PREFACE

Considering our project may have an impact on the biopharmaceutical field to a certain extent, especially on the efficiency of the production of drug, we interviewed Hunan Laboratory Animal Center (HLAC) for some advice on safety and prospect.

PARTICIPANTS

Interviewers and Interviewee

Doctor Jiang	Instructor Lingyun Zhu	Student Dongyu Fan	Student Yizhong Wang

SPOT

Human Laboratory Animal Center

DIALOGUE

Dongyu Fan

Moring Dr. Jiang, thank you for accept our interview. We all know that, in recent years, bio-pharmaceutical security has been subject to the general interest. We've learned that the Experimental Animal Center are already passed the identification of United States AAALAC Certification Center on safety evaluation of drugs. So we hope we can gain an objective and comprehensive assessment of our project and are eager for valuable advice through this interview.

Lingyun Zhu

Moring Dr. Jiang! First of all, I would like to introduce our project. What we are actually doing is using synthetic biology to build a DNA support system. This system is in microorganisms so that we can increase efficiency of regionalization reaction through metabolic engineering of multi-enzymatic reaction.

As far as I understand, metabolic engineering is similar with biochemical reactions.

Dr. Jiang

Dongyu Fan

Could you evaluate the safety of our reconstruction project of the microbial?

Our security assessment is mainly for drugs, such as the safety of medicines produced by the bioactive enzymes, which means we need a specific bioactive substance such as enzymes to conduct the safety assessment. Your project is more like a methodology study which does not have direct relation to medicine, so I can only make a safety assessment of potential safety hazard instead of a detailed one.

Dr. Jiang

Dongyu Fan

What influence will be make to the cells if we change the signaling pathways of cell?

The level of the cell modification plays an important role in drug safety. Generally speaking, lower modification level means less side effects. Modification of subcellular structure may cause the cell activity change. If it leads to an acceleration of cell metabolism, it may eventually make the cell cancerous or autophagy.

Dr. Jiang

Dongyu Fan

What kind of side effects?

Increasing reaction rate may result an accumulation of intermediate products which cause side effects. However, your project will not only increase the reaction efficiency but also make the reaction ordered. This modification of reaction chain makes reaction under control. In other word, the type and output of productions can be controlled. Theoretically, the side effects can be minimized.

Dr. Jiang

Dongyu Fan

Finally, could you please make a prospection of our project?

I have engaged in drug safety assessment many years. I think what restricts the development of the pharmaceutical industry is the disorder of reaction. The disorder makes it difficult to get the identical ingredients in different production batch which cause worse side effects. Your project is supposed to order the reaction chain and decrease the impure component of drug. This can not only increase the reaction rate but also improve the quality of drugs. I believe it will have a positive influence on the development of the pharmaceutical industry.

Dr. Jiang

Dongyu Fan

Thanks for your answer.

We start a new program this year through which we could invite several members from other universities (which are not iGEM participants) to work with us in our project to:

1. Help them to have a thorough understanding of iGEM and Synthetic Biology.

2. Get them prepared to start an iGEM team in their own universities in the years to come.

3. Further promote the spreading of iGEM and synthetic biology.

“It’s not just about running a simple model on TianHe, it also gives a clue on how such High-performance computing platform can be used in bio-technology.”

---Shaoliang Peng, Prof. from the high-performance computing platform

With 16,000 computer nodes, and a peak performance of 54.9 petaflops, TianHe computing platform has been widely used in meteorological service, aerodynamic analysis, and government security applications. This time in our project, this platform was applied to run our mathematical model, thus brought us advantages in the accuracy of our model. Here we thank those teachers from Tianhe High-performance Computing platform for helping us optimizing our algorithm and preform the computing.

Movie

Pinciples

1. After pinch the strawberry, the cell will be broken and the contains will get out. It’s not difficult to broke the cell because there are full of big vacuole.

2. In this simplified DNA extract process, the adding of detergent is to crush the cells because there are some phosphatide on the cell membrane. After the detergent has dissolved them, the surface of the cell will be full of little holes.

3. After adding the ethanol, the DNA will precipitate out. This is because DNA is polarity molecule (and also the RNA and nucleotide), but the ethanol is nonpolar molecule, the DNA can’t be dissolved. Salt can make DNA easier to separate out.

4. So, if you have some strawberry left, only one and you can see the DNA with your own eyes.

5. Only a few kinds of thing which can be found in home, anyone can break the cell wall of strawberry and divide the DNA out. At last, you can twist the DNA with your chopsticks. And now, DNA won’t be an abstract concept, neither the double helix model which is made by the computer. It’s just here, in front you eyes. This is the most important matter among all the creature.

By the way, the biological technic is not always so easy, but you can do it yourself in the kitchen, things can get easier. No matter you succeed or not, feel the fun of doing experiment by yourself. syndetic biology is everywhere if only you have the love of science!

Song

Lyric

Final group photo on CiCC

In order to activate the communication, Peking University held the Conference of China iGEMer Committee (CiCC) on 14 & 15, August. NUDT_CHINA was invited to give a presentation.

Through the communication, we got more ideas and involved in more detailed question about our project.