Team:OSA/Implementation

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Through HP research activities, we learned that there is a certain market for heavy metal ion detection. Heavy metal pollution generally originates from industrial activities and can enter the environment in the form of waste water, waste gas, waste residue, etc., and pollute water bodies, atmosphere and soil. Due to the continuous progress of society, various countries have become increasingly strict with heavy metal pollution control. However, despite this, there are still many environmental problems and some unexpected situations.

Fig 3.3.1 Lejieshi Environmental Technology Interview

During the interview, we learned that the pollution sources of copper and zinc ions and lead and manganese ions that are concerned in our project are different. Regardless of the illegal pollution of industrial production, copper and zinc ions are more likely to come from metal drinking water pipelines, while lead and manganese ions are more likely to come from metal processing. These circumstances lead to very large differences in the usage scenarios of individual users who may want to check these heavy metal ions.

Fig 3.3.2 DNAzyme Lateral Flow Assay (Left: DNAzyme with Heavy metal iron; Right: DNAzyme without Heavy metal iron)

For copper and zinc ions, consumers may be more inclined to use heavy metal ion detection kits for water bodies. For this use scenario, we can use DNAzyme with lateral flow test strip technology for detection. While meeting the needs of users for easy use, the test results can be obtained quickly and intuitively.

As for lead and manganese ions, they are more likely to appear in the soil because they come from industrial production. During our HP survey, we learned that in China, especially in some developed cities, as the scale of the city continues to expand, industrial land will be transformed into commercial land. If these industrial lands were contaminated by heavy metal ions in the past industrial production, after being converted to commercial land, it may also cause harm to the people living in them. In response to this scenario, some consumers may want to check whether their area needs to take drugs to prevent the effects of long-term heavy metal pollution. Therefore, we need to introduce a test kit that can detect lead and manganese ions in the soil. In our laboratory tests, we also tried some methods to detect the lead ion content in the soil, but the actual results indicate that our heavy metal ion extraction method may have some problems, which makes it impossible to detect whether the soil contains lead ions. . If you want to develop related kits in the future, how to extract heavy metals from the soil and ensure that they can be used in our DNAzyme detection method will be a major point.

In summary, at present, we have designed more specific usage scenarios for the methods developed in our projects, and optimized the usage methods for these scenarios. Of course, there are still some shortcomings that need to be improved, which will also be what we need to complete in the next step.