Integrated Human Practice connects world and our projects. Inspired by the bone disease of old people, our project centers on osteoporosis and calcium absorption to constitute Bone Appetite. We constantly improve our design and execution by the feedbacks of public engagement, to make sure our project is good and responsible for the old, the whole human, the world.
Frame and Overview
Figure1. Integration of Human Practice and Bone Appetide project
Social Surveys
Considering the COVID-19 pandemic, our team specially design an online questionnaire to do relevant social surveys. Due to our care about bone health and osteoporosis, we used widely social study to investigate public awareness and dig the potential need. For the old who has a hard availability of smartphone and the Internet, we visit the elderly community and senior home under the premise of keeping enough social distance and well protective measures.
Figure2. The questionnaire of social surveys
Public general knowledge
The online surveys mainly direct at the people under 60 years old. We analyzed their knowledge of osteoporosis and daily calcium supplement situation. The result showed that the public has a strong awareness of osteoporosis and bone health along with the growing of age. For respondents aged 40 to 60, more than half of them are taking or have taken calcium supplements health care products.
Figure3. Calcium supplements situation of respondents aged 40 to 60
Figure4a. Surrounding osteoporosis knowledge with different ages
Figure4b. Surrounding osteoporosis knowledge with different ages
The old people interviews
We believe the best suitable way to know the awareness message from the old is talking face to face. Connected with the largest student public-service association of Fudan University, we cooperated with “The Home of elderly” project, which aims at satisfy the need of the old. We interviewed dozens of aged people over 60 years old in a Shanghai elderly community. Then we were surprised by their extremely low awareness of osteoporosis and lack of calcium supplement.
Figure5. Our teammate interview the old in community
The series of effective surveys provide us the reality of public awareness of calcium supplements and reveal the elderly’s problem. The evidence from the statistics analysis helped us to unearth the education need of the elderly. Specially, we came up with an idea of educating the younger generation and instructing them to educate their grandparents.
Online Public Engagement
Dr.Dongying Qiu and Weiying Ren
Deputy chief physician of Geriatrics Department of, Zhongshan Hospital, Fudan University.
We consulted clinical physicians about the current osteoporosis treatment situation and FRAX (WHO Fracture Risk Assessment Tool), which is considered underestimating the Chinese population’s risk. They provided us plenty of important messages.
First, the consultation rate of osteoporosis was quite low, owing to the old’s low awareness.
Second, different assessment tools match various application scope. Guidelines for the diagnosis and management of primary osteoporosis provided by the Chinese Society of Osteoporosis and Bone Mineral Research are used in the clinic but still has question and limitation.
What’s more, we exhibited our project design and education for older people to them, which gained great admiration. Dr.Qiu shared his own educational experience to instruct us. He suggested we should be careful with our expression, which needs to be scientific.
Dr.Wei Hong
Deputy chief physician of Osteoporosis Department, East China Hospital affiliated to Fudan University
Dr.Hong is a professor in the area of osteoporosis who also makes an effort to educate patients.
We discussed the design of the assessment tool and how to improve the current treatment and recovery method. Dr.Hong pointed out the self-assessment tool's difficulty because of the lack of a database that big enough. We learned that the community is the most effective way to carry out education and recovery introduction. The direct contact with the old helps continuous supervision of treatment progress.
3.Senior home staff and care workers
Xinguang senior home
In Xinguang senior home, they have nearly 100 elders aged 60 to 100. We interviewed their staff about the bone health of the old. They reflected several severe fractures caused by osteoporosis and pointed their general bad bone health.
4.Senior home staff and care workers
Xinguang senior home
In Xinguang senior home, they have nearly 100 elders aged 60 to 100. We interviewed their staff about the bone health of the old. They reflected several severe fractures caused by osteoporosis and pointed their general bad bone health.
Collaboration
We collaborate with team TJU held an online summer camp for high school students. The activity lasted for two days, and a total of nearly 40 students ranging from grades 9 to 12 participated in it. In the event, we introduced to them the relevant principles and concepts of synthetic biology and shared the concept of iGEM as well as our project.
This year team SCU-China's program is related to fermentation production. They plan to show the different fermentation processes of traditional flour-made food from all over China. Similar to our project, we both focus on nutrition and diet. Some members of our team provided SCU-China with photographs and instructions of flour specialties in their hometown.
Click here to see more details
Model
We establish two models: quorum sensing process and Kill Switch. We refer to the model and data of 2019Fudan team and use the random process to describe it more clearly to model the quorum sensing process in stages and levels. In the kill switch section, we use the 19BNU team’s data, improve the logistic equation, adjust the promoter properties, and make a sensitivity analysis. We can see good results through it.
In the quorum sensing part, we used the Gillespie algorithm in random simulation to simulate the macro and micro levels’ physiological processes. It expresses luxI and luxR genes at the micro-level and produces dimers before the population reaches a certain size. At the macro level, Escherichia coli keeps proliferating, excreting antimicrobial peptides, and colonizing the intestinal tract during this process. When the population number is sufficiently large, the short calc-absorbing peptide and the regulation system begin to express. In contrast, the antimicrobial peptide is expressed but cannot be discharged so that the bacterial number can achieve dynamic stability.
Kill switch
We contacted Mr. Feng in BNU, a member of 19BNU-China and very experienced in kill switches, discussing the kill switch and safety issue of antibiotics resistance gene design.
We doubted whether the glucose-starvation promotor (BBa_K3036003 from 19BNU-China) would be a suitable response system for our kill switch and hope to obtain their plasmids as a control group directly to save time for constructing it from the beginning.
Mr. Feng didn’t consider glucose concentration as a distinct signal to trigger glucose response that existed both inside and outside the body. The difference between the two conditions was not very significant. And he also recommended we search some literature on toxin/antitoxin systems. They probably were ideal candidates for carrying eliminating function.
After search the advantages of the toxin/antitoxin system, we decided to undergo an overhaul of our kill switch. This consultation helped us summarize the idea of designing a kill switch that kill switch circuit can be divided into two core components: judging whether bacteria leave the set condition and the other component to kill the bacteria when it leaves the set condition.
Antibiotics resistance genes encoded on a plasmid can transfer to the host’s intestinal flora and hurries the development of antibiotic-resistant strains. To improve our product’s safety factor, we wanted to insert our genetic circuits into the genome to inhibit the horizontal transfer. Mr. Feng told us that verifying genome insertion in experiments would take a significant amount of time and was unlikely to be done within a few months. Using plasmids in the experimental stage is still a preferable way. He commended that multi-copy insertion could be designed as the final form of the product.
Education
Educate the old through younger generation.
Educating the elderly helps the old keep health and protects them from fraud and mis-information. We used a previous unexplored education approach to educate biologic knowledge to the old. Our main strategy is educating the younger generation and instructing them how to educate their grandparents. Compared with traditional education strategies, our approach offers emotional support from the younger generation and is comfortable for the old. In countries like Japan, Korea, Singapore and China, where the bond between grandparents and grandkids is incredibly tight, our approach is undoubtedly effective.
To educate the youth, we have held online summer camps for high school students to pass on aged care, in addition to synthetic biology which we have been teaching in the past several years. We developed an online audio course on basic biology knowledge, which could been listened by both the youth and the old.
In addition, we combined osteoporosis prevention with traditional Chinese art Xiangsheng, and taught it to the old living in a nursing home (we self as the youth). Also, we wrote Xiàng Sheng (a popular traditional art in China) and other outreach materials for people to use. In summary, we made brave and compelling attempts to implement science communication between the younger generation and the long-neglected social communities - the old.
We made the market investigations and pitched our commercial plan to potential commercial investors. During these interactions, we improved our existing design for CaAP, and we came up with the CaAss test strip product, which later got support by our pilot experiments.
1.Commercial consult. We contacted factories about our product's cost, more specifically, about the cost of producing pills from lab benches to packages ready for the market.We scheduled several in-person and online appointments with professional investors in the biochemical industry and corresponded with them back and forth to polish our business plan. We also obtained a letter of intent from them, paving ways for future collaboration. Besides, we asked for advice from peers in the Fudan school of management about our marketing strategies and shaped our business plan to target our potential users more effectively.
2.CaAass developing. To obtain more professional feedback and get our projects wider public known, we participated in the Fanhai Bei innovation competition and won a third-class prize. According the judges' feedback, we modified our business model and found that older people in China lacked an easy method to assess their calcium status. Therefore, we developed our Measurement project CaAss to provide a solution for the old people to measure their blood calcium status in a portable way. Click here to see more details
Summary
Our project focus on reducing the impact of osteoporosis, trying search the way to making world better.
Analyzed the whole ages surveys to investigate public awareness and the current suffering situation of the old people.
Interviewed various stakeholders, including clinicians, professors and care workers to gather the limits of current treatments and used these feedbacks to design our project.
Connected with members of 19BNU and 19Fudan to gain their valuable insights and outline our wet lab experiments.
Made the market investigations and pitched our commercial plan to potential commercial investors.
In order to educate the aged people more effectively, we communicated with care workers and created instructional materials on care given.
During these interactions, we improved our existing design for CaAP, and we came up with the CaAss test strip product, which later got support by our pilot experiments.Our team successfully integrated Human Practice to design and improve our Bone Appetite project.
Figure1. Integration of Human Practice and Bone Appetide project
Figure2. The questionnaire of social surveys
Figure3. Calcium supplements situation of respondents aged 40 to 60
Figure4a. Surrounding osteoporosis knowledge with different ages
Figure4b. Surrounding osteoporosis knowledge with different ages
Figure5. Our teammate interview the old in community
