In 2022, from February 28th to March 2nd， the heads of state, environment ministers, and other delegates from 175 countries meeting in the Kenyan capital Nairobi have decided to aim to eliminate plastic pollution by 2024. We can conclude that under the dual driving forces of domestic and international, global policies and regulations on plastic governance will be more stringent. What is more important is for producers to vigorously promote the degradation rate of plastic products and reduce plastic-related greenhouse gas emissions. As middle school students and future genterations of our planet, we wantplan to find a bio-degradation method that can improve the efficiency of plastic degradation to solve the problem of plastic dyeing in the world.
Scientists from Oxford University and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation have conducted a longitudinal analysis of human antibiotic consumption in 204 countries between 2000 and 2018. The study, which took place in the Lancet Planet Health, has found that antibiotic control remains Mired, with global consumption rising 46 percent in 20 years. The study is in the Lancet Planet Health. In China's case, China consumes 200,000 tons of antibiotics annually, which accounts for 50% of the world's total consumption, and antibiotics abuse has become an imperative issue. Statistics show that China uses twice as many antibiotics as World Health Organization's recommended amount, and the antibiotics injection rate in China is three times higher than in similar countries. As a result, Bacteria have becaome increasingly resistant to antibiotics, and numerousmore superresistant bacteria are emerging.
Aqueous two-phase extraction is an extraction technique that utilizes the different solubilitiesy of components in two immiscible water phases to achieve separation. However, the traditional aqueous two-phase separation method uses fungal-derived hydrophobins, such as HFBI and HFBII.; Tthe production process of such hydrophobins is cumbersome and expensive, which limitsreducing the economic benefits of the aqueous two-phase separation method in large-scale industrial production.
All three of the problems we mentioned above can be further solved with a bacterial-derived hydrophobic protein——BslA.
In the first question, when BslA forms a fusion protein with a PET degradation enzyme mPETase, BslA canis able to enhance the efficiency of PET hydrolysis. Tthis helps the plastics to degrade in the most cost-efficient manner and minimizes environmental damage while degrading.
Aimed to ing at solvinge the drug resistance and application problem of antibiotics, our team is dedicated to improving the effectiveness of antimicrobial peptide LL-37 by designing the fusion protein LL37-BslA. This is, because we're using athe biological approach that we are using, which involves, using Protein LL37-BslA, it's going to be safer and more reliable for the human body than the chemical approaches.
In the third question, we found that the traditional protein purification methods are hampered by high costs and low efficiency. Our proposed aqueous continuous flow two-phase separation improves on traditional ATPS, significantly increasing its speed and reducing its cost. Using BslA, a bacterial hydrophobin, instead of fungal hydrophobins, our new method greatly expanded the potential of ATPS's industrial application, which can be a crucialis an important contribution to the synthetic biology community.
Indeed, we did thoughtful and well-developed experiments in the laboratory. However, Undoubtedly, human practice is also extremely essential and necessary indispensable for our project to be successful and complete. Peter Carr, the director of Judging for iGEM once said, “Human Practices is the study of how your work affects the world, and how the world affects your work..” Peter Carr, the director of Judging for iGEM once said. WeHis words realized and understoodsparked us to understand the purpose and importance of Human Practice, and inspired us to devoted our enthusiasm and efforts into our work.
Specifically, we held online meetings with teams from different provinces in China.; We communicatedived into deep communication with the teams and madeke progress together.; The deep cooperation with TJUSLS_China has brought both of our teamsus great support and improvements.; Starting from the educational purpose of the project, we carried out publicity through various aspects, such as public speech, publication of articles on Wechat official account, publication of promotional videos on popular social media platforms, and makingcreation of some educational videos to help other other fellows who are making effortspeople in synthetic biology. Fortunately, our educational propagandization has received a number of positive feedback, encouraging us to keep move forward confidently.
Beijing Economic and Technological Development Zone is the region with the largest contribution to GDP. Although it accounts for only 0.35 percent of Beijing's land, it contributes 20 percent of the capital's total industrial output. It also has the largest number of biopharmaceutical companies in Beijing, with about 1,200. Since our school——Beijing Etown Academy is alsolocated here, we hope to take advantage of the regional advantages of our school and also use the iGEM competition platform to increase the chances of working with more companies and increasing the chances of turning real research results into production. Our team will also take this opportunity to contribute to expanding iGEM's reach.
We are located in the economic development zone of Beijing and China, where many laboratories and factories are located. This means that we must pay great attention to the safety of experiments. SoThus, we invited Dr Wang an expert in laboratory safety to give an online talk. The lecture is very comprehensive, including the safe operation of electricity, gas, water, and fire. In addition, the safe treatment of chemical reagents, the disposal methods of microorganisms, the safe use of radioactive substances, the hazards and protection of ultraviolet radiation, and the disposal methods of waste are also introduced. Because our team communicated with the expert in advance, we briefly introduced to him thathow our project was closely related to synthetic biology to him. Therefore, experts emphasized the safety risks of nucleic acid dyes and asked us to pay special attention to this reagent. At the same time, we learned how to use the ventilated super clean table, and the experts reminded us to turn on the ventilation switch and sterilize our hands before we could enter the table. During our experiment, of course, we also contacted experts in real-time to continuously improve the safety of the experiment. For example, when we cut glue under the UV lamp, some students were accidentally burned. We quickly contacted the expert to understand the treatment method so that students could quickly alleviate the burning situation. Through in-depth communication with experts, team members' understanding of the importance of laboratory safety has been significantly improved, which has also laid a goodsolid foundation for our subsequent experiments.
In the Beijing Economic Development Zone, where our school is located, there islocates a company which is closely related to synthetic biology -- Bluepha Microbiology Company. The Bluepha Microbiology staff told us about their culture and technology since their inception. We introduced our project to our staff, and they suggested improvements to the topic of two-phase purification of our BSLA-linked fluorescent proteins: wWe can use a variety of proteins to connect BslA to ensure that the experimental procedures and results are more universally applicable. After the interview, we held a group meeting to summarize and digest what we had learned. We constructed a vector linking different fluorescent proteins and fused BslA as a purification tag to a series of fluorescent proteins. We chose to use fluorescent proteins because they are easy to observe and can be easily identified when the target protein is in the surfactant (a sign of successful purification). This visit allowed us to learn more about the promise, advantages, and uniqueness of synthetic biology. We also learned about employment and the environment in biotech companies, and in just a few hours, we deepened our understanding and expectations of this promising field. We also modified the subject based on expert advice, and we were inspired to fuse BslA with fluorescent proteins for easy observation.
We contacted SinoCellTech Engineering at the most difficult time of the experiment. We had experienced many PCR failures before this visit. When we visited SinoCellTech Engineering, we learned that a researcher who had been working on antimicrobial peptides for eight years had questioned himself, but he warned us: "Enthusiasm is the best motivator, but when you're miserable, it doesn't last long. But my determination to help patients with rare diseases kept me going, and that protection allowed me to achieve what I sought. Later, to take care of hemophiliacs, I also sponsored a hemophiliac to work in the company. This is what I started with." The members were encouraged a lot during this visit. A, although the process was not smooth, because of this experience, we also deeply realized the difficulty of perseverance and the spirit of never giving up.
We went to YICON Medical Technology for the experiment later because of the epidemic. When Dr. Li at the lab realized that our experiments were hampered by poor PCR results, he recommended an improved DNA polymerase. We changed the reaction system with a new polymerase, and it worked immediately. When we used electrophoresis to recover PCR samples in gels in our school lab, Dr. Li taught us a new technique - direct recycling. Instead of electrophoresis, we recovered the amplified fragments directly from the PCR reaction system. This recycling method is more in line with our experimental schedule and greatly improves recycling efficiency. When our experiments progressed to transformation, we could not determine the growth of the positive clones, which were mixed with the miscellaneous bacteria. We were confused, so we asked our seniors for advice. Dr. Li encouraged us to continue the experiment. In the end, our clone was a success. YICON Medical Technology has provided us with a lot of significant and far-reaching reading experiment guidance and a better biological experiment platform, thus making our process more smooth, and giving us more valuable experience and unprecedented progress.
We are really grateful for every company and experts who helped us along the process. Our project has no doubt improved greatly under the generous support from them!
