Team:BIT-China/Human Practices
When we decided our project is about flavone, we immediately realized that we have no idea about the industrial production of it. As we feel the need to have a deeper understanding of this matter, we choose to go to the COFCO to fine out more about it.
In the scorching sun of the torrid summer, a small group of two graduate students of grade 19 and two undergraduates visited the Institute of nutrition and health of COFCO, which located in Changping district of Beijing on behalf of team BIT-China.
With every bit of excitement, we had an in-depth discussion and exchanged our idea with their researchers regarding the matter of our iGEM competition projects this year. The rest of the team members were unable to come to the scene due to the special reasons of the epidemic. Therefore they participated in the project by watching video recording.
First, we visited the biotechnology and animal fuel research area of the Institute. In this floor, we can see the advanced and spacious laboratory with piles of enviable high-end instruments in order to support a large number of short-term detection work, and a larger fermentation tank compared with the university laboratory to simulate the fermentation environment of the factory.
Colleagues of the research institute explained the function of each laboratory and the use of instruments for us. For us who have only been in and out of the University's laboratory, we can not help but found ourselves so deeply impressed by the excellence of the research environment of this state-owned enterprise.
After the visit, we sat down in the conference room and invited several researchers and teachers from COFCO to introduce and discuss the project of our team in this year's iGEM competition - the Production of Eriodictyol in co-culture by dynamic regulation of double oscillation.
First of all, we introduced the project, which is divided into three parts: Team introduction, project background, and the main body. The main part is presented in the order of the way that the project was formed therefore made it easier for the listeners to follow.
After listen attentively to the introduction, the teachers and us had a wonderful q&a time. To start up, the teachers thoroughly answered our questions about industrial production. Such as what is it like to proceed co-culture microorganisms in industrial production. After that, they put forward many problems and pertinent suggestions to our project, which gave us a insight about the industrial demand for higher efficiency, lower cost and simplification of research projects. They raised the question about what extent can our project increase production, and how can we control the toxicity of our toxic protein to make sure it kills the right amount of E-coli without threatening the productivity. Although these were the questions that we currently have no clue with, it raised our awareness to certain matters.Ms. Wang criticized our pH regulation part, saying that such design is unnecessary for automation equipment.
They also made us realize that there are still many deficiencies in our project, the core point of which is the necessity of change according to the actual needs of the industry.
This time, our eye opening human practice project was revealed by the surprise and admiration of visiting the laboratory to the end of the open-minded teaching&receiving during the whole tour.
It was also sublimated by the profound meaning of the university-industry cooperation that was explained by the teacher. I was shocked by the fact that one simple outing can really exposed us to the deep core of the university-industrial cooperation, which may also be the real connotation of social practice! It is also for those who are new to the society to have a glimpse of the scientific field and draw a vivid picture of our future.
After the research in the industrial field, and in order to better understand the production of natural products in enterprises and the intention of enterprises to develop new compound products. Our team visited a liquorice manufacturer in Xinjiang, China. We visited the biological fermentation workshop under construction and visited the licorice and black gallons of the enterprise. This gives our team a more intuitive understanding of plants such as licorice. In addition, through the exchange with Mr. Miu, the head of the enterprise, we understand that enterprises have a strong interest in the development of high value-added natural products by biological law.
We introduced our project to Mr. Miu to produce herbal phenol through co-culture system, which he said was a new attempt and very optimistic about its application. At the same time, he also pointed out that our project is challenging and needs to control a lot of parameters. It needs to be tried first by computer simulation and modeling, then experiment and pilot scale up, and so on. He said such a challenge will make our team grow and gain! These let us have more vision of our project, but also let us have more motivation to challenge new ideas!
