crucial platform for over a decade, igniting sparks of innovation among youth and facilitating project competition. CCiC has witnessed synthetic biology evolve from a niche discipline to one now popularized across more than 200 universities and communities, transitioning from pure laboratory research to industrial explosion. In addition to providing iGEM teams with opportunities for project presentation and mutual exchange, the conference also featured specialized academic discussions, guest sharing sessions, poster presentations, Unconference segments, and other activities.
In the preparatory work for the conference affairs, PekingHSC played a significant role as a co-organizer. Our team members contributed substantial effort in areas such as sponsor communication, venue coordination, attendee team liaison, and participant information collection. Furthermore, as participants, we actively presented in project showcases and poster exchanges, ultimately standing out in the synbiopunk-challenge evaluation and achieving a Top 10 result, successfully completing all tasks for this conference.
Figure4: PekingHSC made its appearance at CCiC as a participating team
This conference not only provided PekingHSC with a platform to showcase scientific research and innovation but also promoted exchange and collaboration with iGEM teams nationwide. Through project presentations and discussions in themed seminars, we delved into cutting-edge topics within the field of biotechnology and gained insights into the development of related technologies. We believe that, leveraging the experience accumulated and resources integrated from this conference, PekingHSC will continue to break new ground in the future field of biomedicine and advance towards higher developmental goals.
To establish a high-level academic exchange platform, gather expertise from various fields, share cutting-edge research findings, stimulate innovative thinking, and explore the broad application prospects of functional nucleic acids, our team hosted a self-organized session—the Functional Nucleic Acids Workshop—on the afternoon of August 7, 2025, during the 12th China Conference on iGEM (CCiC2025) and the 2nd Global Bio-Developer Conference. The workshop consisted of three thematic report sessions and a free discussion segment.
Figure6: Presentation of the meeting agenda
In the first thematic report, the PekingHSC team outlined the development history and current research status of functional nucleic acids. They provided a detailed introduction to the SELEX technology for obtaining functional nucleic acids and their applications in biosensing, nanocarriers, disease diagnosis, and nucleic acid drugs. This report laid a solid foundation for subsequent in-depth discussions, offering a comprehensive and authoritative opening perspective.
In the second thematic report, NNU-China presented in vitro diagnostic technologies driven by functional nucleic acids, covering the design background, principles, and detection methods. ZJU-China detailed the extensive applications of functional nucleic acids in therapy, using therapeutic aptamers, functional nucleic acid-assisted drug delivery, and the application of ribozymes in gene therapy as examples. CJUH-JLU-China introduced the concept of theranostics, starting with diagnostic aptamers and delving into the applications of functional nucleic acids in diagnosis. Together, these three teams demonstrated how functional nucleic acids move from the laboratory to the clinic, playing a revolutionary role in disease diagnosis and treatment, based on their design and optimization methods.
In the third thematic report, HZAU-China presented on the background, current status, core issues, and potential discussion points related to high-throughput screening technologies. DUT-iGEM proposed rational design strategies for modular RNA drugs, while PekingHSC focused on the directed evolution of functional nucleic acids. These three teams concentrated on the key technological pathways from concept to practical application for functional nucleic acids, highlighting methods that collectively advance the discovery and performance enhancement of functional nucleic acids.
During the free discussion session, participants addressed the challenges of using unnatural nucleotides in nucleic acid drugs, acknowledging difficulties in efficiency and incorporation techniques, while also recognizing their promising application prospects. Subsequently, students discussed the limitations of functional nucleic acids, pointing out issues such as the susceptibility of aptamers to degradation, from both policy and practical experimental experience perspectives.
This workshop facilitated exchanges among iGEM teams from across China. By reviewing the latest developments in functional nucleic acids, deeply exploring their applications at the forefront of biomedical diagnosis and therapy, and looking ahead to the sophisticated technologies for their design, screening, and optimization, we recognized the crucial role of collaboration in advancing this field. We look forward to deeper and broader applications of functional nucleic acid research in the future.
On the afternoon of September 14th, we joined the “Innovation, Integration and Impact” (3i) meeting organized by the Human Practices team of SJTU-Software. The event brought together seven Chinese iGEM teams to explore the core values of Human Practices, share distinctive outreach activities, and brainstorm how to weave a coherent narrative through our projects.
As an active participant, we presented our work in three areas:
The exchange was an opportunity for us to further discuss inclusivity with OUC-China. During the meeting, we shared our stories of inclusiveness, looking for the missing link in each other's story lines. We shared our current inclusivity activities and logic chain, and introduced our inclusivity guide to OUC-China, while the OUC-China team shared their experiences in inclusivity activities with us, as our experiences complement each other as we are not targeting the same inclusivity groups. Their experience taught us what we should pay attention to when dealing with the elderly and left-behind children, and made us realise that it is not enough for us to carry out inclusive activities on our own, and that we are limited in our experience, but we can make a bigger difference by building an inclusive exchange platform and working together with iGEM teams all over the world!
