In the face of all communication, the quickest way to get effective information is none other than face-to-face consultation and discussion. We have noticed that in recent years, the frequency of iGEM teams conducting external events to promote their projects is increasing, as are the opportunities for team-to-team communication. For teams in China, participation in the CCiC community is a key opportunity for good communication and cooperation with other teams. For this reason, we actively participated in the conference and hope to introduce our project to iGEMers, as well as listen to participants' project descriptions and gain more information about synthetic biology.
Due to the epidemic caused by the new coronavirus, this year's CCiC will take place from August 18 to August 22, 2022, in a combination of online and offline formats. The conference was hosted by the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology team and attracted more than 1000 iGEMers. The theme of this year's conference is "Life Meets Everything", which aims to encourage everyone to explore and think about more paths to use synthetic biology for practical applications, to aspire to life, and to contribute to the future. This is also one of the common goals of all human development.
In this year's conference, the organizers set up six lectures on synthetic biology, and invited many experts in the academic field to participate in the conference and introduce their research fields and the current status of their research one by one. At the same time, the conference also enabled each team to present their project content in the form of poster show and slide show. After the team leaders finished their presentations, the judges and the audience could ask them questions to enhance the interactivity and make the leaders aware of the problems and omissions of their projects. It is also important for each team member to fully condense their ideas when presenting to avoid taking too long. Posters and slides improve the audience's understanding of the project and allow the content to be expressed clearly enough, which is certainly helpful for the presentation; and the joint delivery of the presentation and the oral presentation is a great opportunity for different teams to learn from each other.
The CCiC Conference hopes to create a good atmosphere and a platform for teams to communicate through such a formal discussion format. Such a networking opportunity has brought together most of the iGEMers and biology enthusiasts in China to work together for the development of biology and cutting-edge technology. Likewise, by participating in the conference, we learned a lot of practical skills and knowledge from various aspects of experimentation, human practice, modeling, etc. CCIC built an immensely strong bridge to connect teams with teams in a real way. We hope that we all gained something from the conference and witnessed the budding and development of synthetic biology in China together. And these precious and joyful moments deserve to be recorded.
On September 17, we conducted an online meeting with Guangxi University GXU-China and Nanjing Foreign Language School Nanjing_NFLS to interview experts together. At the same time, we formed the Fresh Freshwater Bioremediation Alliance (FBA). We jointly invited Professor Shen Xia from Nanjing Academy of Water Resources and asked him questions about wastewater management.
During the meeting, we asked Prof. Shen Xia about the governmental and private aspects of wastewater management, and she explained to us critically the channels and methods of wastewater management. Then, she introduced to us in detail the methods of sewage treatment, i.e. through physical, chemical and biological methods. The application of engineering bacteria is the biological method, in fact, it has two major advantages, first of all, it is a relatively low cost and no secondary pollution. In our national water treatment, including the treatment of sewage treatment plants, as well as the treatment of natural water bodies, all include the application of microorganisms. At the same time, Prof. Shen Xia also taught us the method of microbial treatment and the feasibility of machine treatment of sewage. We also consulted Prof. Shen Xia about our project - about the feasibility of microalgae treatment of sewage, and the professor fully affirmed the authenticity and feasibility of our project after understanding it, and encouraged us to continue our efforts towards the research direction.
At the end of the meeting, FBA had a relevant discussion, we deeply understood the current situation of sewage pollution and treatment, we gathered together to discuss each team's treatment and solution for sewage, and understood the situation of each of them. We each provided suggestions and plans for each other's development, which were approved and supported by everyone. With the development of science, the progress of the times, and the rapid growth of population, the water resources on which human beings depend are polluted and the amount of water we can drink and use is unknowingly decreasing. The issue of water recycling is gradually receiving widespread attention from the society, and the solution of a series of problems such as eutrophication of water bodies, excessive bacterial content and harmful residues is imminent. In implementing the 17 sustainability goals proposed by the United Nations, we also discussed the feasibility of microalgae treatment of wastewater technology in practical production applications in this conference, which provides experimental ideas for the laboratory and is of great significance for putting the laboratory results into practical production applications.
The "Paris Agreement" proposes to limit global warming to within 2°C above the industrialized level, and
strive to keep it within 1.5°C. June 5th and June 8th are World Environment Day and World Oceans Day
respectively. In response to the 2022 United Nations Ocean Conference and the 2022 United Nations
Conference
to Support the Implementation of Sustainable Development Goal 14, we decided to organize and planning the
academic exchange activity of "Blue Carbon Economy, 'Source' Drives the Future". We invited the NFLS
team
of Nanjing Foreign Language School to cooperate and preach, and they explained their iGEM project in
layman’s
terms.. We also invited the president of Minjiang College, Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University
Doctoral
supervisor Prof. Zonghua Wang, Dean of the School of Life Sciences Prof. Yuan Qin ,Prof. Wenxiong Lin of
Fujian
Agriculture and Forestry University, Prof. Chao Zhao of Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University,
Associate
Researcher Zhou Jin of Tsinghua University, Associate Professor Tao Yi of Tsinghua University and Researcher
Wei
Xiangying of Minjiang University with us.They are all proficient in the field of synthetic biology and
provided
students with real examples of thesynthetic biology use, using their personal experiences to guide. The
conference basically provides participants with the basic knowledge of synthetic biology and guidance on how
to
effectively read scientific literature. We hope that through the academic exchanges of this conference, our
experimental scheme will be further improved, and at the same time, the public awareness of marine
protection
will be raised.
As an additional support, we have also organised several ad hoc sessions by which members of our team come
together to check in and ask the experts any additional questions related to the content of the lectures,
applicable to both universities and synthetic biology. During this meeting, we are looking for schools and
partners, mainly for application venues and publicity platforms.
Due to the limited number of participants in our conferences due to the the epidemic, our conference have not only offline participants but also online participants. On-site participants included more than 120 students from Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University, members of the 2022 CHINA-FAFU team, and online participants included teachers and students from Minjiang University, and members of the Nanjing_NFLS team. During the course of this session, we were able to interact with the audience, and online participants were asked to mute and encouraged to turn off their cameras and interact with us via the chat box to ensure our discussions were moderated and their privacy kept safe.
On the afternoon of June 5th, we held the following lectures in the lecture hall of Boxue Building, Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University.
Professor Lin Wenxiong of Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University's report title:Agricultural ecological transformation and its path under the background of ecological civilization,
Jin Zhou, associate researcher of Tsinghua University, reported title: Degradation mechanism of phycomelanin by microbial quorum sensing signals,Yi Tao, associate professor of Tsinghua University,gave a presentation title: Microalgae Biotechnology Coupling Sewage Denitrification and Carbon Neutralization
The title of Researcher Xiangying Wei's report from Minjiang University: Exploration of the three-dimensional ecological aquaculture model of Penaeus vannamei in seawater NFLS team report title of Nanjing Foreign Language School: Microcystin Terminator: Combination of mlrA withcross-membrane protein to degrade cyanotoxin.
Professor Chao Zhao from Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University's report title: High-value utilization of seaweed resources and research on carbon sink function in aquaculture
And the technical representative of our partner Yisheng Biotechnology Co., Ltd. carried out solutions for the mining and transformation of plastic depolymerases.
Based on the knowledge of synthetic biology, we heard the academic discussion on how microbial populations degrade phycomelanin proposed by Zhou Jin, associate researcher of Tsinghua University. His remark caused our team to think about the safety of microbial population degradation technology. Indeed, as he said, we have encountered the safety problem of microbial population degradation technology. We have been aware of this problem before. Through the discussion of associate researcher Zhou Jin, we have confirmed that the microbial degradation technology repairs the POPs polluted environment or has no secondary pollution. , low cost, quick and easy and other advantages, has a wide range of application prospects. The students listened to the sharing of various experts, and also gained more knowledge in the field of synthetic biology, and had a deeper understanding of the original intention of the Ocean Day activities and the ocean carbon sink.
Tao Yi, associate professor of Tsinghua University, proposed a discussion on the microalgae biotechnology that couples sewage denitrification and carbon neutralization. Through his report, we discussed the interaction mechanism between microalgae technology and PPCPs in wastewater, especially the microalgae under the action of complex pollutants. A deeper understanding of the response mechanism. This reminds us that we should further develop efficient, low-cost and easy-to-operate microalgae harvesting and recycling processes.
For the algae mentioned by Professor Chao Zhao of Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University, there are many potential minerals, and we also have doubts as he thinks about the environmental problems caused by the arrogant growth of algae. This is one of the most challenging planning parts. Therefore, we put forward at the meeting: eutrophication of water often causes algae to grow wildly. For this problem, whether we can turn environmental problems into a resource to use, such as algal fertilizer, diatom mud and other questions. Professor Chao Zhao also answered us, he believes that not only that, but seaweed farming is a perfect solution for these programs, as the demand for seaweed in the food and industrial sectors is increasing. We believe that by growing seaweed, we can save many of the world's water bodies facing the eutrophication crisis, and even turn this crisis into an opportunity.
Finally, we also shared our project to transform Phaeodactylum tricornutum through genetic engineering technology, expecting to realize the increase of high economic value by-products such as carbon fixation, lipid accumulation and fucoxanthin of Phaeodactylum tricornutum, and explained the improvement of microalgae. The idea of algae's ability to absorb nitrogen, phosphorus, heavy metals and other elements in water body, we also discussed the use of microalgae and synthetic biology technology to promote sewage recycling, biomass energy project ideas, and how our projects can be used to deal with carbon peaks and carbon neutrality goals.
At the same time, there are entertainment activities such as lottery draws, questionnaires, and prize distribution, which make the atmosphere of the scene relaxed and happy, and the team's visual effects team records wonderful moments. We received an overwhelming response from the live attendees, and we were delighted to hear their appreciation for the concepts of synthetic biology and wastewater treatment.We received an overwhelming response from the live attendees, and we were delighted to hear their appreciation for the concepts of synthetic biology and wastewater treatment.
We are very grateful to have this opportunity to hold the blue carbon energy, "source" to move the future theme academic conference. This meeting greatly broadened the students' knowledge, cultivated the students' awareness of protecting environmental benefits and maintaining the development of the marine ecological chain, and also promoted the further development of the experimental part of our project, and further promoted the formation of a good social atmosphere for the whole people to care for the marine environment.