Integrated Human Practices

Our synthetic biology application project in the field of heavy metal pollution detection involves the following stakeholders: residents, governments, legal, research institutions, industry enterprises, environmental governance companies, etc. We have taken into account the values and considerations of each stakeholder and reflected them in our project execution.

Project Origin

In a city in northeast China, the hometown of one of our team members, a new copper smelting factory was constructed. People there worry that the sewage discharge from the copper smelting plant will pollute the groundwater, thus affecting their health. Some people even worry that the sewage water will be discharged into the nearby river, which will lead to environmental pollution in the whole basin. Therefore, the local people questioned the safety of the factory. Relevant government departments carried out a detailed investigation, invited an authoritative environmental impact assessment agency to conduct a detailed inspection, and issued an environmental assessment report. The report showed that the pollution level of the enterprise met the national standards. However, local residents are still worried about the leakage of wastewater.

We consulted relevant literature and found that industrial wastewater contains heavy metals with significant biological toxicity, such as arsenic, copper, lead, cadmium, nickel, mercury, zinc, and thallium, which have multiple negative effects on human health, including carcinogenicity, mutagenicity, teratogenicity, etc. The pollution of heavy metals is different from that of organic compounds. Some organic compounds can reduce or eliminate their harmfulness through physical, chemical, or biological purification naturally. However, heavy metals are rich and difficult to be degraded in the environment. Some heavy metals in water can be transformed into more toxic metal compounds under the action of microorganisms, such as the methylation of mercury; Heavy metals absorbed by organisms from the environment can be enriched tens of millions of times in larger organisms through the biological amplification of the food chain, and then enter the human body through food, which can accumulate in some organs of the human body to cause chronic poisoning and endanger human health. Minamata disease (mercury pollution) and bone pain disease (cadmium pollution) in Japan, for instance, are typical examples. Therefore, heavy metal pollution should be strictly regulated. The locals are worried that despite the enforcement of governmental regulations, accidents or other factors might still directly influence their health and cause devastating impacts.

Of course, the government has also been taking action to prevent environmental pollution. We have learned that the Ministry of Ecology and Environment of the People's Republic of China has promulgated many laws and regulations and set up many environmental quality monitoring stations to monitor and manage enterprise pollutant emissions. At the same time, enterprises are required to install and use monitoring equipment, regularly detect pollutant emissions, strictly control industrial pollution, and reduce ecological damage. In addition, the Law of the People's Republic of China on the Prevention and Control of Water Pollution clearly stipulates that the state encourages and supports scientific and technological research on the prevention and control of water pollution and the promotion and application of advanced and applicable technologies, and strengthens publicity and education on water environment protection. We are in the middle of a longstanding battle against heavy metal pollution.

Therefore,

  • Our project comes from the life around us and is directly related to health.
  • Environmental protection is everyone's responsibility. We hope to further understand the problem of heavy metal pollution and contribute to it.

Preliminary Research

First, we contacted experts from the Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences (CRAES). CRAES is the most high-end research institution of environmental science in our country, and it is also an environmental impact assessment agency for enterprises that are obliged to control pollution. They also have a clear understanding of relevant laws and regulations. We want to know:

  • How harmful heavy metal pollution is to the environment
  • The current situation of heavy metal pollution in China
  • What the national requirements for enterprises in terms of environmental testing are, and how it is implemented
  • The role of CRAES in heavy metal detection and environmental governance

Experts from CRAES, including Dr. Zhipeng Bai, Dr. Yongjie Wei, Dr. Yan Qian, and Dr. Zhigang Li, held many meetings and communications with us. They were very supportive of our research on environmental pollution and were very interested in the exploration of synthetic biology that we wanted to carry out. They told us:

  • Heavy metal pollution has the characteristics of being long-term, cumulative, latent, and irreversible, with high treatment costs and great harm. Heavy metal pollution is one of the most serious environmental problems faced by our country, and it is also a recognized international problem in environmental governance.
  • At present, multiple heavy metals pollutants have been found in China. For example, more than 30 kinds of heavy metals have been found in CRAES’s recent environmental pollution research conducted near Beijing, Tianjin, and Hebei. Heavy metal pollution mainly comes from industrial production, such as nonferrous metal smelting.
  • China's environmental pollution control is mainly carried out by third-party governance policies. The third-party governance model is widely adopted internationally. The pollutant discharging unit pays a professional environmental governance company in the form of a contract to detect and treat the pollution generated. This can not only reduce the governance cost of the pollutant discharging enterprise, improving the emission rate up to the standard, but also enable the government law enforcement department to reduce the cost of law enforcement.

The main legal basis is as follows:

  • As early as 2015, China's Ministry of Environmental Protection issued several policies, encouraging social environmental monitoring institutions to participate in environmental monitoring activities such as self-monitoring of pollution sources of pollutant discharging units, environmental damage assessment and monitoring, and cleaner production audit.
  • In 2017, the Ministry of Environmental Protection issued a policy to promote the establishment of a new pollution control mechanism that combines the “polluter pays”, third-party governance, and pollution discharge permit systems.
  • In 2020, the General Office of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the General Office of the State Council issued the Guiding Opinions on Building a Modern Environmental Governance System jointly issued by the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Science and Technology, and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, which clearly requires actively promoting third-party governance of environmental pollution.
  • As for the wastewater treatment of copper smelting plants, experts introduced the technical specifications for the copper smelting wastewater treatment project issued by the Ministry of Ecology and Environment of China, emphasizing that the state strictly requires production enterprises to follow the technical specifications.

  • * We later studied this specification and found that the specification emphasized that wastewater treatment projects should actively adopt advanced and applicable new technologies, new processes, new materials, and new equipment based on scientific research and production practice.
  • In CRAES, because they have a national key laboratory, their detection equipment is very high-end, mainly using ICP-MS, which is expensive, but the detection accuracy is extremely high. CRAES is also a third-party governance institution, and also undertakes heavy metal detection business.

From the expert interviews and meetings with CRAES, we learned that:

  • Heavy metal pollution is detrimental to human health.
  • Heavy metal pollution is a serious problem in the world.
  • The state and environmental workers attach great importance to the problem of heavy metal pollution.
  • At present, the pollution problem of industrial enterprises is mainly implemented by third-party governance companies.
  • The State encourages scientific research on wastewater treatment projects to actively explore "advanced and applicable new technologies and equipment".

We did not do interviews with enterprises that might cause environmental pollution because it might be a sensitive discussion. Moreover, in China, the government has strict supervision over these enterprises, and the main detection and governance work is undertaken by third-party governance companies. Therefore, industrial enterprises themselves do not know details about environmental governance technologies.

Next, we made an interview outline for the experts from the third-party governance enterprises. We gained a deep understanding of the heavy metal pollution detection work of these enterprises.


Interview Outline on Heavy Metal Pollution Detection

1. What business does your enterprise mainly do? Are there many heavy metal pollution detection businesses at present? What are the main customers?

2. What methods are mainly used to detect heavy metal pollution in China?

3. Advantages and disadvantages of these methods? (including but not limited to equipment price, detection price, sensitivity, required time, process complexity, operation difficulty, etc.)

4. What method does your enterprise use? Why choose this method?

5. Has your enterprise used or tried biological/synthetic biotechnology to detect heavy metal pollution? What technologies? What are the advantages and disadvantages of these technologies?

6. What do you think are the main reasons why synthetic biology technology for detecting heavy metal pollution has not been widely used?

7. What technologies are mainly used for heavy metal pollution detection abroad? If it is different from that in China, why is it not used in China?

8. What do you think is needed and can be improved in the current heavy metal pollution detection work?

9. Do you think it is feasible to improve the synthetic biology method for heavy metal pollution detection? If there is such technology, will you and your enterprise use it?

10. Can the method of heavy metal water pollution detection be applied to soil and other environmental detection?

11. Do you have any other suggestions on heavy metal pollution detection, synthetic biology technology, etc?



When we went through the literature, we found a document on the technology and methods of heavy metal pollution detection. We contacted the author of this article, Mr. Chen Wang, and found that he works for SPXFLOW now. He and his boss Mr. Xianbin Yan introduced to us the pollution detection technology ten years ago and the technological development process up to now.

Next, we interviewed experts from Emperor of Cleaning Hi-tech. This is a medium-sized environmental protection enterprise. Their technical and marketing experts, Ms. Shijue Yuan, Mr. Shan Jiang, and Mr. Jianqiang He, enthusiastically helped us. They introduced to us in detail the instruments and equipment currently used in their company and the operation process, and told us that it should be feasible to detect heavy metals via synthetic biological methods. Their company has applied biological methods in practical business, and they are doing experiments on the treatment of heavy metal pollution by engineering bacteria.

Later, we interviewed the detection technology expert of Poten Environment. Ms. Yunhui Fan is very senior and has more than 20 years of detection technology experience. She gave very detailed answers to our interview questions.

Based on the suggestions of all experts, we compared the use of heavy metal detection technology and equipment by different companies and made the following summary:

  • The conventional methods of heavy metals detection include ICP-MS, ICP-AES, GFAAS, FAAS, AFS, etc., and the ICP and AAS are popularly applied.

  • We compared the most popular methods as follows.
  • The above two methods of heavy detection have a common defect, that is, the residues containing strong acid and nitrate will be directly poured into the sewer, causing secondary pollution.

In the interview with the governance enterprises, we learned that,

  • The advantages and disadvantages of the two key existing technologies and equipment for heavy metal detection: One is high precision, high price, high maintenance cost, and high skill requirements for technologists; The other is price friendly, low requirements for personnel, and relatively low accuracy.
  • The opportunities for improvement of existing technology and equipment: price, maintenance, skill requirements for technologists, and environmental friendliness.
  • The current status of technology shows us the necessity for the emergence of synthetic biology solutions.

Then we consulted synthetic biology experts. They believe that it is possible and feasible to use synthetic biological methods to detect heavy metals.

With the Human Practice above, we determined that,

  • Heavy metal pollution is a problem that needs to be solved in the real world and is beneficial to the world.
  • The existing treatment methods have room for improvement, and the use of synthetic biology solution is necessary.
  • The State encourages scientific research exploration and technological innovation in this field.

Therefore, we determined the content of our project: tackling the problem of heavy metal pollution based on synthetic biology.

Change of Experimental Design

From database software to a biosensor

Through literature research, we found that some people have been trying to detect heavy metals by synthetic biology. However, the sensitivity and accuracy were not ideal. Therefore, we determined the project direction, that is, through experiments, to find a method with better sensitivity and accuracy. At the same time, on the premise of ensuring safety, we developed a convenient, efficient, low-cost and friendly to environment method for detecting heavy metals with synthetic biology.

We called our initial product LABPAT. Taking arsenic pollution detection as an example, it would use standard synthetic biological components BioBricks to synthesize plasmid templates and preserve them. At the same time, the self-developed plasmid template and LABPAT software would be used for actual pollution monitoring as an example to measure its accuracy. Later, a more advanced suicidal module would be added at the same time to prevent the leakage of mutant strains and ensure environmental friendliness and safe discharge. With the LABPAT tool, convenient kits and colorimetric cards could be synthesized, and auxiliary pollution monitoring becomes more popular and convenient.

For this reason, we specially contacted the author of the literature, Prof. Yu Bo, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and asked him to provide the genetic sequence of the suicidal gene.

We invited synthetic biology experts, environmental researchers, and environmental governance companies to help us demonstrate the feasibility of the scheme. We also asked advice from:

  • Dr. Jinyu Wang, our advisor, Huazhong University of Science and Technology
  • Dr. Jinshui Yang, China Agricultural University
  • Dr. Yin Zhang, the Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology (SIAT) of the Chinese Academy of Science (CAS)
  • Master. Jerome Rundon Lon, South China University of Technology

After this round of discussion, it was found that:

  • The bacterial suicidal module is not necessary, as indicated in relevant literature.
  • The database is not very necessary in the actual operation of the experimenter.

According to this HP process, after listening to the experts' suggestions, we realized the problems with the first version of the project plan and made modifications. We then adjusted the project from database software to a biosensor. The database was deleted and hardware design, among many other elements, was added to the project.

Experiment Execution

From offline to online, from arsenic to copper, safety first

After determining the project scheme, we determined the experimental scheme. And prepare for the implementation of the experiment in CRAES. Unfortunately, after nearly a month of preliminary preparation, we were unable to enter the high-end national laboratory of the CRAES due to the occurrence of new COVID cases in Chaoyang District of Beijing and the government's requirement that all staff work at home.

As the closure did not end in a short period, we had to look for alternatives to offline experiments in the waiting process. Fortunately, we discovered the concept of cloud lab when we studied last year's iGEM project, so we contacted Ailurus. After discussion, we found that Ailurus’ cloud lab can realize our experimental plan. The advantages of cloud lab include low cost, low technical requirements for the people who proposed the experiment, more data can be obtained in a shorter time, fast iteration, etc. The only problem was that we originally had planned to carry out experiments on arsenic. Ailurus was unable to carry out experiments on arsenic due to limitations of laboratory security. We put safety at a high priority, so we gave up arsenic detection and continued the literature work to find the alternative. We found a paper on a copper-sensitive part and contacted the author Prof. Shoushuai Feng for requesting the gene sequence. Finally, we took copper as the experimental subject.

Project Outlook

After the project entered the experimental stage, we communicated with experts from CRAES, the Enterprises, and the synthetic biology experts. They agreed that synthetic biology detection methods for heavy metals pollution maybe a useful attempt and were willing to support our projects. They also looked forward to technological innovation and upgrading. After the initial success of our project in the laboratory, we will further cooperate with CRAES and the governance enterprises to conduct tests in their actual work and continue to improve. We look forward to achieving technological breakthroughs and applying mature synthetic biology heavy metal detection technology to the real world.

Responsibility

To achieve this goal, we continuously referred back to relevant stakeholders in the related fields, making sure that our executive plan met their values and needs.

At the same time, experts in laws and regulations also reminded us that if a new environmental detection technology is to be formally applied in the market, it needs to be evaluated and certified by several research institutions, and can only be formally applied in the market after the formation of nationally recognized implementation specifications.

For this reason, with the support of Duke Kunshan University and under the mentoring of experts from CRAES, we have successfully got the project approval of the 2022 National Innovation and Entrepreneurship Plan for College Students. After iGEM, we will continue to carry out further research and application of our project and apply for industry-standard certification through national procedures and channels.