In order to spread the concept of synthetic biology and the significance of iGEM competition to the public, we have carried out a series of HP activities. These HP activities
have made a strong demonstration of the feasibility of our project
and
given significant feedback on our experiments and hardware design.
1.Team project discussion
At 7:30 p.m. on April 12, the 2022 GXU-China topic selection conference of iGEM competition was held in our conference room. Our team PI Weihui Li, instructors Jiaming Song and Yuan Su, all 2022 GXU-China team members participated in this meeting.
The purpose of this topic selection conference is to
determine our final project.
After the discussion of teachers and our team members,
it was finally decided to combine the topics of Java Yao 's group and Wanlin Gu's group as the formal project of our team.
Meanwhile, the topic of
Mei Jin's group
was an
alternative.
After the meeting, GXU-China improved and perfected their project hugely.We strongly figure out the meaning and significance of our project.
2.Summary of questionnaire survey
On June 24th, 2022, GXU-China team set up a series of questions to collect the public understanding and attitude of sewage treatments and sewage treatment bacteria preparations. As of August 31,
we collected a total of 60 valid questionnaires
, in which most of the applicants came from various regions of Guangxi Province, and a few came from Fujian Provinceand Henan Province, and 46.67% of the filling personnel belong to biological or chemical related groups.
1.The linkages between living areas and sewage sources
After collecting the living area and sewage sources, it is concluded that the types of living areas (urban, township, rural areas) are different, and the distribution of the main sewage sources is also very different.
The main reasons for this difference are as follows.The city is industrial developed and densely populated. There are relatively many industries in towns, and the population gathers and the farming population account for the majority. While in rural areas, most of the population is farming and has few factories.
2.The water quality in Guangxi Province
The questionnaire collected people's impression of the color, smell, floating objects and other aspects of the living water quality to understand the local water quality situation. According to the results, the water quality of Guangxi province is medium on average.
According to the water quality monitoring data of the Xijiang River Basin in Guangxi, xijiang river basin water quality overall good, but unstable, section overweight occurs. According to the worst monthly monitoring data, 17 sections out of 46 monitoring sections in the river basin exceeded the standard, with a exceeding rate of 37%. The paper introduces and questionnaire results are roughly the same, Guangxi waters need certain treatment measures to deal with pollution situation, in order to maintain the safety and stability of Guangxi residents water and economic development.
3.Emission statistics of various pollution sources
4.People’s understanding of sewage treatments and policies
We also set five questions (2 points per question, 10 points in total. Six points or above is considered for understanding) used to collect people's understanding of sewage discharge standards, and
the results show that only 16.7% of people know certain sewage discharge standards
, and
most people do not understand or understand some, but do not know the sewage treatment policies.
5.Problems in wastewater treatment
On the existing sewage treatment technology,
we also collect dissatisfaction with the current technology
, focus on the sewage treatment is not thorough, immature, expensive, etc. At the same time, the paper put forward the opinions on strengthening media publicity and education, government-invested project construction and strengthening management, and improving the corresponding policies of sewage treatment.
6.People’s attitudes towards bacterial preparations studied in our project
Our project is committed to creating a more effective bacterial preparation with nitrogen removal function, to ensure the safety in the process of treatment, to prevent the secondary pollution of water quality, and to configure simple water environment testing equipment, so that the change of water quality is more directly displayed in front of users. It is worth mentioning that, after learning about the bacterial preparations studied in the project,
all the filling personnel have expressed their support for the bacterial preparations and had great expectations for the research and development of the bacterial preparations.
3.Field research
After the communication and learning with Prof.Shen , we went to
Beitou Zhongmeng Water Purification Governance CO.LTD.(BZWP)
for a field research.
BZWP is located in Nanning, Guangxi, China.
It is a sewage treatment enterprise specializing in domestic Sewage treatment.
Using semi-buried construction, it is the first built and operation and the largest semi-buried water purification plant in Guangxi province.
The sewage treatment adopts A2O, rectangular two sedimentation tank, sand adding efficient sedimentation tank, precision filtration, ultraviolet disinfection process and so on.
The sewage discharge implements the 1A standard in the Pollutant Discharge Standard for Urban Sewage Treatment Plants.
Next,
we sampled the water from different sewage treatment stages
after confirmation and permission by the staff for subsequent project studies.
The research and learning activity of BZWP
has greatly improved our cognition in water treatment
, making us jump out of the laboratory research and think more about the problems that may be encountered in the actual production practice. The
A20 process treatment
of the domestic sewage quality is
clear and has high light transmittance
, which is
very suitable for our synthetic biology transformation of light regulation.
This practice is also a great evidence of our topic. We have also
reached a long-term cooperation
with this company, after which we will
regularly sample and conduct some simulated wastewater treatment studies of our bacterial preparations.
They also promise to help us improve the A2O process to bring it closer to our project design.
1.Interview of experts
In order to better improve and implement our project,
we interviewed some research groups that have been engaged in sewage treatment for a long time.
To be honest, their suggestions have really inspired us.We have improved our experimental design and downstream product development work according to their guidance.
1.1 Communicate with Assistant Professor Luodong Huang
Teacher Luodong Huang
is mainly engaged in the development and utilization of microalgae and fungal biological resources; Cultivation of microalgae and fungi, and
application of wastewater treatment
; study on the regulation mechanism of microbial metabolism in special habitats; fungal and algal genome, the assembly and annotation of transcriptome, special metabolic components transcriptional regulation and related functional gene mining related work.
GXU-China communicated with Mr.Huang on April 21, 2022,
mainly asking him about the advantages and disadvantages of biological treatment of wastewater, the limitations of practical application of biological agents made of microalgae as the chassis for sewage treatment
, and
whether there are other organisms that are more suitable for synthetic biology transformation
Mr.Huang explained patiently for us about the advantage of biological wastewater treatment, and
recommended Bacillus subtilis to us as the chassis for synthetic biology transformation.
According to the data and related research, Bacillus subtilis itself has a certain sewage treatment capacity, which can effectively reduce the COD content in sewage.
1.2 Communicate with Researcher Peihong Shen
Researcher Shen has been engaged in environmental microbiology, microbial molecular ecology, and
biological treatment of wastewater by using microbial flora to efficiently treat alcohol waste liquid
.
GXU-China communicated with Researcher Peihong Shen for some
professional guidance and advice
on July 25, 2022.
The influence of our project and experiment:
After communication with Teacher Huang and subsequent literature investigation and team discussion,
we finally decided to use Bacillus subtilis as the chassis organism of our project.
Professor Shen
gave us a lot of information on wastewater treatment process
,
common monitoring indicators and how industrial production practices are combined with upstream experimental design.
2.Co-interview
At 7:30 p.m. on September 17, 2022, Nanjing_NFLS, XJTLU-CHINA, CHINA-FAFU, and GXU-China interviewed Professor Xia Shen of Nanjing Hydraulic Research Institute online. During the meeting, Professor Shen gave detailed answers to the questions raised by each team, and also
put forward many practical suggestions to us.
The first question of GXU-China is
whether it is difficult to treat the deep-water environment with bacterial agents because the transparency cannot be guaranteed.
Professor Shen pointed out
two effective ways
to improve the transparency of water. Since the transparency of water body mainly depends on the content of suspended solids in the water, flocculants can be put into the water through
physical and chemical methods
to settle the suspended solids in the water. Secondly,
quatic plants can be planted properly
to make suspended solids settled through the adsorption of leaves and roots, so as to improve transparency.
The second question we raised is
whether biological bacteria agents have been used in the regulation of deep-water channels. If not, why not consider biological bacteria agents?
Professor Shen replied that
deep-water channels in China are usually include large rivers like the Yangtze River with fast water flow and large water volume.
So it is
not suitable to use biological bacteria for treatment
but mainly by reducing pollution.
The third problem is
how to deal with the difficulty in modeling that we can not control the process of sewage treatment in flowing water due to the change of inflow water volume, inflow water quality parameters and other factors.
Professor Shen reminded us that we can
use straight or circular flume
to
create flowing water to simulate natural flow effect.
Then we can carry out experiments in a controllable environment in the laboratory to draw conclusions.
During the whole interview, Professor Shen
answered all the questions
raised by GXU-China about
the experiment and modeling process
in detail.She also provided highly feasible suggestions for our difficulties. Our team gained a lot in this meeting.
create flowing water to simulate natural flow effect
The influence of our project and experiment:
During the whole interview, Professor Shen
answered all the questions
raised by GXU-China about
the experiment and modeling process
in detail.She also provided highly feasible suggestions for our difficulties. Our team gained a lot in this meeting and
improved our project
later for better results.
3.Communicate with sewage treatment enterprise
On August 2, 2022, GXU-China watched the special sharing of basic algae analysis and cyanobacteria prevention control by WaterCountry Protection Company.
This sharing includes the following four parts
1. Basic algae analysis.
2.Cyanobacteria Control Technology.
3.Introduction to Cyanobacteria Biological Control Cases.
4.Company introduction.
The influence of our project and experiment:
Our project uses bacterial preparations for sewage treatment.
There are
great similarities in principle
, and it also
has great reference
for the biosafety prevention and control of bacterial preparations
in the later stage. The implementation process of successful cyanobacterial air defense cases and the technical routes are inspiring for our project development, and at the same time allow the team members to
broaden their horizons
and
accumulate experience.
4.Biosafety Symposium
At 7:00 pm on September 2, 2022, the freshwater remediation alliance held a meeting on biosafety issues, and the participating team included CFCA_China, Nanjing_NFLS, XJTLU-CHINA, Nanjing-China, CHINA-FAFU, GXU-China and NPU-CHINA.
The main purpose of this meeting is
to discuss our safety from three aspects.
Firstly, we aim to
prove
that our experimental steps
meet the safety standards.
Secondly, we aim to
prove
that our engineering bacteria
will not cause leakage.
Finally, we
try to ensure
that our projects
will not cause harm to the environment and human beings.
After the seven teams introduced their own solutions, we discussed some existing questions, and everyone put forward many views that are worth referring to. The participants benefited a lot. This time,
GXU-China team learned from the safety ideas of other teams engaged in sewage treatment and other fields
, and
further discussed with other teams that synthetic biology operations should be carried out in a safe, legal and ethical framework.
After that, we will further improve our safety program according to this meeting.
The influence of our project and experiment:
Through this meeting, we have
refined the team's consideration in biosecurity.
We experimentally designed
a light control switch
, which activates the suicide mechanism when green light shines, and then kills bacteria.
The hardware adopts
closed-loop design
and the detection devices of temperature, pH, nitrogen oxide, etc. are designed, which
ensures the safety
to a great extent.
The
harmful gases
that may be discharged during the experimental detection process are
collected and processed in a centralized manner
so as to avoid being released to the environment.
