Integrated Human Practices

Offline Survey

In order to communicate with the public directly and collected some more real feedback and opinions on harm of higher alchol and the importance of genetic engineering techniques, we designed 6 interview questions for the offline survey. Our members were divided into several groups in different locations, like inside the shopping mall, on the street, and inside the office building. Finally, we collected 51 pieces of feedback at last.

Figure 1. We conducted offline surveys in different locations

We learned that most people are suffering from the culture of drinking and that many people had to drink a lot for social purposes which did harm their health. Therefore, we could be sure that our project is responsible for the real world. During our communication with our interviewees, we explained our project and our goal to them, they agreed that this project will be beneficial to human health.

Since we wanted to produce that kind of wine where higher alchol is lower than average, we also made a survey regarding the element of wine that matters when people choose. Based on the survey result below, the flavor of wine matters the most when people choose. This will be considered when we draft our business plan.

Figure 2. Offline survey result of the question “which element matters when you choose wine?”

Online Questionnaire

We also designed an online questionnaire for public sampling analysis and spread online to inviting more people to complete this survey. In the end, we collected 692 completed questionnaires.

In order to filter out the valid samples, we ruled out those completed questionnaires by the respondents under 18. Thus, the first question is about the age. We found that 191 were under 18, thus we only took 72% of people older than 18 as valid questionnaires.

Figure 3. Survey results about the distribution of the drinking gender among the respondents

Generally, we can see that men more than women who drink and the number doubles. Then we can look at the left two columns which show actually many men just drink occasionally. This result is also consistent with our offline survey result. Actually, in our offline survey, most men interviewees complained that they suffer a lot from the culture of drinking and privately they seldom drink. According to the women interviewees in the offline survey, they seldom drink, and sometimes they drink for relaxing themselves from down emotions.

Figure 4. Survey results about the distribution of kinds of drinking the respondents drink

Based on the result above, most people (52%) prefer brewed wine, including beer and wine. We can speculate that brewed wine industry is a very influential market and there will be many opportunities for business. Per our previous investigation, people usually drink for social and suffer a lot from being drunk, like headaches and thirst due to higher alcohols. So as for us, our project aims to regulate the metabolic pathways of higher alcohols in Saccharomy cescerevisiae through genetic engineering to reduce the production of higher alcohols in brewed wine. The survey result aligns with our target industry.

Figure 5. Survey results of the questions “How you feel after drinking much” and “Do you know higher alcohol?”

Besides the investigation about drinking, we also wanted to investigate the public awareness of higher alcohol. Many people suffer from overdrinking, like being dizzy or sick. But as seen above, there are 81% of respondents had no idea about higher alcohol at all which is the main culprit to make them feel bad. Therefore, in our education part, we will prepare some educational materials to spread knowledge about higher alcohols to the public. We hope people could learn more about higher alcohols as well as their harm so as to remind them to control their ingestion for health concerns.

Figure 6. Survey result of the question “What is your attitude towards genetic engineering?”

Since our project utilize the engineering technology to modify the production process of brewed wine, we need to know how our consumers react to this. In this question, we can see the overall shows good signs to us that more than half supports the genetic engineering technology and the rest votes either neutral or not sure.

Figure 7. Survey result of the question Will you try a new wine which has been modified to be more healthy for the human body through genetic engineering technology?

As seen in figure 7, the result is quite similar to the result in figure 6. Per our literature investigation, actually, genetic engineering technology has been playing a more important role in the food industry and people are coming into contact with more and more GMF (Genetically Modified Food). All these results provide us with a promising future that many people are looking forward to healthier wine even by genetic engineering technology, not by natural though. But comparing these two results (figure 6 and figure 7), we could also notice that the percentage of “No” increases when we talk about whether themselves willing to try wine through genetic engineering. It indicates that there still exist many people who have concerns about genetic engineering applications in the food or drink industry. Therefore, in our future promotion plan, it is essential to pay more attention to popularizing genetic engineering technology. In addition, we need to prioritize the safety consideration of our product development so as to eliminate the concerns of our customers.

First stage

Figure 8. Online interview with Dr. Chris Liu

Chris Liu, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Ph.D. in Finance, CFA & FRM certificate holder

In order to implement our products, we interviewed Dr. Liu. First of all, we asked Dr. Liu whether there is a national standard for the content of higher alcohols in wine. Dr. Liu said that there is, but it is not mandatory to comply with this standard, it is only a recommended standard not legally required. So we ease our concerns about whether our technology would violate the law. We then raised the question of how much importance Chinese people place on the health of their alcohol consumption. Dr. Liu replied that this is difficult to reflect with data. "What is certain is that the trend is gradually getting higher. This is related to per capita disposable income.”

When it comes to how to specifically conduct market analysis and write a business plan, he pointed out that there are three parts to consider. The first is to solve the bad drinking experience. It will unlock those big markets consisting of people who don't drink often. The second is drinking people. Due to the culture of drinking, many people have to drink for job regards, so this piece of the market is also very large for our product. The last is that if our product is developed, it will be very innovative in the drinking market which could attract many business opportunities.

As for whether our products can replace traditional yeast and how our products are positioned in the market, Dr. Liu suggested that we don't have to convince manufacturers to give up traditional yeast because their products are too diverse. What we can do is improve the quality of their current products by adding our engineered yeast. Dr. Liu explained that since we can provide this innovative technology, we could find more manufacturers to cooperate with to make our own profit. The positioning of the product depends on how we position this technology in the market, and what kind of market we want to enter. ” Our product is kind of a complement to traditional yeast, covering areas it can't cover."`

In conclusion, Dr. Liu's sharing gave us a clearer understanding of the market. After this conversation, we decide to focus on market analysis and product positioning. We also dispel the misconception that our product could not compete with other Saccharomyces cerevisiae but complements each other. Conversely, we started the idea of partnering with other yeast companies.

Second stage

In this stage, we interview the Production Manager Qiqian Jia from Hongqiao Winery in Gansu Province who is quite experienced in producing brewed wine. The interview was conducted from the aspects of wine production, yeast selection, wine business and wine publicity strategy. The following contents are about the reflection and knowledge we gained during the interview.

Figure 9. Online interview with Mr. Jia

Qiqian Jia, Production Manager from Hongqiao Winery in Gansu Province

After the introduction from Mr. Jia, we had basic information about the wine production process. We wondered whether traditional wine production factories will control the higher alcohol contents and how. He mentioned actually they care and they will control the production of higher alcohol by controlling the quality of raw materials, like grapes, which means they will pay more to buy high-quality grapes. Therefore, he added adding our genetically engineered yeast could restrict the growth of wild yeast so as to control the production of higher alcohols by wild yeast. Besides we don't need to buy those grapes at a higher price. Our engineered yeasts will contribute to the cost of production.

Regarding the engineered yeast application in the wine industry, he mentioned some factories might have used genetically engineered yeast to produce wine for better flavor but their factory only uses those natural wild yeast mainly from the three major domestic excipients since their strategy is focused on controlling the quality of the raw materials. We also asked if he will try our yeast if it is successfully developed for wine-producing. He mentioned the function of our genetically engineered yeast is quite new and their factory might need to do more analysis, like risk analysis and pricing before they confirm to purchase of our yeast. Besides they produce premium wine and target on those consumers who are willing to pay more for better quality. Therefore, they don't have to save on the cost of raw materials. Instead, he suggested we could look at those small companies that might not have much budget for raw materials since the most competitive selling point of our product is to reduce the cost of raw materials.

We explained that we planned to bring our yeast with low-yielding in higher alcohols into the market. Mr. Jia suggested, that we could sell some patented technologies to excipient companies who could graft the technology on mature yeast for a win-win. Because the yeast culturing industry is also very complicated since the growth, and the condition of yeast can affect the stability of fermentation, besides it also requires tolerance to alcohol, high acid, and temperature. In this regard, those excipient companies will be more experienced. Therefore, based on the cooperation between the two sides, the propagation rate of yeast will be enhanced, the patentability can be guaranteed, and the company in the same industry can have more extensive cooperation.

In terms of industry publicity, the expert says that “we should focus on data on higher alcohol production and improvements in the cost of lower quality raw materials.” Per his suggestion, we shall focus on the promotion of our technology and its performance result to show our competitive.

Third stage

In order to seek more professional advice on our experimental design and our future product development plan, we managed to contact Dr. Chen whose research fields include protein production and functional research, enzyme engineering, and food microorganisms.

Figure 10. Online interview with Dr. Chen

Chen Xingzhou, Associate Professor, Wuhan Institute of Technology.

According to Dr. Chen, nowadays genetically engineered strains like ours will face many difficulties bringing them into the market since the technology might be not stable or mature enough and must go through many complicated assessment procedures by relative committees. For patent applications, actually, it is very difficult to determine the innovation and other supplements may be required. For example, in our experiments, no matter how much the higher alcohol is reduced, the shape and the performance could not be easily measured. The stability of hereditary genes through genetically engineered organisms is very important! He added, that higher alcohols can be lowered with the additional help of process aids and the loss of genetic shape may be due to insufficient nutrient supply or incorrect composition of fermentation broth, all of which need to be verified by experiments. Various factors must be considered, and the subsequent development and optimization of bacterial strains will account for the largest amount of engineering and cost.

When talking about the public awareness and attitude to gene engineering technology, he mentioned that, public awareness may be affected by the cultural level because not everyone knows about genetically modified engineering, and not many people pay much attention to it except for professional studies. But if we take more effort into popularizing relative knowledge, it might change something.

In conclusion, Dr. Chen provided a brand new perspective to our team. He fortifies our basic cognition of the topic by providing reliable data and societal trends. Regarding the concern of technology, and the confirmation from the wine committee in China, we have to influence the attitude of people by emphasizing the theory and pros and cons of genetic engineering, and improving the technology uses in the lab. Although our product is creative, we still need to prepare more content to successfully apply for the patent. What's more important is that our gene needs more stability to hold the feature of its gene for a longer time which will be one of our development goals.