INTEGRATED HUMAN PRACTICES
During our project, we organized and participated in various activities with the goal to spread the world of Synthetic Biology, iGEM, and our project to society.
Diabetes Treatment
After careful researching and investigation, we found that the scale of impact diabetes have on modern society is rather stunning, while the knowledge on efffective treatment with antibiotics is relatively poor. This results from both insufficient education and limited production of targeted antibiotics.
To address the former problem, we conducted several comprehensive activities for education, which aimed at people across all ages. That includes both the synthetic biology and the most important source of new antibiotics, namely actinomycetes. To deal with the latter, long-lasting cooperation was made between us and renowned research institute in the hope of that our software can better aid advanced lab research in this field.
Ⅰ、Healthy China
The State Council, China's cabinet, had issued a new guideline to implement the country's Healthy China initiative. With the introduction of the "Healthy China initiative", disease prevention and treatment had attracted much more attention, and people's health had increasingly become a national strategic focus.
Ⅱ、Literature Research
In today's world, the global prevalence of diabetes continues to rise, and according to the International Diabetes Federation (IDF), diabetes is a major global challenge to the health and well-being of individuals, families and societies.
Ⅲ、Questionnaire Survey on Public Awareness
We collected the public's understanding of diabetes and diabetes treatment by sending out questionnaires we designed. By analyzing the results, we gained a better understanding on public opinions concerning diabetes treatment.
GEM modeling platform
As the main source of antibiotics like acarbose, actinomycetes metabolism is well worth digging into. To learn more about it, we visited experienced researchers for details. We happened to find that there are still obstacles in clarifying the metabolism mechanisms of actinomycetes. Consequently, we started our project mainly from this point and enriched the function throughout the following process.
By constructing such a GEM modeling platform, researchers working in this area can receive great support by freeing themselves from tedious experimenting procedures. And, more significantly, this will help to inspire more attempts towards high throughput antibiotic production . Since our project has been modified along with constant discussion with members of public, this synthetic biology based machine signifies more about the iGEM value.
Ⅳ、Interview With Professor——Initiating Cooperation
We exchanged ideas with Professor Linquan Bai , which helped us confirm our reaserch focus on actinomycetes metabolism. More importantly, long-lasting cooperation was made between professor Bai's lab and our team.
Ⅴ、Interview With Professor——Feasibility and Significance
After deciding on our research focus , we visited Professor Ting Shi to further get knowledge of the details concerning modeling procedure, so as to determine the feasibility of our project, and also validate the significance of our work in helping researchers with their lab work.
Ⅵ、Meeting with PI Yue Zhang about model training optimization
When using deep learning methods to predict Kcat values, we tried and adapted various algorithms in order to improve the accuracy of the prediction. When it was found that the existing algorithms could not fully achieve the desired results, we turned to Mr. Zhang for help.
Ⅶ、User feedback from laboratory
Once our modeling platform was initially built, we contacted senior students in our cooperating lab to get feedback on the trial. We are happy to have received practical suggestions for improvement.
Generalization to a wider area
After valuable conversation with other iGEM teams and informed professors, we realized that our software could do more than just facilitating enzyme and cell engineering in actinomycetes. Promising directions include expanding our focus from mutation on single sites to important domains on the protease, and implementations on gene engineering.
Ⅷ、Discussion with Prof. Yuhang Zhang -- Improving ideas
We had a discussion with Prof. Yuhang Zhang on our work. Having known of what we had achieved, he made certain practical proposals for future development.
Ⅸ、CCiC
From August 18th to 22th, 2022, we participated in the 9th Conference of China IGEMer Community (CCiC) , shared our projects at the meeting, communicated with other teams, and received a lot of valuable opinion.
Education
We gave lectures of synthetic biology and chemistry to students in rural areas both online and offline.
We introduced the relevant background of the International Genetic Engineering Machine Competition (iGEM) and the project theme of SJTU-Software to students of different ages.
We conducted science popularization with online platforms by publishing articles and lauching emoji packages designed by our team.
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Collaborations
Due to the impact of Covid-19, we took online and offline approaches to communicate with other teams and had in-depth collaborations with them. We shared ideas, discussed the problems in the process, and mutually put forward much practical advice.
Through constant and significant communication, we gained a lot of suggestions and improved our project. Here are some of the teams we work closely with.
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Glad to stand by the side of our dear fellow team, SJTU-bioX-Shanghai, we had in-depth communication and cooperation throughout the whole project.
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