Team:BIT-China/Practices
Overview
BIT-China is now taking their third iGEM trip! This year we continued the fine tradition of our team, and hence we created Human Practice through large varieties of academic activities, which belongs to a significant part of our project, including giving preaches and training at school, project communications with plenty of universities in China and obtaining financial support from COFCO. Eventually, we accessed our project from three aspects, containing Risk Assessment, Feasibility Assessment and End-User Considerations.
Promotion
Many people are still unfamiliar with iGEM and synthetic biology though there were over 200 teams in last years’ competition. For promoting the concepts of synthetic biology and iGEM, we held several lectures about synthetic biology and iGEM in our university. After these lectures, we held a winter camp for recruiting and training new team members. In May, we contributed to Newsletter of Xiamen University, popularizing synthetic biology and advertising our project.
1.Lectures and Winter Camp[Collapse]
Fig.1 Lecture of synthetic biology and iGEM
After 2014 iGEM Giant Jamboree, we decided to hold synthetic biology lectures for promoting iGEM competition and synthetic biology and meanwhile recruiting new team members who are interested in synthetic biology.
The lectures are for all students in our university. Besides students from school of life science and technology, some students major in Electronic Engineering, Software and Art Design also attended these lectures. We invited Prof. Chun Li, team instructor of BIT-China, to make speeches at lectures. After these lectures, we recruited some new members with great passion for iGEM and opened our third iGEM trip.
Before project brainstorm, we conducted a winter camp for all potential members. In winter camp, we gave some basic knowledge and offered several classes for improving their fundamental research ability.
Fig.2 iGEM Winter Camp in Beijing Institute of Technology
Winter camps consist of three terms. In the first term, 2015 BIT-China team leader Chenyi Li offered a class concerning how to gain the latest news from iGEM main page, how to quickly search and get information from references；In the second term, 2014 BIT-China team member Mingming Cao made a speech about how to use Photoshop to design ppt or poster. We invited 2014 BIT-China team member Zhong Wan to make an instruction about writing in the last term. Our winter camp ended up with a final exam for all attendees. After the winter camp, all attendees’ ability upgraded a lot and they were aware of how to become a good iGEMer.
2.Contribution to Newsletter of Amoy[Collapse]
Fig.3 The Newsletter of Xiamen University
We contributed to Newsletter at Xiamen University’s invitation. This Newsletter was mainly composed of Team Introduction and Project Update as well as the special issue-interview with SYSU. They do offer a communication platform among teams. Teams all around the world introduce their programs, share details of experiments, ask for help, and reply to requirements from counterparts.
Our writing was published at Newsletter No.3, project 01. In our piece of paper we advertised our team and made a brief introduction of our project in 2015. (click here to see the Newsletter)
Communication with teams all of the world
We have participated in Asian Conference organized by NCTU and CCiC organized by Peking University, in order to collect suggestions and feedbacks on our project as well as learn the strengths and expertise of other teams. We also have exchanges and discussions with Beijing Normal University, Tianjin University and Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University.
1.Attending the 3rd iGEM conference, NCTU, Taiwan[Collapse]
Fig.4 BIT-CHINA took part in 2015 Asian iGEM Conference held by NCTU-Formosa
Time: 2015.7.23-2015.7.27.
Location: National Chiao Tong University in Taiwan
In July, 2015, BIT-CHINA was invited to take part in an Asian iGEM Conference held by team NCTU-Formosa. Over 40 teams participated in the conference, and all of them made splendid speeches to introduce their own projects. Of course, we gained plenty of useful knowledge and inspiration from the conference. Our team also made a brief introduction about pH Controller, after that, we communicated with many other teams and acquired lots of suggestions.
2.Exchange meeting between BIT-China and BNU-China[Collapse]
Fig.5 The Communication between BNU-CHINA and BIT-CHINA
Time: 2015.07.11 and 2015.08
Location: 712 Meeting Room, 5th Teaching Building, Beijing Institute of Technology and BNU
Since it has been the third time for us to join in the iGEM competition, we deeply appreciate the significance of communication and discussion. We had several exchange meetings with BNU-China. In the first communication, the two teams respectively introduced their project and the recent progress. Then we exchanged some ideas on how to guide new team members and discussed some problems in experiments. We found our own advantages and shortcomings in the exchange. At the end of this meeting, the two teams decided to establish a cooperation relationship and helped with each other.
The next two exchanges were mainly focused on cooperation. Discussions were processing both online and offline. We helped BNU-China to construct a part of the gene circuit, and meanwhile, BNU-China tried their best to help us with the characterization of our parts and also contributed a lot to our project’s modelling.
3.Participated in CCiC (Conference of China iGEMers Committee), PKU, Beijing[Collapse]
Fig.6 BIT-CHINA participated in CCiC held by Peking University
Time: 2015.8.13-2015.8.15.
Location: Peking University
In August, 2015, BIT-CHINA participated in Conference of China iGEM Committee (CCiC) in Peking University. We had a good harvest during this conference. After a long time of experiments, this time we showed more results of our experiments. For this time, much more attention was received in virtue of our project, and many different kinds of questions about pH Controller were asked. Meanwhile, we had received some valuable suggestions. Surprisingly, staffs from some fermentation industry companies expressed great interests in our project, at the same time, they put forward a number of targeted issues, which made us think more deeply about our project.
4.Exchange meeting between BIT-China and TJU[Collapse]
Fig.7 Communication between TJU and BIT-CHINA
Time: 2015.8.15.
Location: Peking University
After CCiC, we communicated with iGEM team TJU. Two teams presented their 2015 projects content respectively and proposed a number of problems related to experiments and modeling. Through a pleasant discussion, BIT-CHINA and TJU decided to take advantage of each other and collaborated with each other.
5.Exchange meeting between BIT-China and FAFU[Collapse]
Fig.8 The Communication between FAFU and BIT-CHINA
Time: 2015.8.16.
Location: 712 Meeting Room, 5th Teaching Building, Beijing Institute of Technology
FAFU is a young team, and they have active ideas. While we were communicating about project content, they proposed some useful advice on application for us. As a team with triennial competition experience, we also made some suggestions for their graphic content as well as their project.
6.Communication with BIT[Collapse]
From July to August in the summer of 2015, BIT and BIT-China, two iGEM teams from Beijing Institute of Technology, carried on several communications about the project, daily works, the experimental processing and iGEM matters. We have discussed about problems in each other's project and helped each other to solve the practical difficulties encountered by both sides.
The main content of communications between the two teams:
1. Sharing some experimental apparatus and the experimental reagents with each other.
2. The improvement and optimization of experimental skills and experimental methods.
3. Solving existing problems of both projects. Discussing optimization and suggestions.
4. Team building and interpretation of iGEM rules.
5. Establish the international Human Practice alliance with other schools around the world, and expand the international communication among the iGEM teams.
This year, the communication and cooperation between the two teams are the most comprehensive and in-depth since two teams participated in iGEM, aiming at realizing the goal of working together for better results.
Human Practice Union[Collapse]
Fig.11 The global iGEM Human Practice Union
This year, we led a global iGEM Human Practice Union with other three teams: BIT, CUHK and CGU. We finally cooperated with other 10 teams from Europe, Asia and South America.
This Union mainly has two purposes: the first is to combine with iGEMers all over the world and spread knowledge of synthetic biology. The second is to build up a database which can supplement the existed iGEM database and make it more convenient for iGEMers’ online communication around the world.
However, it is the first year of this union and the time is limited, we firstly made a questionnaire about synthetic biology and iGEM. We used Internet and collected more than 500 questionnaires. We also built up a rudiment form of our database(click here to see more details).
Communicated with COFCO[Collapse]
Fig.12 BIT-CHINA communicated with COFCO
Time: 2015.8.18.
Location: COFCO Institute of Nutrition and Health, Beijing
On August 18th, our team visited COFCO Institute of Nutrition and Health and communicated with their staffs.
COFCO is the world’s top 500 enterprises, and also China’s leading supplier in the fields of agriculture products, food products and service, which is committed to building the whole industry chain about oil and food. COFCO constructs the whole service chain of urban complex. Research Institute of Nutrition and Health in COFCO based on the life sciences, is committed to the health and nutrition, which improves the life of Chinese people.
It is the 3rd year for BIT-China to participate in iGEM, and the collaboration between BIT-China and COFCO Institute of Nutrition and Health has been three years. We did get plenty of help and advice from COFCO, contributing to the further more collaboration. This year we mainly collaborated with COFCO Institute of Nutrition and Health.
Our project, pH Controller, is mainly designed to solve issues related to industrial fermentation pH adjustment, which attracts many fermentation companies.
At the meeting, Chenyi Li, the team leader of BIT-CHINA, gave a presentation for project description and synthetic biology introduction. We promoted the concept of synthetic biology and iGEM to COFCO. As an internationally renowned food company, COFCO has raised many substantive recommendations for our project, especially in the actual fermentation industry. They issued explanations for conventional fermentation conditions, fermentation technology and problems occurring in fermentation. According to these recommendations, we made a preliminary verification of fermentation, which would effectively support our project. Tai An and other staffs of COFCO proposed some suggestions on how to apply our project in fermentation industry and showed great interests in learning about the application of synthetic biology technology in their company. After discussion, BIT-CHINA visited the biological lab of COFCO and had a group photo.
Project Assessing
1.Risk Assessment[Collapse]
Our project, pH Controller, is mainly applied in the field of industrial fermentation, which could keep the pH value of the fermentation in an artificial setting. Among the many types of fermentation, food fermentation can be the most direct impact on human health. However, in the face of food fermentation, the biggest potential risk of our project is the toxicity of acidic or alkaline products when regulating the pH of fermentation liquor. Consequently, we are committed to finding a simple, non-toxic and harmless substance as regulators from the beginning of the construction of our gene circuits. At present, only D-lactic acid catalyzed by ldhA may be toxic. But it is only used as a model gene. When used in the actual industrial fermentation, we will analyze factors including recycling rate and reaction among product, regulation acid and alkali since D-lactic acid is also an important fermentation products. At the same time, we have found the gene which could catalyze pyruvic acid to produce L-lactic acid. In the subsequent industrial practice, we will select those harmless genes to avoid these risks.
2.Feasibility Assessment[Collapse]
Compared to the traditional methods, monitoring and adding acidic or alkaline substances, our project constructed self-regulating system using synthetic biology, which is more conducive to solve the problems, such as long-term detection, maintenance of equipment and so on. We focus on the design of the earlier stage. According to HP information feedback from companies and universities, we could choose a variety of ways to apply it in the actual industrial fermentation, such as mixed bacteria fermentation, immobilization, etc. For different fermentation industries, we will apply the appropriate fermentation method to get the maximum benefit. Application of our project will greatly save the cost of testing, maintenance, and mechanical conditioning system, and also with the expansion of scale and time, the advantages of our project will be more obvious. Our customers will be able to obtain higher returns based on the actual industrial scale. If our project will eventually be applied to industrial fermentation successfully and efficiently, maintenance staff will be reduced, but at the same time, it will provide more opportunities for those who have the ability to design biological regulation system.
3.End-User Considerations[Collapse]
The main application field of our project is industrial fermentation, so it is necessary for us to contact with fermentation companies. Depending on our previous experience, we decided to communicate with COFCO Institute of Nutrition and Health. On the one hand, companies usually focus more on final efficiency of the technology, which is helpful for us to collect important information about how we can apply it better, but on the other hand, it is of little help for us to rationalize our biological micro-machine. Therefore, we also communicated with many other iGEM teams, including BNU-China, FAFU, TJU and BIT. Besides, we took an active part in two iGEMers Meetups held by NCTU and Peking University respectively. Our project becomes more complete during these activities. We made constant improvement day by day and solved many knotty problems with the help of other iGEMers. The united survey offered significant messages concerning other respected application fields more than industrial fermentation of pH Controller. We realized that our system has the potential to solve problems like the soil acidification which is one of the main issues the public concerns. Above all, through the communication with other teams, the companies and the public, we had a better understanding of the potential application of our project in the theoretical context, the business context and the social context. The relatively complete research in Human Practice improved our project a lot. Besides, the united questionnaire spreads the concept of synthetic biology throughout the world and provides a new idea about how we can do such a valid research in China particularly. We are really grateful for all people involved in our Human Practice who have offered us so much useful information. There is no doubt that the united form of Human Practice will benefit us more for next year’s plan.