We successfully delivered the required materials,
On our Attributions page, we acknowledged the people who have contributed to our project. Besides stating what each team member was in charge of, we also indicated the people outside our team who have helped us. Those include students and faculty in DKU (Duke Kunshan University), experts from CRAES (Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences), experts from environmental governance enterprises (Poten Enviro, Emperor of Cleaning Hi-tech, SPXFLOW), other consultants, education and academic communication facilitators, and last but not least, our sponsors.
We refer to the principles of “local people solving local problems” and “tackling global challenges”
suggested by
iGEM.
In the hometown of one of our team members, people were worried about the construction of a copper
smelting factory. Our team thus paid attention to environmental heavy metals pollution. Through our
research, we
found that conventional methods for detecting pollutants also have some defects, especially the residues of
the
detection itself are environmentally-unfriendly. Therefore, our project goal is to apply a new approach to
developing whole-cell biosensors and propose alternatives to conventional detection methods. In this project
we
aimed to develop high-performance copper biosensors in E. Coil through high-throughput technology to achieve
optimization.
We achieved the introduction, characterization, and improvement of parts, mathematic
models,
and production of a hardware prototype. We hope that our efforts can contribute to the trend of technical
innovation in environmental pollution detection.
We have made various efforts to help future iGEM teams and enrich the resources of the iGEM community.
During the execution of this project,
We created a new reporter, a new repressor, respectively a new promoter and its corresponding promoter, a
new
collection, and characterized and constructed variants for an existing part. Also, we found and synthesized
a
toxin during the early stages of our project. Though we eventually did not use it, we reserved our
synthesized
sample for future iGEM teams to use.
Our student leader Shiran Yuan made correction efforts to Chinese translations to the iGEM SynBio
Translation
Glossary and thus he was invited by iGEM to be an official volunteer translator.
We produced a multipurpose biosafe box for both our project and our partner’s. This box could be used for
future
iGEMers. We wrote an article” A Quick Guide to 3D Modeling for iGEM” for new iGEMers’ reference.
We respected the standard process of design thinking and the engineering DBTL circle throughout the whole
project.
In the design stage, we made a preliminary plan, while after the interviews with stakeholders, we made major
changes and removed the database software which we had planned to do.
During the lab stage, we found that the arsenic detection of our original project design could not be
carried out due to safety restrictions, so we altered to copper detection. Meanwhile, our experiment
followed two lines. The first line contained two cycles. In the first cycle, we eventually concluded that
it did not work as expected. We learned from our failures and constructed the second cycle, which succeeded.
The second line contained one engineering cycle, and it worked successfully.
Our hardware prototype design has also undergone two iterations. Therefore, we have fully realized the role
of the engineering cycle and the benefits it brings.
We created new Parts for this criterion, BBa_K4494001, BBa_K4494002.
We mainly collaborated with NWU-CHINA-A (with whom our collaboration further developed into a partnership),
JLU_China, and IISc-Bengaluru (an international collaboration).
With NWU-CHINA-A, we took full charge of their modeling work and hardware making, and we enriched the NWU
parts library together. We also collaborated in public education, in which we invited them to hold a public
educational speech together, and they invited us to join them in the “Gut Alliance” (we wrote the article
“Gut Flora and Heavy Metal Poisoning” for the Alliance).
With JLU_China, we co-founded the “Cyber Orchid Pavilion Meetup”, and jointly produced the handbook "2022:
An Instruction Handbook for New Teams”, for which we wrote the article "A Quick Guide to 3D Modeling for
iGEM”.
With IISc-Bengaluru we conducted an international collaboration in education, in which we translated their
educational brochure to Chinese and distributed it.
The main values of our project correspond with our goals. The environmental value is helping to tackle heavy metal pollution, the scientific value is using a new technology (high-throughput technology) and attempting to create a next-generation technology (better heavy metal biosensors), and the social value is making environmental governance easier and raising public awareness regarding environmental pollutant and synthetic biology. We consulted residents, experts, environmental governance workers, and many other stakeholders to confirm that our project is heading the right way throughout the process of our project. The results of our stakeholder interviews and investigations have shown that our project will benefit many people and that stakeholders welcome the possibility of a new generation of pollution detection technologies. Therefore we are confident that our project is valuable, responsible, and good for the world.
The proposed end users of our project include scientific researchers and third-party environmental governance enterprises, and we envision our main product (heavy metal biosensors) as a replacement for conventional machinery. Besides, we have also envisioned ways of replacing other steps in the traditional procedure for better implementation. Hence we also designed hardware for the sampling stage and models for data analysis. As for safety, we have made detailed plans as to how our biosafety verification work (unfortunately currently impossible due to COVID and time restrictions) will be carried out, and the biosecurity of typical end users was verified in our human practices work. We also further considered possible obstacles in commercialization, mainly governmental standards and restrictions for the application of new technologies, and proposed ways to tackle those.
Building upon and responding to our Silver Medal Human Practices work, our project constantly changed to satisfy the stakeholder needs and expert suggestions. Our project was formed from interviews and surveys with residents who worried about environmental heavy metals pollution, and our preliminary studies also received guidance from experts in environmental science. We then conducted stakeholder interviews to further confirm the needs of environmental enterprises. Responding to related conclusions, our project was altered from a software project to a biosensor project, conducted via cloud lab in replacement of normal labs, and the plan for arsenic biosensing was deleted for safety. As for responsibility, apart from constantly consulting stakeholders, we also continuously attempted to seek official approval. Our project was accepted by the 2022 National Innovation and Entrepreneurship Plan for College Students, implying national approval, and thus further proving that our project is responsible to and good for the world.
the part number for the existing part, BBa_K1980004
the part number of your new part, BBa_K4494102
On our Model page, we presented two models. The first one is a theoretical calculation of the relationship between promoter activity and copper concentration in our project, in which we took toxicity-induced cell death into account. Due to a lack of data, we did not further investigate our experimental data with this model. However, it still led to many insights regarding our system, and we constructed an interactive demonstration of this model on our wiki page so that other teams can also use it. The second model encompasses experimental performance and genetic analysis to predict ideal variants for the future progression of our project to be based on. It also presented us with many meaningful insights regarding our parts, which can also be seen in our part documentations.
The intended end users of our products are mainly environmental research institutions and pollution governance enterprises. In order to prove that our project will work in the real world, we will continue this project in the next months. We have successfully got the project approval of the 2022 National Innovation and Entrepreneurship Plan for College Students mentored by the experts of the CRAES. We will send our engineered strains, models and hardware prototype to CRAES for experimentation in their high-biosafety lab with the samples they conduct in conventional detection. The CRAES is not only an academic research institution but also an executing agency for environmental protection assessment. At the same time, we will also carry out the same synthetic biotechnology application tests in environmental governance enterprises. Through these practices, we will improve our products and step further for its application in the real world.
We formed a close partnership with team NWU-CHINA-A. The two teams first found each other when NWU-CHINA-A was experiencing problems with modeling and hardware-making work. After a meeting, we quickly settled on the content of our collaboration. We drew members from both teams and formed a small team for cooperation. We helped them with all the mathematical modeling work, as well as the hardware prototype which was suitable for both teams. In addition, we enriched the NWU parts library together. The NWU-CHINA-A team invited us to join the Gut Alliance for communication with more iGEM teams and helped us design the animation of our team logo. We also cooperated on educational activities such as giving lectures to middle school. We held routine conversation meetings once a week and further discussed our projects at any time when needed. In the process, both of our projects benefited a lot, and the projects' shaping process was also partially shared.
Our educational materials included lectures and brochures regarding synthetic biology, iGEM, and environmental pollution. The target audience included a very broad and inclusive range, from people with only primary-school level knowledge (the “Sync” brochure) to Ph.D. students (with Tsinghua University). Our materials encouraged an open dialogue with our audience since we always adopted close positions with them, including face-to-face communication and familiar tones. Through these lectures and activities, those students are full of interest and passion for synthetic biology. Some have planned to join the iGEM competition next year for their school’s first time. In addition, we also created numerous articles and brochures, such that more people inside and outside of iGEM can learn more cutting-edge knowledge.