Art & Synthetic Biology, Why & Our Design
General Idea
As iGEM has always emphasized, it is only when we communicate deeply with our stakeholders and develop mutual understanding that we have the opportunity to work together to make the world the way we all want it to be.
As synthetic biologists try to change the world, we should also be mindful that we are really doing a good thing, not a disservice to some people, only if what we do benefits everyone involved in the environment you want to change.
We want to establish a synthetic biology business with the consumer market as the ultimate goal, so consumer understanding is very important for us to promote our products. Therefore, we want to be able to communicate with our end audience, spread the synthetic biology perspective, and get their feedback so that we can recognize any mistakes we may have made, or go further to make our products better.
How do we do this?
In our conversations with our partner, CAFA_China, we recognized the advantages of art as a vehicle for communication: it communicates knowledge and experience visually and brings the most direct experience to people, and elicits strong and immediate feedback. At the same time, in the context of presenting artworks, we as creators are able to observe the reactions of the audience in various ways. We can directly observe the audience's behavior, verbal feedback, or we can understand the audience's deeper thoughts through deeper interactive communication. In this way, we can trigger a broader discussion on the topic of synthetic biology and bring it to the attention of more people. (In the current environment in China, we believe that increasing the attention to synthetic biology is beneficial to the development of synthetic biology because policy and development needs are relying on synthetic biology technology) Therefore, we hope to make some bioartistic attempts in this year's project. These activities would not be possible without the help of our Partner, CAFA_China. We would like to thank CAFA_China for their inspiration and technical help.
Our Design On Bioart
During our preliminary communication with CAFA_China, CAFA_China became interested in a UV-induced bacterial suicide switch. We have often discussed this concept together, and we believe that there exists a philosophical concept of suicide switch that is easy to touch. Since we are amateurs in this field, these contents are mainly discussed by CAFA_China. We also need to ensure biosecurity in the presentation of our work. After careful consideration of safety and presentation, we felt that an installation would be the best way to present the UV-induced suicide switch. Based on this consensus, we worked together to create a bio-art piece. The biological phenomenon of this work is derived from a system that is subject to UV-induced expression. We used bioluminescence to represent gene expression and biomass decline to represent the death of individual bacteria. By combining the intensity of fluorescence that can be expressed per unit of biomass, we developed a time-dependent mathematical model of UV exposure and completed the design of our work in its entirety.
About Modeling
Model
The establishment of mathematical models can help us describe the relationship between different parameters and variables in the project process by using a set of mathematical equations.In our project, UV-inducible promoters control the expression of GFP and toxin proteins, and we use mathematical models to describe the relationship between incubation time and fluorescence intensity under different durations of UV-induced induction.
Ultraviolet irradiation will increase the expression of fluorescent proteins per unit, making the overall fluorescence intensity stronger, but at the same time, the accumulation of toxin proteins in bacteria will also lead to a decrease in bacterial biomass (OD value) and weaken the overall fluorescence intensity.Through the whole model, we can know the change of fluorescence intensity under different UV irradiation time and incubation time.The model parameters are obtained by fitting our experimental data, and referring to some literatures and the work of other iGEM teams.Our assay can help us better understand the relationship between bacterial death and fluorescence intensity within the assay.
1.Model Hypothesis
1 The resources in the environment where strains are cultivated are limited, and the population cannot grow infinitely
2.After UV irradiation, GFP and RelE under the control of UV-sensitive promoters start to express simultaneously
2 Parameter Description
3.Modeling and Solving
1 in the absence of toxic proteins When given different times of UV light (2-20min), the fluorescence intensity emitted by bacteria cultured for the same time has an exponential relationship with UV light:
[Experimental results, replaceable scatter plots]
[Experimental results, replaceable scatter plots]
Substituting (2) into (1), we get:
It can be seen that when $ 1 min <= T_{uv} <= 20 min $, the model can effectively fit the experimental data. Finally, we can get the functional relationship of F on $ T_c $and $T_{uv}$.
2 In the presence of toxic proteins The growth of the E.coli follows a logistic curve, which is indicated by the following equation:
When the E.coli expressed the bacterial virulence protein relE, the growth of it still followed the logisticstic curve, which could be indicated by the following equation（ref：https://parts.igem.org/Part:BBa_K3036004）：
So there is
When a' is taken as 1, 5,10, respectively, the changes of F with UV irradiation time and incubation time are as follows:
Visual simulation
Here is the visual simulation of our artwork.
In this design, we use a beam light operated by audience to simulate a UV-light pointed at a specific location of a screen.
On this screen, we visualize the growth and death of bacteria, as well as the fluorescence induced by UV-light.
The following 2 images show the vision before conducting UV-light.
Following shows the vision after UV-inducing, simulated by clicking on the screen.
These are the simulation on computer of our installation, as a proof-of-concept of our model and software code. Installation is still under construction and will be presented latter this year.
An Education Activity: The Question of Synthetic Life
We prepared a popular science content on synthetic biology for the junior high school students of Beijing Normal University, with the theme of "The Question of Synthetic Life".
Taking poetry and life as the breakthrough point, we take the popular science course of synthetic biology. It talks about oceans and animals, discusses the necessity and potential risks of synthetic biology, helps junior high school students understand the concept of genetic engineering, and stimulates students' interest in synthetic biology.
In order to help students to understand, many examples were given, ranging from degradable plastics to transgenic mice. Bacteria are so small that they are invisible to the naked eye. How do scientists transform them? This transformation process is like putting together Lego in cells, by putting together Lego, a gene with different life functions, and Lego, a protein, to create a "new species" to perform a specific function. The attempt to transform bacteria is not the starting point of synthetic biology, let alone the end point. In fact, human beings have always been obsessed with synthetic biology. Whether it's fairy tales or science fiction movies, such as the resurrection of species and the transformation of life, there are always many of these ideas, and now we may have the opportunity to realize them.
Besides, about the future of synthetic biology, it seems that there are related critical works in the field of literature, such as Frankenstein. Even though we can minimize the ecological impact of synthetic organisms through full evaluation and experiments, we can temporarily put aside the moral problems caused by synthetic organisms. We can be allowed to be synthetic organisms, just like at present, but when you know that humans can synthesize viruses with stronger lethality or even "customize humans", how to use these knowledge and technologies becomes a very important issue.
