What ideas did you come up with during the brainstorming session? How did you come up with these ideas?
Ⅰ. What idea did you come up with during the brainstorming session? How did you come up with these ideas?
The instructor asked us to learn more about the Wiki website design of the last three years' winning projects, etc., and to add highlights to the basic boards by learning from the designs of the gold medal projects. So each member chose an area of interest to study and get new ideas from them.
Ultimately, the idea we chose was to achieve high yields of ergothioneine in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. This project could provide a more sustainable, cost effective and efficient way to manufacture EGT, which will benefit our life and health.
We can achieve EGT production in yeast. We designed a questionnaire about biosynthetic products and hope to get some valuable feedback from people of different age levels. In addition, we conducted campus interviews to investigate the views and attitudes of students from different majors towards gene editing. The feedback from these target populations helped us to better assess environmental, social and ethical values when designing our project.
Attention to the safety of the product raw materials
What values - environmental, social, ethical, scientific or others do you have in mind when designing your projects?
Age frequency distribution
Willing to accept food-grade additives
Ⅱ. What values-environmental, social, ethical, scientific or others - do you have in mind when designing your projects?
We can achieve EGT production in yeast. We designed a questionnaire about biosynthetic products and hope to get some valuable feedback from people of different age levels. In addition, we conducted campus interviews to investigate the views and attitudes of students from different majors towards gene editing. The feedback from these target populations helped us to better assess environmental, social and ethical values when designing our project.
Attention to the safety of the product raw materials
Age frequency distribution
Willing to accept food-grade additives
The safety of gene editing is a major concern. Through the questionnaire, we found that people's concern about the safety of the material was high, reaching nearly 87%. Most people considered the risks of gene editing to human health and the environment. Ethical issues of gene editing can affect our choice of subjects. The future of gene editing is highly uncertain. Therefore, the application and development of gene editing technology must be taken seriously.
We have conducted a series of campus outreach activities targeting university students. College students of different majors have different perceptions and attitudes toward genetic modification. Some college students think that GM will violate ethics and morality, make human beings lose the meaning of life, and even threaten the long-term development of human beings. And some college students believe that scientists should figure out the advantages of GM as soon as possible, so that human beings can discard the stereotypical concepts and live in harmony with GM. Since our team project involved gene editing and other manipulations, we also discussed the safety of such genetic modifications in our later science education.
What community resources did you consult to ensure that they were of appropriate value in the context of your project?
Ⅲ. What community resources did you consult to ensure that they were of appropriate value in the context of your project?
Our team contacted Yichang Anqi Yeast Co., Ltd.and came to their industrial park to visit and learn about the industrial application of yeast and the direction of prospective landings. Mr. Qin Xianwu, Senior Engineer of Anqi Yeast, discussed with us the recent research directions in biochemical and food industries; meanwhile we presented our project to our engineering team.
1. About the prospect of landing the project, Mr. Qin Xianwu(Senior Engineer of Anqi Yeast ) said that EGT is not only a health product, but also widely used in the cosmetic industry. He said that except food industry, it is more recommended to apply in cosmetics, such as facial masks, etc. It helped to open up new horizons and directions for our project.
2. He said that good project application should do a good market research, and suggested us to do more recent feasibility research from both food and cosmetic.
1. In terms of product development, professor Zhang said that EGT has strong antioxidant properties and is a food grade raw material, so it can be involved in other fields. It is suggested to develop the field of nut and fruit preservation or animal feed, because the threshold of this direction is low and easier to apply in real life, which opens up new horizons and directions for our project.
2. He said that biosynthetic food additives is widely used in the domestic market, depending on production costs, production technology, product stability and other aspects. But it needs to meet the actual national conditions and domestic dietary habits.
3. The safety of EGT has been approved by the European Food Safety Authority and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. He said the substance has good prospects for development in China, where domestic policies mainly consider intellectual property rights, economic costs and trade barriers.
4. When it comes to the application of the product, he said that animal testing should first be conducted to ensure that the substance works and is non-toxic and non-hazardous, and that it is also necessary to consider whether the substance has an impact on the environment.
