We have four main collaborations. Firstly, BIT-China, NAU-CHINA and ZJU-China jointly invited 12 iGEM teams to participate in an online meeting called “ICII”. We hope to see the promotion of iGEM events and synthetic biology throughout China. Each team also took video logs in the presentation, combining with team culture and city culture publicity. Secondly, BIT-China and BIT jointly held some meetings for the freshmen and we made a survey about their experimental skills and knowledge of synthetic biology. Thirdly, BIT-China came up with a problem of lacking of data and grey prediction in communication with SJTU, they shared some database with us. We also held a serious discussion about bioethics. Fourthly, we communicated with SCU-China because they want to achieve the independent niche colonization of erythritol of probiotics under the condition of hypoxia in the intestine which has something in common with our project - constructing gene elements to realize hypoxia in cells.
Since the beginning of the competition, we have regarded the promotion of synthetic biology as our responsibility. The emergence of "ICII" has greatly helped us to promote synthetic biology. "ICII" means "Into China Into iGEM", which is a domestic publicity event hosted by NAU-China. In 2022, BIT-China and ZJU-China jointly invited 12 iGEM teams from well-known universities across the country to participate.
We hope to invite iGEM teams from all over the country to join us in promoting it, so as to have a greater impact in the field of synthetic biology, and finally achieve the goal of bringing iGEM into China and China into the world's iGEM platform. We hope to see the promotion of iGEM events in different cities, so as to reach the goal of popularizing science programs throughout China, promoting synthetic biology, and attracting more people to pay attention to synthetic biology. At the same time, such a national gathering can also allow new technologies and ideas to collide with each other, and present them in a more specific form, so that the society will pay more attention to the efforts made by the young generation for the development of synthetic biology.
As early as May, NAU-China invited us to co host ICII in 2022 with ZJU-China. In the discussion of the creativity and design of the preliminary activities, we deeply felt that ICII was in line with our team's concept, and gladly accepted the invitation of NAU China with an open mind to learn from each team. From the production of posters, brochures and team badges for formal activities to the production of summary videos after the meeting, the three teams have fully cooperated and communicated, and delivered perfect answers. In the process of making and integrating posters and brochures, we were inspired by many ideas and marveled at the wonderful ideas of each team. For example, ZJU-CHINA's posters are very exquisite. They design cell models into different systems for cities and cities to perform their respective duties. They have a sense of science and technology, a sense of the future and the characteristics of synthetic biology. They are different from our team's style and very novel. At the same time, the theme of each team also opened our eyes and gave us in-depth thinking on many directions and details that we didn't pay attention to at ordinary times. For example, Fudan China's thinking on the economy of skin care products follows the trend and has a unique perspective; NAU-CHINA pays attention to the liver and its related diseases, focusing on medicine and human health. The topic selection is very meticulous and fits the public's attention.
Each team also took video logs in the process of communication and presentation, combining the display process with team culture and city culture publicity. We hope to show the iGEM world the cultures of different teams and cities in China and the enthusiasm of Chinese people for the development of synthetic biology and biotechnology in the form of video presentation, so that the world can further understand China through ICII. ICII is like a large-scale centralized seeding, laying the seeds of using synthetic biology to solve problems, benefit society and change the world for children, young people and all sectors of society. We look forward to the germination and growth of these seeds.
At the same time, in the joint organization of ICII, we found that the communication with NAU-China was very efficient, the cooperation was very pleasant, and there was room for discussion on the projects of both sides. Therefore, we decided to conduct follow-up competitions as partners to have more in-depth exchanges, so as to achieve the goal of mutual learning and common progress. This is also a windfall for BIT-China.
The BIT team and BIT China are both participating teams of Beijing University of Science and Technology. They are from the School of Life and the School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering respectively. The BIT team is a characteristic team integrating many disciplines such as biochemistry, biomedicine, electronic informatics, mechanical manufacturing, design, economic management, humanities and social sciences. The track of the BIT team in 2022 is Diagnostics. The BIT team's project this year has built a pain classification system based on detection, which distinguishes different types of pain by detecting pain related pain markers, so as to achieve the goal of assisting doctors in diagnosing pain types. We think it is a very meaningful research project, which can enable doctors to obtain more information about the disease so as to make more accurate diagnosis. In order to promote synthetic biology and iGEM in the whole school, we decided to establish a series of joint lectures. We hope more friends will join us.
Before the presentation, we released a questionnaire, and the following are some data:
We learned that nearly 80% of people are interested in synthetic biology. They usually read relevant books, but due to the limitation of their original majors, they have only done biological experiments in the senior high school. Most people have learned a little about biological hydrogen production and biological nitrogen fixation, but they do not know the advantages and disadvantages of biological synthesis and chemical synthesis. We have answered these questions one by one in the presentation.
On April 15, 2022, we and the BIT team made the first joint presentation, which is mainly aimed at students majoring in biology, chemistry and environment. This presentation is also the first time that our team and iGEM competition have been publicized in the school since we established the team.
After the lecture, we issued a feedback questionnaire. According to the data, we learned that the lecture we had held was still meaningful, which made us gain from various aspects. For example, we learned the principle of oxygen paradox in our project and some experimental techniques in conducting synthetic biology experiments. Later, someone sent us an email to consult our project.
We also investigated the safety form officially provided by iGEM. They believed that our project would have some bad effects on the environment. Nearly two thirds of them believed that it would be harmful to the environment and human life and health. The reason is that the senior high school textbooks emphasized bioethical issues in gene editing and that some biological means might bring harm to the environment. This description was deeply engraved in everyone's minds, Therefore, most people will unconsciously associate biology with this kind of harm. Of course, this kind of harm is not impossible. We think it is necessary to guard against it. Under the condition of knowing what harm may exist, a good response plan is a solution. Specifically, according to this questionnaire, 29.63% of people think that our project will cause harm to human health, 25.93% think that our project will cause harm to the environment, including wildlife, 22.22% think that our project will cause harm to crops, 18.52% think that our project will cause harm to materials, equipment and infrastructure, Our project does not involve human experiments and has little direct impact on the environment. If our project can be applied to human beings in the future, more professional institutions in the country will carry out more clinical trials to verify its safety and more experiments to measure its impact on the ecological environment; 11.11% of them think that our project will break the norms of engineering biology, 7.41% of them think that our project will cause or aggravate social inequality, we think that the way of hydrogen production and nitrogen fixation may gradually move closer to synthetic biology in the future, and some workers may face the problem of unemployment. The project leader will consider the social benefits of any decision in advance, and as a democratic country. I think our Congress will introduce some policies in advance to protect the rights and interests of some people and reduce the impact of scientific and technological development.
On August 31, 2022, it was our second joint speech and invited CPU-CHINA Team. We introduced our achievements in the iGEM competition to freshmen, including how we selected topics, consulted literature and designed experiments in scientific research, as well as the communication methods within and between teams learned from the competition, and discussed with new students to help them choose their direction in college life. When freshmen enter the university, they are full of unknown and confused about the university world. By participating in this lecture, they begin to come into contact with the concept of synthetic biology, laying a foundation for future professional selection and research direction. In this cooperation, we also examined our project from the perspective of others, which also revealed some problems that we had not considered before, giving us a new understanding of the project and a deeper understanding of the application of synthetic biology.
On September 24, 2022, we, together with the BIT team of the same school, held an online lecture to Changping No. 1 High School students and offline lectures to college students in Qiushi College Community. The theme of this lecture was the research idea of synthetic biology and our entry project -- "oxygen killer".(Look for more details in our education part)
Shanghai Jiaotong University has two teams, the SJTU software team focusing on "dry experiment" and the SJTU team focusing on "wet experiment". We expected to conduct online communication.
SJTU software started their introduction. They introduced the background of their project - in the medical field, antibiotic resistance is becoming stronger and stronger, and they hope to use actinomycetes to synthesize more effective antibiotics. Acarbose actinomycetes can synthesize a kind of glucosidase inhibitor, which is an effective drug for treating diabetes, and has little toxicity, side effects and pollution. They have obtained high acarbose producing strains through wet experiments, but they have encountered bottlenecks in the process of large-scale transformation. They hope to select new prediction tools to find metabolic pathways and enzyme sites that need to be modified. Through in-depth learning, the parameters are optimized to find the transformation scheme for the key proteins, and then backtrack to the model for verification to complete a whole closed-loop structure. In terms of project value, software based on modeling and simulation prediction has been developed to reduce the cost of experiments and shorten the exploration cycle of enzyme engineering. At the end, they introduced the human practice part: learn from many universities online, design mascots, give popular science lectures, and communicate with industrial companies.
During the introduction, SJTU introduced the topic of DNA storage with broad prospects through the problem of information storage in interstellar transportation. The spores of Bacillus subtilis can endure the effects of extreme conditions, temperatures and radiation on DNA. They found that the water bearworm has a strong viability through literature, and found that its DNA is protected by Dsup protein. So they want to introduce this protein into Bacillus subtilis to improve its viability. They then demonstrated the process of DNA construction, the process of gene expression testing, the expected simulated space experiment, and finally introduced the human practice part.
Our project introduction starts with the background and inspiration: biological nitrogen fixation and hydrogen production have great development prospects, but nitrogenase and hydrogen production enzyme are obviously inhibited by oxygen. In the experiment part, the hypoxia environment in E. coli was constructed by leghemoglobin and laccase. The promoter nirB can be used to detect the oxygen concentration, and the transcription factor ArcA can reflect the oxygen consumption rate. Our project can be applied to the synthesis of easily oxidized substances, the transformation of denitrifying bacteria to increase the rate of sewage consumption, and food production. In the modeling work, we use Fick's diffusion law to describe the space-time relationship of oxygen concentration in Escherichia coli. The oxygen consumption model is mainly described by dynamic equation and neural network prediction. We also developed the software of neural network prediction to facilitate our neural network prediction.
After that, we mainly carried out exchanges on modeling and social practice, and put forward suggestions and help to each other.
In the discussion of human practice, we asked each other how to carry out human practice. And the problems encountered in it. We have learned that SJTU has carried out offline support activities and cooperated with Shanghai University of Science and Technology in an online open class. In the education part, they also made a series of popular science push, produced popular science audio for the public to listen to, and wrote some popular science articles. Partnership has carried out in-depth cooperation with many universities, and the collaboration aspect has participated in CCiC, etc. Then, our team also mentioned the work we have done - making picture books for lower grades, and making a series of synthetic biology education videos, which creatively carried out human practice. We will also consider drawing on some new practice models of SJTU to benefit more people.
SJTU software talked about that because of COVID-19, they experienced long-term closed management in the spring semester, and the collaboration part of their team is not enough. They have more online communication with other teams than offline in-depth communication. Our BIT China team also reflects the work of HP and is affected by COVID-19. Of course, we did our best to do publicity activities and CCiC with other schools. It was mentioned at the meeting that the human practice of our team is not enough, and the enterprise part is still to be improved. In this regard, they and we support and encourage each other and hope that both sides can seize the limited opportunity to carry out more human practice.
We also asked the other party how to define communication, collaboration, education and other modules. The other side gave their team's division of these modules, as well as the specific implementation form. Finally, we hope that both sides can clarify their ideas and consider developing some new ways of implementation to enrich our social practice. Since then, we have gained confidence.
In the discussion of the modeling part, after the introduction, we mentioned that the modeling part uses neural networks, which requires a large amount of data to accurately predict, but currently there is a lack of data provided by experiments. We have considered the grey prediction algorithm because it only requires less data, but its grey prediction requires certain conditions to calculate the correct result. We asked the team of Shanghai Jiaotong University how to supplement the data. They pointed out that there are some databases with large data volumes, which are more reliable in accuracy than laboratories. Therefore, our team will consider looking for some ready-made databases to assist in modeling.
Later, we proposed that some uncommon operations, such as the expression of leghemoglobin in prokaryotes, do not have enough data and are not easy to find in the literature. In this regard, they suggest that at least several groups of data can be used to obtain their distribution rules, and the data with certain distribution rules can be generated by generating models. We absorbed their ideas and considered that if the experimental data is insufficient, we can use the method of generating data to approximate the prediction.
Their team affirmed the part of our modeling software, and pointed out that the lack of experimental data is a common problem with us, because Beijing and Shanghai are affected by COVID-19. They also have some pressure on the operation of modeling to obtain data. We also discussed how to legally draw on the data and pictures in the literature, which will be of great help to our later literature use and writing.
Finally, we also discussed what bioethics is and its significance.
Bioethics is a discipline that systematically studies human behavior in the field of life sciences and health care according to moral values and principles. It came into being in the 1960s. It mainly studies the moral problems in biomedical and behavioral research, the moral problems in environment and population, the moral problems in animal experiments and plant protection, and the moral problems in human reproduction, birth control, genetics, eugenics, death, euthanasia, organ transplantation, etc.
This is the official explanation. It matches bioethics more with biomedicine, but our three teams agree that synthetic biology also involves bioethics in many aspects. Through literature review, we concluded that bioethics mainly reflects two problems in synthetic biology: 1. Biosafety 2. Biosecurity.
Biosafety: Synthetic biological products may pose risks to human health and the environment, such as synthetic viruses or bacteria that are pathogenic to humans, or their products seriously harm certain kinds of animals or plants, disrupt the food chain and disrupt the ecological balance; Synthetic microorganisms may have unexpected interactions with the environment or other organisms, thus posing risks to the environment and public health; The release of synthetic microorganisms into the environment may cause gene horizontal transfer and affect the ecological balance, or generate abnormal functions due to evolution, resulting in unprecedented side effects on the environment and other organisms.
Biosecurity: refers to the malicious use of synthetic lethal and toxic pathogens for terrorist attacks or personal revenge, especially when the knowledge and skills to produce these pathogens are readily available.
We discussed and concluded that we should not only self regulate, but also external regulate (through public surveys, asking teachers and experts for evaluation, or contacting scientific research centers) bioethics issues that may arise in experimental research. Because researchers spend most of their energy on scientific research and innovation, they do not have enough time to pay attention to social and ethical issues.
The ethical evaluation of synthetic biology is mainly for human and other organisms, human society and human society.
Paying attention to the bioethical issues of synthetic biology research can not only avoid some security risks, but also improve the social trust in the results of synthetic biology research, which is more conducive to the development of synthetic biology.
We also investigated the safety form officially provided by iGEM. They believed that our project would have some bad effects on the environment. Nearly two-thirds of them believed that it would be harmful to the environment and human life and health.
The following is the questionnaire:
We believe that the reason for this result is that biology textbooks in senior high school emphasize bioethical issues in gene editing and the harm that some biological means may bring to the environment. This description is deeply engraved in everyone's mind, so most people will unconsciously associate biology with this harm.
Not only for students, but also many people now have a direct connection between gene editing and bioethical issues, and have low trust in gene editing products. Some new biology textbooks for junior and senior high schools in China have begun to infiltrate bioethics. We believe that high school teachers should guide students to analyze the advantages and disadvantages of new technology from multiple perspectives. Avoid students' one-sided view of new progress, expand their horizons, and avoid students' tendency to be textbook oriented.
Through literature review, we found that bioethics is an unavoidable problem in synthetic biology research. Every innovation, R&D and application of synthetic biology will assess the risks and benefits of bioethics.
So we still analyzed and solved the bioethical problems that may exist in our project. It is necessary to guard against trifles. Under the condition of knowing what hazards may exist, a good response plan is a solution. Specifically, according to this questionnaire.
(1) 29.63% of the people think that our project will cause harm to human health, 25.93% think that our project will cause harm to the environment, including wildlife, 22.22% think that our project will cause harm to crops, and 18.52% think that our project will cause harm to materials, equipment and infrastructure.
First of all, our project does not involve human experiments and has little direct impact on the environment. Secondly, if our project can be applied to human beings in the future, we will contact more professional institutions in the country to carry out more clinical trials to verify its safety, and more experiments to measure its impact on the ecological environment;
(2) 11.11% believed that our project would break the norms of engineering biology, and 7.41% believed that our project would cause or aggravate social inequality.
We think that the way of hydrogen production and nitrogen fixation may gradually move closer to synthetic biology in the future, and some workers may face the problem of unemployment. The project leader will take into account the social benefits of any decision in advance. In addition, as a democratic country, I think our Congress will introduce some policies in advance to try to protect the rights and interests of some people and reduce the impact of scientific and technological development.
On October 2, 2022, SCU - China held an online communication meeting between the two universities at the invitation of BIT - China. The two teams briefly introduced each other's topics, and then exchanged views on some questions.
The subject of SCU - China this year is ERYBiotic. The main work is to achieve the independent niche colonization of erythritol of probiotics under the condition of hypoxia in the intestine. This has something in common with our project - constructing gene elements to realize hypoxia in cells, especially the growth curve of Escherichia coli in hypoxia, and the methods and results of establishing hypoxia environment in metabolic modeling Co - culture Simulation of multiple strains of E. coli. Subsequently, the two teams exchanged views on the problems in the design of Human Practices and wikis, and discussed the possibility of cooperation in this year and the following years. When the wiki freeze was approaching, the two teams answered questions and encouraged each other, and gained a very valuable friendship.
