In all communications, the quickest way to get effective information is to consult and discuss face to face. This year, the frequency of our external activities to promote our projects is increasing, as are the opportunities to communicate between CHINA-FAFU and igem teams, with companies, with experts, and with different groups. We are working together with other iGEM teams to establish in Fresh Freshwater Bioremediation Alliance
In the process of experimentation, we often encounter problems that cannot be solved by our team members' discussions, so our team keeps the spirit of open-mindedness and learning. We hosted a large scale conference on the theme of Blue Carbon Economy, "Resources" Promote The Future Theme Academic Conference, inviting experts and scholars in the field to help us further expand our experiments, and asking for help from business representatives, technicians, communities, stakeholders and governments to get more innovative ideas.
This year, our team is also focused on developing new opportunities for individuals in the field of synthetic biology. Our ultimate goal is to promote mutual learning and open discussion among audiences and to expand integrated human practices among groups, thus making such events more educational.
In addition iGEM is an inclusive organization and we want to create a more inclusive space that fosters dialogue between the iGEM team and the entire iGEM community, opening doors for special groups. This year, our team held a volunteer walk with the blind under the theme of "Close to Nature" to provide care for the blind and partnered with community nursing homes to provide care for the elderly. We visited online to provide science courses to students in remote, educationally disadvantaged rural areas and orphanages to build conservation and environmental awareness.
According to the sixth United Nations Sustainable Development Goal: Everyone should have the right to enjoy clean water and use water freely. So our team contacted the campus wastewater treatment plant from this perspective, starting with the nearest community wastewater treatment plant to understand and explored a new model of biological pollution treatment based on the original equipment combined with the microalgae water purification technology.
Our team went to the west wastewater treatment station of the campus of Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University (Fujian Agricultural Solid Waste Recycling Engineering Research Center) and visited embrane tank, aerobic tank, phosphorus removal tank, sludge concentration tank, disinfection tank, reuse tank, etc under the guidence of the staff of the wastewater treatment station. The staff said that the adjustment tank is equipped with a submersible wastewater lifting pump, an ultrasonic liquid level recorder, and a bag filter, which are used to homogenize and adjust the wastewater to make its water quality more stable. "wastewater will flow into the grid tank, then into the hidden regulator, and then into the anaerobic tank, anoxic tank, aerobic tank, MBR membrane tank, a return flow of the mixed liquid, and some sludge will enter After reaching the sludge thickening tank. Finally through the process of phosphorus removal and disinfection, the purification process is almost complete," the staff said.
During the tour, we presented the team project to the head of the wastewater treatment plant. After listening to the outline of the project, he put forward a valuable opinion to us, "Will the microalgae decontamination technology cause biosafety hazards?" Our answer was to isolate the wastewater source with the medium and avoid direct contact with the wastewater. This plan has been affirmed by the person in charge of the wastewater treatment plant. After visiting the wastewater treatment plant, everyone focused on the possibility and methodology of combining microalgae water purification with a modern physical wastewater treatment plant. The team members actively expressed their opinions. At the same time, the team members carefully found that compared with the wastewater treatment plant in the community, the school wastewater has reduced kitchen waste, etc., and is more alkaline. Therefore, the pH concentration of the culture medium will be configured when there is a subsequent opportunity to cooperate with the wastewater treatment plant.
The head of person the wastewater plant put forward valuable opinions on our project: when the by-products produced by microalgae decontamination are made into edible food, attention should be paid to whether the chemical elements in them exceed the standard. So in response to this commitment, we will carry out a special project at a later stage to filter and purify the by-products and monitor the concentrations of their chemical constituent elements.
With the deepening of the trend of economic globalization, the effective management of river water environment has extremely important social and historical value. It can not only improve the natural ecological environment and achieve the goal of harmonious development between man and nature, but also improve people's quality of life and develop regional The economy promotes the continuous progress and development of the social economy, and has extremely important practical significance for the survival and development of human beings.
We are very aware of the importance of reaching out to people associated with the discipline of synthetic biology and informing them about it. This year, we decided to communicate with our students on campus about our project in order to gain a comprehensive understanding of the impact, utility and nature of the project and the application of our proposed solution. The traditional teaching model is fixed in the room and limited by time, space, equipment, etc. We wanted to break this barrier in an easy way, so that students are not limited by the school LAN and geographical restrictions; break through the spatial restrictions, teaching and learning not necessarily indoors, but also outdoors. So we decided to set up a mobile classroom in Topside Square of Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University to promote our project through posters, video broadcasting, brochures, etc.
We noticed that some students in our school are relatively backward in their understanding of science knowledge, and we popularized science content as close to life as possible, such as the introduction of microalgae and the interpretation of gene editing. We believe that similar outdoor classes can inspire students to learn intensely and will be an unforgettable experience for everyone. In addition, we produced some interesting science cartoons, hand-drawn books and brochures on biological evolution, synthetic organisms, etc. For example, used microalgae to treat sewage as an example to tell students about the amazing effects of microalgae, so that students could understand that biology is not only limited to the visible range, but also the amazing microscopic organisms. At the same time, we distributed a paper version of our questionnaire to collect the knowledge of synthetic biology among the university students.
Our idea was well received by students as well as school teachers, who believed that the teaching content of modern education system should not be limited to traditional subjects such as language, mathematics and English, and that this kind of science popularization and competition could open up students' horizons and cultivate their interest in science, as well as contribute to the sustainable development of cultivating new STEM talents with the 2022CHINA-FAFU iGEM team's modest contribution.
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 Jin Zhou 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 Jin Zhou, 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 Jin Zhou, 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.
We have always believed that visual and tactile communication is the easiest and clearest way to promote the concept of our project, and it is also the most effective way to reach an educated audience. After talking to our team members, we decided to write a popular science book to diversify the content of our project in order to inform students about synthetic biology and to expand the reach of our project.
Before writing the book, the team members positioned the book to focus on explaining and illustrating the content of our project. We tried to educate people by teaching students more about microalgae and broadening the audience of the project. However, when we told our instructor about the idea, she suggested that we could open up more ideas. "It's obviously not enough for science to stop at just microalgae." She said, "In addition to making the public aware of our team's thinking, it is important to know the purpose and background for our move." At this point, we have come to appreciate the very important point of thinking more deeply about the contribution of our project to the development of society and assessing some of the relevance so that more people can understand what we are doing.
The point of this popular science book is to make students aware of the importance of synthetic biology and to use simple language so that students of almost all ages can understand the meaning of each point. In addition, we have added several modules promoting synthetic biology, earth energy, microalgae, and other topics designed to help students step into the world of iGEMer and see how these seemingly complex projects were born successfully using them. We have also linked the development goals of global organizations such as the United Nations and WHO to the various contents of the book, so as to give more people to see that our projects are trying to be close to daily life and continue to contribute to human development.
The science book is an ingenious tool that allows us to connect with many communities and bring synthetic biology into the public view. Regardless of their level of education, students will be able to read our books and gain more interesting knowledge outside of the classroom. When we gave the finished science books to students of the same age group, they were amazed at the design and content of the panels and expressed a strong interest in synthetic biology. This is in line with our original intention of creating the book. We will continue to monitor the situation after the launch of the book, so that we can prepare for further reaching out to the people with good reasons.
This outreach approach has honed the members' ability to describe the project and related knowledge, and to gain a better understanding of the project's launch and application. On the one hand, we could observe the reactions of students of different age groups based on the reading of the science books, and thus constantly update our science content. On the other hand, we reached out to students of all ages and encouraged them to apply modern ideas to solve pressing problems in synthetic biology. Overall, we managed to mention the content of our project in the book and to develop a rich imagination and reflection. In the future, we can work with more experts and scholars to draw more inspiration from them and generate interest in an evolving industry.
English Version
The power of books is immense. We have found from our previous experience of organising events in the public eye that books have a huge appeal to those who are educated, especially students. We reasoned that increasing the visual impact of pictures in books might enhance students' interest in synthetic biology and achieve a better impact on science. Moreover, adding a visual learning medium would also encourage students to be in a better state to learn new things. We have therefore conceptualised the story of microalgae and added illustrated pages in the form of a hand-drawn book, using the perspective of a young human boy to teach the science of using microalgae to tackle with water pollution.
Pinyin Version
Tips:We have extra made a phonetic symbols version of the popular science hand-drawn book, hoping that preschool children will receive better enlightenment education
After several meetings and discussions, we finally decided on a hand-drawn book with two main characters, a human boy called "Yuan Yuan" and an anthropomorphic image of microalgae called "Little Fuzao", whose names were inspired by our project's main theme Their names are inspired by the main theme of our project: "Clean Water with Microalgae". The name "Yuan Yuan" means clean, innoxious water, and is taken from the poem "For a source of flowing water to come from". The picture books are aimed primarily at young people, but are also relevant to adult readers. In the picture book, we focus on the origins of sewage, the available means of treating it, the wonders of microalgae, and link the two together in a witty way to convey the core message of using microalgae technology to combat water pollution. In order to make our content accessible to all, the team members went to the Fuzhou Children's Library and carefully studied hundreds of children's picture books in order to figure out the language used in science books to better convey our ideas. To make the most of the science, the members consulted a lot of literature to integrate the science knowledge with the content of the project in a complete way. We are sure that such an easy way to promote knowledge will be appreciated by the student community.
Chinese Version
Throughout the book, we have focused and highlighted mainly on pollution control and the wonders of microalgae,in the hope of illustrating the close environmental pollution issues associated with the project and giving children a healthy and positive educational message while promoting the main elements of biological sewage control. The protection of the environment has always been a common goal of mankind and a topic that is closely linked to everyone. Through such vivid and entertaining science, we ourselves feel deeply the need to protect the environment and are determined to study it. This is an important force of support that encourages us to give more scientific activities and humanitarian help to the people concerned in our subsequent social practice.
One of the important prerequisites for the steady development of a country is the stability and security of the ecological environment. Protecting the environment and saving resources requires the joint efforts of generations or even dozens of generations. Therefore, the education of minors is very important. We believe that motivating minors to take responsibility for conserving and protecting water while imparting simple skills and problem-solving skills can make the learning process more enjoyable and engaging by providing a visual learning medium. To this end, we made a short animation for popular science propaganda.
The role of animation is to present the more obscure process principles in a vivid and concise form, so that people can quickly understand our team and resonate. Therefore, in the design process, we often need to consider how to express it without being so cumbersome, but also name the mystery. By looking at these animations from the perspective of passers-by and the internal perspective of team members, we can quickly explore a more suitable animation creation mode for viewers to understand. In addition, in order to ensure the design sense of animation, we often refer to some top AE production videos to understand their control of motion curve, composition, motion time and other content. Watching a lot of other people's videos is also one of our sources of inspiration. Of course, it is difficult to create a good animation by our own strength, so we often listen to the opinions of our teammates, and through constant discussion and research , we can collide with more suitable animations. Most of the time, the most suitable animation can only be designed by continuous experimentation, not only the control of the special effect time, but also the debugging of the size of each element. Through continuous debugging and research, the most suitable set of combinations can be found. Satisfactory results were obtained. Taking into account the knowledge acceptance ability of minors, we introduced two cartoon characters "Yuanyuan" and "Little Fuzao" to popularize "microalgae water purification" through what they have seen and heard. We hope to demonstrate the efficacy of our team through microalgae technology to decontaminate and purify water through a simple event. The purification process is presented in a simple and easy-to-understand manner through animations, and figurative items are added to show the high efficiency of microalgae water purification and the high-value by-products it brings, such as the ability to synthesize oil.
The creative process was not always smooth. We had a lot of trouble in the early days of animation. We have no way of determining whether our audience should be the general population or focus on minors. In the early stage, we carried out social survey questionnaires, kindergarten publicity, primary school publicity, and junior high school publicity. Through these activities, we have clearly defined our audience - we should focus more on minors, and we feel that educating minors is more conducive to cultivating a longer-term development of environmental protection concepts. So we adhered to this concept and used PR, PS, AE, Moho and other software to make our short animations. In order to make everyone like our animations more, we found students who majored in painting in the school, hand-painted the templates of our animations, and presented them in the form of animations after many rounds of polishing.
We also encountered some difficulties during the dubbing process. We couldn't use synthetic sound to synthesize the sound suitable for "Xiao Fuzao", so we switched a variety of different dubbing software, and finally used Balabolka, the general upload audio adjustment tone to synthesize the sound we wanted. So our short animation popular science video did just that.
According to the sixth United Nations Sustainable Development Goal: Everyone should have the right to clean water and enjoy pure water. In the future, we will continue to strengthen popular science education for minors.
2022 CHINA-FAFU iGEM "Handmade What We Love" environmental Handmade class Nature is not just a "playground" for outdoor enthusiasts ,and human survival is also completely dependent on the health of the natural environment.We know that a large number of non-biodegradable plastic products enter the ocean every year, trapping and killing Marine animals. And this situation is a threat to human beings.Most of us have not thought about how plastic will affect us genuinely...With this thought in mind, we and the College of Life Science, Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University jointly held the "Hand-making What We Love" public welfare and environmental protection handicraft class on June 3 this year.
In the activity , the students learned to transform the waste paperbags, graffiti them, and design both beautiful and practical environmentally friendly storage bags. At the same time, the students also designed a string of imaginative”Egg Fish” by cutting and doodling the discarded egg carton. Through the design and transformation of discarded items ,the students improved their innovation ability, cultivated their awareness of ecological protection and waste utilization, and cultivated their artistic sentiment. The activity scene was full of laughter. Then ,we popularize the knowledge about environmental protection in the process of making handmade to the students ,introducing we also use microalgae high-value byproduct of output techniques and the idea of microalgae purifying sewage ,they showed understanding and recognition,and understand our idea,put forward the approval opinions and views.
This activity is faced to all the teachers and students of Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University.Through experiencing the reuse of old things , students added their own environmental protection creativity and design inspiration to design a variety of environmental protection crafts,to stimulate students' innovation consciousness, practical ability and teamwork ability ,in order to awaken students' love for the ocean and environmental protection. We took a group photo with the students who participated in the activity to record this meaningful moment after the activity. Finally, we looked forward to the future of environmental protection together.
Through holding the public environmental protection manual class,we hope to cultivate students the consciousness of the maintenance of Marine ecosystem ,promote Marine ecological civilization ,create a good Marine culture atmosphere on campus,so as to comprehensively promote Marine strategy ,maritime rights and interests ,Marine ecology ,Marine economy ,Marine science and technology ,Marine and other fields of knowledge science education work of the people's livelihood, and enrich the students' after-school life.
Humanistic care is always a very important of our team."The 2022 CHINA-FAFU team from College of Life Sciences, Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University joined hands with Yizhou Street and Taishan Community of Yizhou Street to carry out an activity with the theme of "Keeping the beauty of nature" in the morning of October 8. The theme of "Keeping the beauty of nature" was a filial activity to enrich the cultural life of the elderly, and to lead them to celebrate the National Day and the Chrysanthemum Day by making dried flower bookmarks.
Dried flower art bookmark Dried flower art bookmark belongs to a kind of pressed flower art, which has a long history. It is made by using physical and chemical methods to dehydrate, preserve color, press and dry plant materials including roots, stems, leaves, flowers, fruits and bark to make flat flower materials, and then made by clever conception. In this way, we hope to mobilize the minds of our elders, inspire their love for nature and keep the beauty of nature around them.
The host introduced the raw materials and tools for making bookmarks: dried flowers, tweezers,
scissors,
glue, and tassels. After the facilitator explained the steps, everyone had a basic understanding of how
to
make them and they were eager to try. The next step was to make the bookmark with their own hands. The
old
people took the tweezers in their hands and carefully placed the dried flowers on the bookmark, creating
all
kinds of pictures by matching the flowers and grasses and different colors. Some of them even took up
pens
and wrote phrases in Chinese and English. During the project, iGEM team members communicated with the
elderly, introducing the types of dried flowers and chatting about family life...All the bookmarks made
by
the elderly were unique and in a short time, most of them were done and competed to show their works.
The
aunties had a sense of accomplishment when they held the bookmarks they had made with their own hands.
The
dried flower bookmarks were of different styles, and with the tassels that matched the color of the
flowers,
they revealed a more simple and elegant flavor. The air was full of cheerfulness as the old people
passed
their masterpieces around and praised each other. Dried flower bookmarks are small but can decorate life
and
warm the hearts. Although it was just a small craft activity, it enriched the daily and spiritual life
of
the elderly and let them experience the fun of making bookmarks and the warmth of interacting with their
offspring. Reflection and further improvement Finally, before the activity ended, we also gave out our
small
gifts to each of the elderly people who participated in the activity, hoping that they would feel our
care.
The aunties were all smiles with their bookmarks and the gifts we gave them. They said they were happy
to
feel the beauty of nature could be reflected in this way, and they pulled the team members to take
pictures
together. Some of them even said that we gave them a sense of home when their children were working
outside.
One grandmother said, "Making dried flower bookmarks as a craft activity is also effective in
preventing us from getting Alzheimer's."
Although small, dried flower bookmarks can decorate life and warm hearts. This activity not
only
enriched the daily life of the elderly
and let them experience the fun of making bookmarks with their hands. iGEM team and volunteers from
social organizations also
provided thoughtful services and assistance to the elderly
, which effectively made them feel the warmth of the community and enhanced the good image of the
community service center.
We realized that people from different geographic regions, social and economic backgrounds, age groups and other demographics have a wide range of understanding of scientific concepts. Keeping this in mind, in July this year, we contacted Xiejian Village in Yangkou Town, Shunchang County, Nanping City, and with official permission we conducted an offline exchange and field research for a wide range of groups. . We hope to introduce the concept and use of carbon sinks to farmers through this communication, and to bring the importance of synthetic biology and the carbon cycle to the people’mind.
The theme of this science popularization is "Zero Carbon" strategic positioning to achieve sustainable development. We introduced the concept of carbon sink, its development history and application, and the powerful role of carbon sink in the carbon cycle, starting from the rational transformation of waste agricultural crops. Considering that their expertise is not so rich and deep, we tried to communicate in more common language, and special invitations were extended to local people with authority status and who know the dialect to translate in real time. For example, when we explained the use of carbon sinks, we compared them to a kind of currency. This gave the local villagers a deeper understanding of the concept and encouraged them to think about the current deteriorating environment. We also realized the importance of learning to communicate properly and apply different concepts and ideas to all our activities.
Carbon emissions caused by rural households include direct and indirect energy consumption, so carbon sinks are closely related to villagers' lives. This activity was interesting for everyone, probably because it was the first time that the farmers were exposed to this type of survey, they were very motivated and often asked some very puzzling but interesting questions. This is a global phenomenon. For example, they would ask, "Is the word "sink" in carbon sink related to foreign exchange?" (There is a similarity in the pronunciation of the two in Chinese.) The term carbon sink is a high-sounding term, so many people who are new to it often talk about carbon sink trading. Of course, we also provide professional and easy-to-understand answers.
All in all, this research brought fun to everyone and at the same time brought the importance of bioscience and carbon cycle into everyone's heart. It was also clear from the positive interaction that people were really interested in this aspect. Through this presentation, . For example, they would ask, "Is the word "sink" in carbon sink related to foreign exchange?" (There is a similarity in the pronunciation of the two in Chinese.) The term carbon sink is a high-sounding term, so many people who are new to it often talk about carbon sink trading. Of course, we also provide professional and easy-to-understand answers. All in all, this research brought fun to everyone and at the same time brought the importance of bioscience and carbon cycle into everyone's heart. It was also clear from the positive interaction that people were really interested in this aspect. Through this presentation, we were able to effectively reduce the cost of fertilizers purchased by the farmers, and at the same time, we could make the agricultural products green, organic and ecologically grown.
We are very grateful to have this opportunity to come to Xiejian Village in Yangkou Town for field research and exchange. Throughout the year, we encouraged dialogue in all our activities because all the views, feelings and opinions of the general population about synthetic biology and environmental issues have a social-cultural context. In order for us to understand this, we analyzed what we can learn to educate ourselves and improve our relationships and the way we communicate things to people, and if we want the general public to accept new ideas, we must do it in layman's terms. The field research also gave us a deeper understanding of the practical application implications of the experimental part of the project. At the same time we improved the farmers' understanding of the carbon cycle and sustainability.
One of the important prerequisites for the steady development of a country is the stability and
security of
its
ecological environment. Protecting the environment and conserving resources requires the concerted
efforts
of
several generations, if not dozens, and therefore education of minors is of paramount importance. On
the
occasion of the new year's World Oceans Day and World Environment Day, the 2022 CHINA-FAFU team
visited the
Kindergarten of Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University on the morning of 31 May, with the
aim of
building up the concept of conservation and promoting environmental awareness. On the morning of 31
May, we
visited the Kindergarten of Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University and held a unique activity of
transforming old things.
We wanted to see the children's understanding of the concept of environmental protection through an event, so we planned this event. After describing the purpose and meaning of our activity to the director of the kindergarten attached to Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University, the director gave us great recognition and support. During this activity, the children, with the help of their teachers and parents, designed plastic dresses, eco-friendly handbags, newspaper fans and other items through the secondary use of old items, plastic and other waste materials, and their own design inspirations.
Through the transformation of these waste items, we were able to enhance the kindergarten children's creative abilities and develop their awareness of environmental protection, conservation and recycling. At the same time, we wanted to instil the concept of environmental protection in the children through a catwalk display, where we decorated the transformed items with stickers of the 2022 CHINA-FAFU team's cartoon characters and then displayed them on stage. There was a lot of cheering and applause at the event. Through the stage display, the children showed their hands-on skills and artistic style, and enhanced the environmental awareness and artistic sentiment of all teachers and students. At the same time, the concept of low carbon and environmental protection was integrated into the children's lives.
By organising this kindergarten presentation, we have raised the awareness of environmental protection, cultivated good habits of low-carbon living, inspired children's creativity, and also made more children experience the joy of dressing up their lives by turning waste into treasure with their own clever hands. The children were made to care about the ocean and the environment, to form a sense of contribution to building a strong ocean state,to improve their environmental quality and to form an ideology of contributing to sustainable development.
We learned through relevant channels that Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University's River Xiao Yu team and Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University's Green Zeyuan team are teams doing research on river water quality and protecting river water quality, so we reached a cooperation with these two teams on the World Ocean Day to hold a public exchange meeting to call for public attention to the state of river and ocean water quality.
Our original plan was to have a large exchange meeting with different age groups, including teenagers, young adults, and seniors, to inform as many people as possible about the current state of the marine environment and conservation measures. However, due to the epidemic, we had to limit the total number of participants. We were saddened by the fact that we were not able to travel out of the school because of the outbreak situation in the nearby area. In the end, after negotiations, we decided to hold the exchange on campus. And our total number of participants was set at 50.
In early June this year, CHINA-FAFU led an offline networking session on campus for the general
public, led
by
He Xiaoyu's team from Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University and Luzeyuan's team from Fujian
Agriculture
and
Forestry University. We prepared a presentation that included rich content about synthetic biology,
the iGEM
competition, and our project. We took the water pollution control as the starting point, and
introduced
the water environment survey, water pollution control action in the field, and microalgae treatment
technology
in turn. Finally, CHINA-FAFU team introduced the basic information of iGEM competition and
popularized the
current environment and energy issues.One of the students came up to the stage to make a speech, and
he
introduced some basic information about his mother river. At the end of his speech, he said that he
had not
studied his mother river seriously before preparing his speech, and he was ashamed of that. This is
exactly
the
situation that most people face: something is around us, but we can easily ignore it. Many people in
the
audience were interested in the iGEM competition and asked us some questions about it, to which we
explained
and answered questions
without reservation. One of the audience members asked a very interesting question:
"When microalgae are treated through synthetic biology, it improves their ability to absorb N and P.
Does that
mean they grow faster and pose a threat to other algae," he said. That's actually the question we've
been
trying to solve, namely how to make genetically engineered algae strains that don't affect
the natural
environment.We are glad to inspire their curiosity and enthusiasm about synthetic biology, and hope
they can
also invest in it and use their knowledge and wisdom to make the world a better place. The whole
process went
very well, the audience watched the whole presentation intently, and the dialogue with people with
common
knowledge background common knowledge background communication efficiency and
achieved scientific
exchange.
Participants at the exchange session expressed their shame for not having acted sooner to contribute to the protection of the water environment, as they had often neglected the protection of oceans and rivers and lakes before. We reassured the participants that this was the case for most people and that all we had to do was to spread the knowledge and action guidelines as much as possible. This led us to focus more on public awareness at a later stage.
If microalgae technology is so advanced and effective in treating wastewater, why is it not yet commonly used in society? The ultimate goal of many iGEM projects is to put them into practical production, especially for us who want to make clean water available to everyone. It is definitely not enough to move from a theoretical laboratory to a practical production, we think there are other factors involved such as economic benefits, production efficiency, social needs, etc. And there are many processes and difficulties that we do not understand. It was time to visit a specialized wastewater plant to see how they work and what are the advantages and disadvantages of the current waste water treatment technologies. After the team members' efforts, we contacted the person in charge of Jinshan Waste water Treatment Plant in Fuzhou City and got the opportunity to visit the site. The drainage system of the plant adopts a split-flow system and uses a modified process of SBR - ICEAS wastewater treatment process, which can reach the standard of Class A in Table 1 of the Pollutant Discharge Standards for Urban Wastewater Treatment Plants after deep treatment of "High Efficiency Sedimentation + Filter Cloth Filter". After many days of online communication between the team and Fuzhou ' Jinshan Wastewater Treatment Plant, the person in charge agreed that we should visit the company to exchange ideas.
After discussion, the team concluded that although we are doing a frontier wastewater treatment project, it is necessary to understand the current prevailing wastewater treatment process and principles in order to find obstacles that may be encountered in promoting our project and to avoid unnecessary troubles. The staff of Jinshan Wastewater Treatment Plant in Fuzhou City told us that the plant generally operates on the basis of biological treatment methods, removing elements such as nitrogen and phosphorus from the wastewater through biodegradation, and then through steps such as coarse grating, fine grating, sand settling tank, SBR biological reaction tank, high efficiency sedimentation tank, filter cloth filter tank, UV disinfection tank, etc., which can produce some economically valuable by-products while treating the wastewater. For example, the sludge is enriched and concentrated to produce sludge cake for power generation, helping to achieve resource conservation and recycling. This has greatly enlightened us that the current common wastewater treatment technology reduces costs by developing by-products, and we can also combine microalgae culture with wastewater treatment. Microalgae can absorb nutrients from the wastewater, thus saving the cost of cultivation and treating the wastewater at the same time. More than these, the leftover products of microalgae can be processed into food or fertilizer, produce ethanol, etc. With the development of synthetic biology, the screening and cultivation of oil-rich microalgae to obtain microalgae biodiesel has also shown great prospects for development. This is really wonderful! It is amazing that a small microalgae can be exploited for so many purposes.
FuJin Zhoushan wastewater treatment plant in the production achieve the goal of no excessive emissions during the process , and its pollution reduction effect is remarkable, to make a huge contribution to energy saving and emission reduction in Fuzhou City.
Through this field research, we also saw the disadvantages of traditional wastewater treatment technology: complex process, high cost, and difficult to effectively use the nutrients in the wastewater. And there are reasons why microalgae treatment wastewater technology is favored by many scholars: strong environmental adaptability, easy to cultivate, better tolerance to different concentrations of wastewater, and the ability to effectively absorb organic matter in wastewater. We believe that the promotion of our microalgae treatment wastewater technology will definitely bring convenience and cleanliness to the society! With the permission of the staff at the site, we took relevant photos and videos to record some of the methods and technologies of wastewater plant treatment in order to compare and study with our project and promote our project to be more applicable.
Microalgae may cause serious pollution to the environment if they are discharged directly to external water bodies without recycling, so it is necessary to recycle microalgae after wastewater treatment. Microalgae are small and difficult to collect, and the main methods of collecting suspended algae are chemical flocculation, self-flocculation and bio-flocculation, gravity sedimentation, etc., but the recovery cost of these methods is still high. To reduce the cost of microalgae recovery, the use of microalgae membranes, immobilization technology and bacterial-algal symbiosis for wastewater treatment is a more effective method. One of the microfiltration membrane recovery may create membrane contamination problem, which is yet to be investigated.
Today this technology is still in the safety validation stage, because GMOs are not legally produced in most countries and regions of the world. This technology from the team can be used as a technology reserve to be useful in the future when there is an opportunity. In addition to the concern about the safety of the technology, we also need to consider other factors such as the need to increase public education and awareness of scientific literacy, etc.
All in all, we are inspired and encouraged by the communication with FuJin Zhoushan Wastewater Treatment Plant, which has facilitated the progress of our project. We are also grateful to the staff of Fuzhou Jinshan Wastewater Treatment Plant for leading us to understand the process of the enterprise, which is of great significance for us to put the laboratory results into practical production applications.
The transformation of lab results requires to a large extent the efforts and support of the entrepreneurial part. Since the founding of the team, iGEM members have been constantly thinking about the issues associated with this and trying to create multiple ways to accomplish the transition from experiment to practical application. It is a very obvious fact that the successful implementation of the results is not a single issue. There are so many factors involved in order to achieve our goals, including public acceptance, social impact, total economic benefit, broad outreach, etc. After realizing that digging deeper would require more angles of interviewing and exploration, we began to gather information and seek more information about the production and application of the microalgae products.
After a period of collecting and searching, our attention was focused on Fujian Shenliu Group - a company specializing in the production of spirulina products. As a unit of Spirulina project in the UN South-South Cooperation Network Demonstration Base and a national health food GMP certified enterprise, Shenliu Group has a complete and clear industrial chain of Spirulina product processing, and has built a corporate industrial production tourist attraction, constantly popularizing relevant Spirulina knowledge to the public, and equipped with advanced instruments to be in the forefront of the times. We contacted Mr. Xie Jinjian, the CEO of the group, through online communication and proposed to exchange many ideas about the microalgae industry. Eventually, Mr. Xie Jinjian said he could come to visit the corporate development factory and welcomed our visit.
In fact, we have had the experience of working with the Shen Liu Group. (See 2021 CHINA-FAFU
team
human
practice page). This year, we have continued and expanded our research on
Phaeodactylum tricornutum
Unlike before, we have focused on improving the living environment and eliminating water
pollution.
We
aim to modify
Phaeodactylum tricornutum
through genetic engineering technology, and after several iterations of engineering, we expect
to
achieve the increase of carbon fixation, lipid accumulation and high economic value byproducts
such
as
fucoxanthin
in
Phaeodactylum tricornutum
. At the same time, the ability of microalgae to absorb nitrogen, phosphorus, heavy metals and
other
elements in the water body can be improved to alleviate water pollution and eutrophication. We
told
Mr. Jinjian Xie
about the research direction and expected him to make a fair evaluation for our project. After
understanding the needs, he indicated that there was good research potential. For this reason,
he
invited us
into the exhibition hall of experimental instruments and introduced the advanced front-end R&D
instruments
that our company currently has, such as KDN-2C nitrogen fixation instrument and atomic
fluorescence
spectrometer and so on. As a group with an international perspective and a focus on research
field
expansion, Shen Liu has an advanced production system and is happy to continue developing the
front-end
chain. "Having more advanced experimental instruments improves the development efficiency and
technology
application rate at the R&D end, creates a high quality, productive and efficient processing and
manufacturing environment, and creates more corporate value and economic benefits." He said
this.
After telling Mr. Xie Jinjian about the progress of our project development, he gave us full
recognition. Although the main industry the group is engaged in lies in health care products, he
showed
great interest after hearing our introduction of the upcoming use of algae to improve
eutrophication
in
fresh and sea water bodies and reduce the cost of biomass production. At present, achieving the
goal
of
carbon peaking and carbon neutrality is still one of the primary goals of business development,
and
our
project has stimulated the enthusiasm and vision of the company to move closer towards these two
areas
and
thus innovate.
He suggested that to develop microalgae, on the one hand, the establishment of a
teaching-integrated
internship base could be used to achieve resource sharing and a win-win situation. On the
other
hand,
the
relevant corporate culture can come into the campus to improve the quality of talent
training
and
achieve
a win-win situation for students, schools and enterprises.
At the same time, he expressed his willingness to reach a cooperative relationship with us to
jointly
promote the prosperous development of microalgae industry.
This way to share the latest results of the lab with related companies , and at the same time to involve more people in the project, so that more suggestions related to the development of the project can be made, is the result we always expect. After an in-depth discussion with the company manager, he gave us full approval and also suggested ideas for future cooperation . Thus, it seems that our project is supported by both front-end development and production applications, and the result is more promising than we had previously thought. The project has every opportunity to be produced and applied. Moreover, the idea of biological wastewater treatment is in line with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals , which shows a very promising prospect - in the future, microalgae treatment of wastewater will become the mainstream treatment method, while increasing the efficiency of treatment, creating more possibilities for environmental restoration and improving human living standards.
Overall, the meeting with the CEO was very successful and smooth. Mr. Jinjian Xie's affirmation is certainly a great encouragement for us to develop our project , and at the same time, the cooperation model he proposed is very worthy of application and promotion. However, he also made some suggestions for our project: For example, the use of algae to remove wastewater ends with the material being rendered harmless in order to eliminate all threats that could cause harm to the environment.However, in general, the content of our laboratory has been recognized by the company , which has promoted the process of the project entering the public view The subsequent research will continue to develop in this direction.
We hope that our research results can be noticed by different people in more areas. In terms of teenagers, we have chosen a series of platforms such as bibili, Weibo, TikTok, WeChat Official Account etc. to promote our project introduction videos, because these four platforms are the concentration of active teenagers, especially Tik Tok, which has about 300 million daily active users. In fact, WeChat Public and Tik Tok also have a large number of active mibddle-aged and older users. We upload our popular science videos on these media to spread the knowledge of biology and synthetic biology.
As the leading youth culture community in China, bilibili features real-time comments hovering over the videos, which we usually call "pop-ups". We chose bilibili as our platform to popularize synthetic biology for a number of reasons, including the unique video experience of the "pop-up format" that allows Internet-based users to transcend time and space and build a wonderfully co-temporal relationship to form a virtual tribal viewing atmosphere; bilibili has become a very interactive sharing and secondary creation cultural community. It has become a very interactive sharing and secondary creation cultural community, and it has a special technology and science content section.
We noticed that this is a good way to interact with the audience and achieve our goal of communicating with them through pop-ups. At the beginning of the project, we simply put our project PV video on bilibili, but there are many viewers who do not know synthetic biology will feel our video is a bit obscure and difficult to understand, and there are also some viewers who want to know more about our project. For example, microalgae can be used to purify water and produce a lot of carotenoids; microalgae can absorb N and P elements in the water body to solve the problem of eutrophication, and the synthesized substances can promote the synthesis of their own oil; carotenoids are high value biomass products for health care, food processing, pharmaceuticals and cosmetics, making more people aware of environmental issues, etc.
Encouraging us, we saw many users of Station B messages to explain their interest in synthetic biology and affirm our popular science works.
In China, Weibo is an online platform for sharing information and interacting with netizens in real
time.
It
also allows users to access it via Web, Wap, Mail, App, IM, SMS and a variety of mobile devices such
as PCs
and
cell phones, which means it can be distributed through multiple channels. Microblogs are a unique
way of
communication that fits the characteristics of people's lives in this fast-paced era. As Weibo is
the
largest
blogging site in China with a very large user base, we tried to create short science videos and some
illustrated
softwares and post them on Weibo. Our short videos are also in line with the "short time" feature of
Weibo.
We
have gained a lot of followers by posting the videos for a certain period of time, and some of them
have
sent
us
messages through the background that they think our videos are very interesting, including a message
from
one
user: "Your videos are very interesting, I like the language style and video style, and most
importantly, it
is
easy to understand, so I will share it with my parents and grandparents. I will share it with my
parents and
grandparents, they usually can't understand the formal science explanation, but this kind of fun
science
makes
them understand quickly". This is a great encouragement to us, and at least some users do benefit
from
our
videos.
In the past time, we have published articles and videos on Weibo, each of which has more than 1,000 page views, and it has a great influence.
In China, WeChat has become a must-have app for people's life and work, and as an extension of WeChat, WeChat Public is naturally supported by the user community. In fact, WeChat Public is not only the place where teenagers are active, but also the content that many middle-aged and elderly people often browse, which means our audience will be even bigger. Therefore, facing a platform with such a huge user base, we also try to operate, edit and upload some team dynamics, science tweets, synthetic biology trivia, etc. However, the process of creation was not smooth. We found that the tweets we posted at the beginning did not get many clicks, so we reflected on whether it was caused by the poor quality of our own articles. We used a questionnaire to survey some readers, and the feedback we got was that most of the synthetic biology knowledge is built on the original biology theoretical framework, which requires a higher biological threshold for most readers. Presenting complex and obscure content with rich drawings and easy-to-understand language. For example, in the professional field, we would say that "proteins need a stable high-level structure to perform their functions, which requires many covalent and non-covalent bonds to be properly constructed and often requires conformational changes to function", and in science, we compare this function to "a house needs If any one of the steel bonds is unstable, the house may not form itself. In addition, we can only open specific doors and windows to allow the things we need to enter the house to function". After launching a new issue of science tweets received higher evaluation, which is undoubtedly our greatest motivation.
After a year, we have gained nearly 1,000 fans, and published popular science articles and videos for more than 1,000 times. At the same time, the majority of readers have commented on the popular science works, benefiting a lot.
We are always looking for a video platform that exists for users of all ages and can be used to spread our short science videos. There is no doubt that Jitterbug, which has exploded in recent years, is a very good choice. Jitterbug has a very low threshold of use, so you don't have to worry about the elderly and children not knowing how to use it. In China, the average daily active users of Jitterbug has reached 300 million, which means our videos have a great potential to be viewed by a large number of users. After uploading our videos, we use the platform's "traffic plan" to get our work seen by more people, and we plan to create "targeted" videos for real-time hotspots, such as the "Monkey Pox For example, when the "monkey pox" outbreak occurred, we produced a popular science video to introduce the causes and symptoms of monkey pox. In addition, Jitterbug will use big data to push our videos to people who often browse science, technology and biology topics, which gives us more opportunities to communicate with such people who have more contact with science.
We regularly look at the pop-ups sent by our viewers and some of the comments they leave in the comments section, and we think this has been very helpful to us. Some encourage us, some suggest changes, and some say we modify the video content based on their feedback, or follow up with a science video that is as close to their feedback as possible. We hope we can do our best to promote the popularization of synthetic biology. And we hope that other iGEM teams can also make more people around the world understand the appeal of synthetic biology in this way.