Team:NAU-CHINA/Human Practices
Overview
More than 800 million people across the world go to bed hungry each night. More than thousands of tons of cereals around the world are polluted by heavy metal. According to the data from the Environmental Protection Agency in China, heavy metal contaminated cultivated land in China had reached 5,480,000 hectares in 2016, almost 6 times of the size of Beijing. So, we want to rehabilitate the land to protect the farmland, increase grain yield and ensure food security.
Inspired by One Health, we devised “Beyond the Lab” (Fig. 1) to conduct Integrated Human Practices and “Push the Boundaries” (Fig. 2) to carry on Science Communication.
Fig.1. Beyond the Lab
In order to better reach out and learn from diverse communities, we integrated SCIENCE, SOCIETY and PUBLIC into a new investigation method entitled "Beyond the Lab" (inspired by One Health) to conduct our program “Soil Lead Immobilization Magician” (SLIM). This not only guide us improve the project according to the feedback, but also help us better understand Science Communication.
The health of humans, animals and the environment are closely connected--that's "One Health". One Health is the integrative effort of multiple disciplines working locally, nationally, and globally to attain optimal health for people, animals, and the environment.
Fig.2. Push the Boundaries
Besides, as the target of our help, farmers and peasants seriously suffered the lowered income as a result of the heavy metal contamination. We carry out Science Communication with the instruction of "Push the Boundaries", advocating synthetic biology, healthy diet and environment safety in public, so that we can help farmers and peasants to save the loss via improving grain yield and selling heavy-metal-free vegetables with a comparatively higher price to meet the increasing demand of healthy diet.
The SLIM project is like a seed. Now let’s see how SLIM helps build a better future!
The Birth of SLIM
A good soil environment makes the seeds germinate and grow better. A promising market makes the project benefit more people and develop better. Therefore, we consulted various stakeholders, including government, agricultural enterprises and farmers to know their concerns and needs, and thus improve and shape SLIM accordingly.
The Growth of SLIM
To get a better understanding of the relations between humans, animals and the environment, we collaborated with One Health association. After taking the advice from One Healthers, we integrated the concept of One Health into our project to shape SLIM. What’s more, inspired by One Health, we documented two thoughtful and creative approaches to conduct our program. One is "Beyond the Lab", the other is “Push the Boundaries”. Other iGEMers can build upon it.
Collaboration with One Health
One Health is a collaborative, multi-sectoral, and transdisciplinary approach—working at the local, regional, national, and global levels—with the goal of achieving optimal health outcomes recognizing the interconnection between people, animals, plants, and their shared environment.
Fig.3. The Concept of One Health
One Health Club NAU was founded in 2014 by a group of undergraduates who went to the University of California, Davis for a short visit. The club is now made up of students from different grades and a variety of majors including veterinary medicine, environmental science, business, etc. They focus on promoting interdisciplinary efforts, as well as popularizing One Health concept through both offline promotion and online publicity with a goal of making a difference for a better world.
How do we integrate the concept of One Health into SLIM? On the one hand, the tolerance of earthworms is strengthened, protecting earthworms’ safety (animals). On the other hand, we can address soil environmental pollution (environment), so that we can ensure agricultural development, food safety and human health.
We talked with Dr. Osburn, Ms. Brunner and One Healthers in Lunch Time Challenge to share the story of SLIM. With them, we learnt how to explore the communities, institutions, or individuals affected by the problems. Most important of all is that we got kind suggestions and help from Dr. Osburn and Ms. Brunner, which helped to better shape SLIM.
Consultations with Experts
Consultations with Experts and other iGEMers guided our design and the experiments we conducted in the lab. With Dr. Osburn’s advice, we conducted our work in a multi-dimensional way from the health of human, animals and environment. They helped us know how the world (Human, Animals, Environment) affects our work, and how our work affects the world.
The Future of SLIM
SLIM has grown up! We distributed a questionnaire on people’s attitude to SLIM and their acceptance of SLIM. We have noticed that most people were concerned about food safety but knew little about heavy-metal contaminated vegetables. If they could know more about these vegetables and would like to pay a bit more to buy them, farmers and peasants could benefit more. We need to greatly enhance public education. That is also one part of our SCIENCE COMMUNICATION.
At first, we planned to solve an emvironmental problem. One Health inspired us that we can do much more than that, because people, animals and environment are closely connected. We can protect food safety and human health while solving the environmental problem. Farmers and peasants, the biggest stakeholder, can earn more income. Agricultural economy can be promoted. SLIM has been influencing the world and the world has been influencing SLIM.
Under the protection of SLIM, the health of the human, environment and animals are closely connected. To protect One Health, to promote agricultural economy. We’ll create a better future.