Team:NFLS/Human Practices
Questionnaire
Summary:
After we initially decided our project orientation to degrade cellulose and use Microbial Fuel Cell (MFC) to generate electricity, we sent out a questionnaire to investigate on public cognition towards microorganisms, synthetic biology, environmental protection, Microbial Fuel Cell, and disposal for waste cellulose. Finally, we received 192 answers from the Internet after spreading them among our classmates and parents.
When analyzing the data collected, we discovered that most people were not familiar with microorganisms, and some people even considered all of them as harmful to humans. Similarly, most people were not familiar with synthetic biology and genetic engineering, doubting whether they could bring benefits to the public. Moreover, many people didn’t even have heard of MFC and were confused with the treatments for straws, while most of them cared much about environmental protection. Thus, we decided to impart knowledge regarding synthetic biology to the public and to promote our project of degrading cellulose and conducting MFC to generate electricity.
What we have learned:
1. The degree of awareness of genetic engineering, microbiology and synthetic biology remains low in the society, so we decided to impart biological knowledge regarding these topics. We chose to hold a lecture in high school and taught the juniors and seniors with synthetic biology.
2. Public awareness of MFC was pretty low and many people were curious about our project when answering the last question of what you want to know further. Consequently, we decided to also promote our own project to the students and to draw advice from them.
Interview Professor Yong in Nanjing Tech University
Summary:
As a team, we visited Nanjing Tech University. We learned about current direction, method and expectations of Microbiology Research Department, and studied some pioneered microbe-related research techniques with the help of Professor Yong and senior students in the department. The main discussion focuses on several aspects:
First, for background information and advantages of cellulose utility, Prof.Yong introduced several current measures of utilizing cellulose, including combustion, fermentation and chemical treatment. He then went on to explain the advantages and disadvantages of each measure. For example, chemical treatment requires high temperature with strong acid, making it dangerous in large-scale application. In comparison, microbial fuel cells can combine waste water treatment with power generation, but its efficiency is lower than the chemical measure.
For technological features, mechanism and potential usages of microbial fuel cell, he introduced several widely-used electrogens, including P. aeruginosa and members from Shewanella family. He also shew us a sample hardware of standard microbial fuel cell and taught us the mechanism of electron production and transportation chain.
When visiting the microbiology lab, Prof.Yong offered us instructions on necessary protection and safety requirements to follow in order to ensure no environmental or healthy risk is present throughout the experiment, which is the most important basis for all microbiology studies.
What we have learned:
1. Since Prof.Yong mentioned that the positive electrode of microbial fuel cell helps to turn ions of high valance into low-valance ions in waste water, we decided to introduce a hardware that is capable of dealing with waste water.
2. P. aeruginosa functions better than E. coli in microbial fuel cell. This gives us a further guideline in future study to further boost the efficiency of our established cellulose based microbial fuel cell system.
3. Prof. Yong confirmed our idea that using enzyme to break down cellulose is a much better way to utilize the energy source compared to combustion, while it’s much safer than chemistry process of breaking down cellulose, making us more passionate about our project.
4. Some fungi have the ability to produce cellulase in large quantity. If this advantage can be used in genetic-engineered bacteria projects and controlled properly, it will help relief the world’s current stress on energy resources a lot. This also provides a direction for us to conduct further study.
5. As our project is based on genetically engineered bacteria, Prof. Yong offered us several safety requirements to ensure no threat is posed to environment. Advice include:
1) Soil solution and soil used in experiments are sterilized, and treated harmlessly.
2) Choose those bacteria, mainly from the Bacillus family(e.g. Bacillus cereus)， as these bacteria do not exchange plasmids, so the gene is completely under control.
3) Analysis on biochemical, metabolic and bio-molecular properties of bacteria is frequently analyzed during the experiment. If any unexpected mutation appears, the experiment must be stopped and the bacteria is killed and treated harmlessly.
4) When choosing target bacteria, the first step is to check the international biological safety level. Species with high safety risk is never allowed to be used.
5) Metabolic products of genetically-engineered bacteria can be used, but direct usage of genetically-engineered bacteria should not be allowed
Visit a biotechnology company, Genscript
Summary:
We visited Genscript on August 21st. We learned about the company, visited its labs, and listened to the sharing of teams from Peking University and Tsinghua University.
When we were brought to its factories later, we were all impressed by the structure. Workers were divided into varying groups to deal with tasks of different need and difficulty. Every group had its lab with customized facilities. On the door of each lab were designed figures of the group. There were public labs on every floor to replicate DNA and for other common uses. Chemical rubbish were precisely classed and transported to certain sites.
Then there was a sharing from several universities in China. They presented some brilliant ideas, showed their great imagination, and provided us with some creative thoughts. During the sharing, we met some college students and discussed our programs.
At lunch we had a chat with other teams in Nanjing and discussed the presentation above. They shared some novel topics from other meetings this year.
What we have learned:
1. The industrialization in Genscript inspired us to put our program into use outside the lab. To apply our design in a bigger scale, we decided to construct our hardware.
2. The creative ideas of other teams gave us a broader mind in the project and helped us briefly study the schedule of other teams.
3. We also reached to deep collaboration with the other team in NFLS.
4. The visit to the corporation gave us a brief impression what biotech company is, and helped us know more about gene editing.
Interview Prof. You from Hohai University
Summary:
Professor Li You comes from Hohai University, focusing on environmental protection and treatments for waste water and agricultural wastes. We first introduced our project to him and asked him several questions regarding the disposal for straws and wastewater.
Prof. You first introduced the difference between domestic wastewater, whose influent concentration was stable because the composition of wastewater from each family was similar, and industrial wastewater, which included various types depending on their sources. What’s more, he introduced all sorts of physical, chemical and biological method for processing wastewater. Precisely, physical methods include air flotation to dispose wastewater that contains large amount of oil and filter membrane cleaning to dispose wastewater like the liquid in garbage. Chemical methods include precipitation and electrochemical ways. Biological methods include nitrification, denitrification and petroleum degrading bacteria, which are created by scientists to treat petrol. Then, he introduced several detecting methods to distinguish whether the wastewater achieve the standard of being emitted to rivers. Several indexes like Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD) could be detected directly by equipment during water processing, while some indexes like Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD5) should be tested in the laboratories.
What we have learned:
1. When introducing wastewater into our hardware, we should clear what type of wastewater we need, according to the living environment of E.coli and the function of Microbial Fuel Cells (MFCs). Precisely, domestic water contains mainly organic compound, because it comes from daily use like cooking, cleaning and excretion. Industrial water is composed mainly of heavy metal ions. Since the heavy metal ions in industrial wastewater are harmful to our bacteria, we finally decided to introduce domestic wastewater into out MFC.
2. We should make sure that the wastewater provides an ideal environment for the microbes to live and function. Otherwise, the efficiency of our system will reduce. Since the most suitable temperature for E.coli to grow is about 37。C, we decided to use a heating equipment to offer the right situation and Prof. You inspired us that maybe we can install our hardware underground to avoid being influenced by the temperature above the groung.
3. If we introduce industrial wastewater, we should preprocess the industrial wastewater to make sure that the concentration of heavy metal ions is as low as the E.coli can function. Pretreatments include Electrodialysis and etc.
4. We should determine the flow velocity of wastewater into our hardware and its staying time in it. In the future, we may conduct mathematical modeling to deal with this.
5. We were encouraged because the professor advocated that the advantage of using microbes or biological method to cope with environmental problems was that the microbes were relatively cheap, unlike the high expense of physical and chemical treatments. He also advocated our program that a new way to process straws was paramount. Though the phenomenon of burning the straws as fuels is decreasing now, as the living standard in villages is increased, straws are still wasted and need a better regeneration method.
Interview Prof.Hou from China Pharmaceutical University
Summary:
We had an interview with prof. Hou. We first introduced our project to him, and then he gave many instructions to our project. Prof. Hou described the process of how signal peptides process in a mammal cell. Then, he illustrated transportation of the extracellular material into a mammal cell through a transporter. These principles both help us understand the process in bacteria.
What we have learned:
1. Since we would like to apply our project into real use, a certain amount if E.coli should be placed in an equipment for a long time. So, Prof. Hou suggested us to integrate the DNA into the bacteria’s genome so that they can produce the functional enzymes continuously, instead of producing a limit amount and stopping functioning.
2. Prof. Hou suggested that, when applying the project to the reality, we should allow it to work more efficiently. Then, the enzyme expressions should be monitored individually. As a result, each gene of the enzymes should follow its own promoter. According to our project, we can add three promoters into the plasmid, with each in charge of the endoglucanase, exoglucanase and beta-glucosidase. Prof. Hou also suggested that we should use modeling to calculate the ideal amount of enzymes emitted from the bacteria and take all the environmental influence into consideration.
Interview a 3D printing club in China Pharmaceutical University
Summary:
We visited Qian Hongfa and Chen Yuanyu in China Pharmaceutical University (CPU) in Oct. 25th to optimize our hardware. We visited the 3D print club in CPU. We introduced our hardware and proposed several questions about the size and material. They put forward some important loopholes of the prototype, and helped us construct an improved one on the computer.
We also had a talk with another student Gao Yu in iGEM team CPU, and knew more about the schedule of other teams.
What we have learned:
1. We learned about how 3D print work and some different types of materials in 3D printing. They used polylactic acid in their studio, and we used light-cured resin in the hardware. Light-cured resin had a better waterproof function than polylactic acid, but had a higher price.
2. We got some excellent advise towards our hardware. We changed our structure and made a more practical model with elaborate details.
View more in hardware
3. We realized some problems in our design and considered some important factors like the environment of the engineered bacteria in the design of our hardware.
Meetups
8.1 Meetup
Summary:
At 8:30 am, we attended the online meetup held by QHFZ with great honors. Not only teams from Beijing, there are participants from other different regions in China, such as Jiangsu and Shandong. Each team have 10 minutes to give a presentation to introduce their project and there were 5 minutes to answer different questions. At the end of the meeting, professors from Tsinghua University would give instruction on each team’s project.
Our team members spent a week preparing for this presentation. We first introduced the purpose for our ‘cellulose to electricity’ project, and then explained the principles of the whole system. We also introduced what human practices had we done, such as collaborating with QHFZ, and the activities we had planned to do in the future, including consulting professors from Nanjing Tech University and carrying on educational activities for junior and senior students about our project. During the questioning time, we also answered questions from BNDS about the energy use of the physical method in resolving cellulose. We explained that it was not a highly energy-needed method and was worth using.
After our presentation is the introduction from Keystone. They designed a multi-functional garbage bin for addressing PET plastic recycling coverage flaws as well as improving the tourists’ experiences through fragrance in natural tourist areas. We asked them if they would try to deal with the stinking mixing smell of both fragrance and smelly garbage, and where else could the bins be put. They answered that they might genetically engineer the bacteria to get rid of the molecule that release unpleasant smell and might try to promote the solar-panel in order to apply their project into more places such as in the forest where not much sunlight would reach the ground.
We also appreciated many interesting projects from other teams, such as breastfeeding milk from BJ101 and artificial leather from BNDS. We also find out collaborators Nanjing_NFLS and JNFLS. We wanted to develop partnership with Nanjing_NFLS since they happened to research on Microbial Fuel Cells, which we used for generating electricity. We can also help JNFLS to deal with waste masks made of cellulose. Later, we even decided to collaborate on wiki as well as promoting comics. It felt so great when so many students gather together to show their interest in synthetic biology, communicate through their innovative ideas, and learn from each other. We were so looking forward to the next meetup.
What we have learned:
1. After answering questions from BNDS, we thought of a way to improve our hardware. First, which kind of machine we use to shred paper and straw. The upper surface is inlayed a couple of tooth surface wheels which powders paper and straw. Second, we need to collect the remains after shredding. So, we add a valve to one side of the container in the hardware. Third, we searched on the internet to choose a proper solvent to dissolve cellulose while is not harmful for E.coli to live in. Then, we choose ethanol (C2H5OH) and want to find a proper potency through modeling.
2. Then, we had a discussion with JNFLS. Since they produce facial masks made of cellulose and we dissolve cellulose, our projects match perfectly. Also, both of our teammates are really into animations, so we decided to promote our projects together in a form of uploading fiction or comics to social platforms to make more people understand out ideas. We devised two main characters to represent each of our team and wanted to put the images of them on the main page of our wiki. Last but not least, if it is possible, we want to put our products into one processing machine and then revise our procedure to make it work efficiently.
3. Later, we communicated with Nanjing_NFLS to see if it is possible to connect their improved Microbial Fuel Cells into our project. Since we use different kind of bacteria—we use Escherichia coli while they use Pseudomonas aeruginosa—we may mix the bacteria while providing them with a proper living condition. Then, perhaps we can generate more electricity while dealing with cellulose.
9.12 meetup
Summary:
We attended another discussion held by QHFZ to discuss about the problems we met recently and helped each other to come up with a solution. QHFZ said that they could not see an ideal experimental result and would repeat the experiment since the students were becoming more and more skilled. Keystone was trying to hold a large communicative event and tour in Beijing together with many other teams to introduce their projects to more people. We welcomed them to Nanjing and felt happy if they could also do presentation in Nanjing Foreign Language School. We were facing a problem that we did not have enough material and expertise skill to produce our hardware. Keystone demonstrated their method that they designed a blueprint and handed it to professional company to manufacture it. Later, we discussed about the promotion video we made and how to create a subtitle. All of us learned a lot from each other.
What we have learned:
1. Inspired by Keystone, we want to hold a science communication in our campus. We planned to make a lecture in our school’s iGEM club to introduce our project and some knowledge in synthetic biology.
2. We thought that we would try using 3D printing machine to produce a hardware. If it would fail, we would then ask help from the company.
3. We introduced our method to make subtitles when preparing for the promotion video.
10.24 meetup.
Summary:
At 8:30 in the morning, we had a discussion with Nanjing_NFLS and BJ101. We appreciated BJ101 making an improvement in the past two months. Learning from their questionnaire, we planned to add more questions in detail to our questionnaire and try to expand the number of people we investigate. We asked our friends and parents to share it on communicating platforms to make it answered by more people from different ages and different jobs. Then, we can have a more understanding of people’s attitude towards the use of bacteria in dealing with environmental issues. Additionally, we introduced the human practice of interviewing 3D printing club from China Pharmaceutical University and the activity of introducing our project and synthetic biology to iGEM club members.
