Human-Practices

To assure our project of the ability to conduct iterative optimization and to effectively adjust, it should proceed under a logical framework of human practice. We adopted the PDCA Cycle designed by ShanghaiTech University last year, based on which we iterated our project.

PART 1 Selection Process of Micro Nuwa

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Why did we choose DNA multi-site editing to be the center of our project and what kind of values as well as requirements needed to be prioritized?

Ⅰ.Nature of Integrated Human Practice

Every project, no matter which kind, is required to fully connect to society. In order to achieve such a goal, constant adjustments are needed. With that buried in mind, we have to not only focus on current research hot-button issues, but also pay attention to the specific demands of society. Thus, we can bring a both complete and advanced project to the public, and at the same time stimulate the world to become a better place. This page will show you how we started, progressed and improved our project assessing feedback from society.

Ⅱ.Initial Exploration of the Subject

We had thorough discussions with our PI, professor Yi Wu, and grew to great interest in DNA multi-site editing. According to professor Wu, broad application lies ahead for this technique, while interdisciplinary attempts provided opportunities to nourish great ideas. Based on which we brought up three projects revolving around DNA muti-site editing. Including: DNA information storage editing, application of multi-site editing in the field of pharmaceuticals/metabolism, and using multi-site editing to achieve synonymous codons condensation. Our team was divided into three groups to dig deeper into each project and figure out the viability.

Ⅲ.Why Choose DNA Information Editing in the End?

We are living in an era full of explosive information. Compared to natural resources on our planet, information massively grows on a daily basis, and is apparently going to outnumber the supply of storage equipment like hard drives. After going through documents, we found that researchers have shifted their orientation to storage and transmission tools in the natural world, such as DNA. However, further research and discussions revealed the downside of DNA storage — it is difficult to be modified. With the inspiration of Prof. Wu, we determined multiple target points editing in DNA information storage to be our subject.

Since the selection of our subject is completed, we designed pre-experiments and performed its verification. A few problems came out during the process: 1. How to illustrate the advantages of combination between DNA storage and multi-site editing. 2. How to better perform wet-experiments. We interviewed professionals in related fields of study and revised our project for better practice the topic according to their suggestions.

Ⅳ.Core of Micro Nuwa Project

After investigating public cognition extents towards DNA storage and assuming what can be done with the integration between DNA storage and multi-site editing (see Questionnaire 1 for details), initially, inspired by the use of DNA to store Shakespeare 's sonnets, we proposed and developed the idea of converting Chinese characters to bases, and proposed the first generation of coding programs - coding Chinese characters in ternary coding. However, the method of converting Chinese characters to bases was difficult to establish a direct connection with our Micro Nuwa. Due to the particularity of Chinese characters, it was difficult to find text information before and after modification. This generation of coding programs did not advance to subsequent wet experiments, but continued to explore other manifestations. We have come to the decision of presenting our project in the form of music.


In order to become qualified iGEMers, we had to think about where our project centered on and whether it could be effectively understood by the public. Because of which, we consulted doctor Mingzhe Han whose research orientation is DNA storage. During the process, we discovered that we have been focusing on visualization, instead of the priority—the technique of DNA multi-site editing. We took his advice and started a new image encoding: using DNA multi-site editing to modify DNA sequences carrying information of an image made up with many pixels, information of each pixel can be stored in multiple sites of DNA sequences, where multi-site editing comes in and make changes to multiple pixels. The image can be changed into multiple images by altering different pixels, therefore it is possible to create a motion picture effect.

Ⅴ.How to Verify the Functionality of Multi-site Editing?

Before we can try to find out the edit efficiency of Micro Nuwa, we must prove its functionality. Our wet lab designed green fluorescent protein plasmid corresponding to false promoter, planning to check the feasibility of DNA multi-site editing using CRISPR to repair the false promoter, hence reactivate its ability to fluoresce. However, we asked our postgraduate senior whose research focused on multi-site editing to prevent us from making mistakes on basic principles, and changed our initial plan to using ADE2 gene in targeted yeast to verify if multi-site editing functions normally.

Ⅵ.Whether the Improvement of Wet Experiment is Necessary

Due to current technology limit, the modification efficiency of some sites is not as good as we thought. After several discussions, the results still cannot reach our satisfactory. Therefore, we decided to communicate with Professor Cao Yingxiu about our problems.


Based on our problems, Professor Cao suggested that we should not blindly try to enhance wet experiments. In-depth improvements to issues such as off-targeting, hard-to-modify sites, and site distance limits should not be the focal point of our project, these are problems that completely beyond the time and knowledge we own. We should pay more attention to the integrity of our project and the difficulty of increasing public understanding. This prompted us to invest more time to the overall project from the optimization of wet experiments.

Ⅶ.Cognition and Acceptance Investigation within College Students

We were unable to perform extensive social surveys due to COVID-19. By asking some students and designing questionnaires (see Questionnaire 2 for details), we got a basic understanding on college students' cognition of DNA storage and their interestingness as well as plenty of feedback. However, both surveys and questionnaires showed that DNA storage is not such an easy term to understand even for college students, multi-site editing based on DNA storage is also an unfamiliar field for most. Nevertheless, college students expressed high acceptance and expectations for related applications and proposed many creative application scenarios. Based on their ideas, next step we planned to continue interviewing experts on streaming media, information encryption, medicine and other aspects, explore the possibility of practical application and existing technical difficulties.

Ⅷ.Further Discussion on Practical Application

In order to better understand the potential application of DNA storage combining with multi-site editing, we interviewed Professor Yunzi Luo of synthetic biology major on three aspects: streaming media, information encryption and medicine.

After hearing Professor Luo's opinion, we realized that practical application cannot be achieved smoothly as we had imagined, it is restricted by many different factors. It may finally come true with the development of modern technology, but currently choosing to be the medium for streaming is not the best option; instead, information encryption is more possible to achieve, as well as its potential to be personalized, it truly can be a valuable research orientation. Thus, we combined DNA multi-site editing with DNA storage, applied the combination into information encryption and put in into the DNA information storage manuscript which was co-written with the team representing Shanghai Jiao Tong University (more details in Partnership). Although the technique cannot be directly taken to use in medical treatment process, it can be an effective method to select mutations, therefore reduce overall time cost. In general, great future lies ahead for multi-site editing, but there is a long way of technical difficulties to overcome before it is truly put into practical application.

Ⅸ.Interview Examination and Future Plan

During our interview with people who didn't have much understanding about synthetic biology or DNA storage, they also brought up some questions on bio-safety. One interviewee stated, they had heard about news saying that gene editing is considered to be immoral, so how do we make sure Micro Nuwa will and only will take effect on DNA storage modification? Which caused us to think.We have systematically studied the The Tianjin Biosecurity Guidelines for Codes of Conduct for Scientists, learned about current moral basis and legal norms of biological research to help us carry out biological researches responsibly.

Although it is clear that we are only applying multi-site editing in DNA storage under laboratory environment, risks remain that it might be leaked or even used for ethics violating purposes. Microbes are relatively safer and easy to control, however, the necessity of bio-safety still needed to be taken into consideration. In our perspective, we needed to set CRISPR-Cas9-based kill switches even under laboratory environment, in order to prevent accidental leakage and genetic pollution to other species. Aside from that, we believed that relevant laws and management required improvements.

The first step of our project to be taken into practical application is a complete bio-safety system. For the long run of our project, we plan to: First, effectively communicate with researchers concerning bio-safety to guarantee our project is safe; second, contact enterprises related to DNA storage and find out whether Micro Nuwa can be put into use and keep on improving; finally, widely present synthetic biology to the public, looking forward to higher acceptance towards our field of study as their understanding gets deeper and deeper.