Integrated Human Practice
Overview
This year, UM_Macau aims to alleviate freshwater and seawater acidification by adopting a tough bacterium carrying a pump that can absorb protons to increase the pH of the aquatic environment. For advertising our achievement and extending the influence of our project, communication and education are needed. In the past 3 months, we conducted a series of activities, participated in several unions for collaboration with other teams, and introduced our project and idea to people who were not familiar with the biology field. However, since we were not expertise in many aspects from shaping our project ideas to carrying out our project, we had to continuously seek help from literature, professionals, and people familiar with such fields.
Inspiration
Having been inspired by Oceanus, we named our project name “AcidOceanus”. We hope to regulate and release the acidic pressure of the water environment through synthetic biology, just like how Oceanus regulated the heavenly bodies which rose from and set into his waters.
Integrated Process & Timeline
May 2022
Doing the research about recent year ocean acidification and its solution; finding the right position for our project.
First human practice meeting:
At the end of May, we, our human practice group members, all finished our final exam, then we had our first human practice meeting to discuss the outline of our human practice work. In the meeting, we did a lot of research on ocean acidification and its solution to complete our project.
Wrapping up our ocean water deacidification project as AcidOceanus
In the meeting, we firstly decided on the name of our project and used Greek mythology to wrap up our ocean water deacidification project as AcidOceanus.
June 2022
Collecting supporting information to make our project complete; learning water treatment experience in real life.
Second proposal making
We decided to make our second proposal on the purpose of better introducing our project to other teams and corporations for seeking collaboration and partnership. We also used the proposal as the original copy of our meet-up PowerPoints. This original copy had changed to many versions due to the difference in audiences like we’re simplifying the hard biosynthesis knowledge when sharing class to middle school students.
Visiting Macau’s waste water treatment plant
In the early stage when we were deciding the project idea, we visited Direcção dos Serviços de Protecção Ambiental de Macau, the Water Treatment Plant in Macau and interviewed the manager, Mr. Angus. In the interview, we first get introduced by Mr. Angusto the general wastewater quality around the Macau area and the overall treatment procedure for wastewater. Mr. Angus told us that wastewater is different in every area, which requires different methods for wastewater treatment. In Macau, which sits in the southeastern part of the Pearl River Delta, sources of wastewater are mostly generated from household and domestic use, and the normal pH level is around 7. We introduced to him our project and its application in water deacidification and agriculture. During the visit, we learned a lot of knowledge about wastewater treatment. The plant in Macau also used biodegradable methods to degrade the waste in the water. The visit inspired us in the implementation of our project.
Inviting Direcção dos Serviços de Protecção Ambiental de Macau to be our supporting partner
Due to the problem that our team is solving is about our natural environment, we hoped the Macau local government can support us as our partner on the aspect of giving us suggestion and learning experience. Unfortunately, they cruelly mailed us and refused our sincere invitation.
Activating and running an official Instagram account
In order to promote our project to the public, we decided to activate and run our official instagram account. Meanwhile this platform helped us communicate with other iGEM team.
Joining iGEM China Community
We found the entrance of iGEM China community. This exploration helped us meet iBowu-China who invited us to attend their online meet-up. Also by iGEM China Community, we met Jiangnan-China and other teams which have similar topics with us. We had lots of interactions and communication later.
G20 IGEM China Summit 2022. 6.26
This was the first time for us to attend a meet-up, so we prepared carefully and sufficiently. It was the first time for us to know that there are so many excellent bio-students around the world. The team projects sharing part inspired us a lot. We modified and improved our project according to what we have learnt from the meet-up, such as how to organize meaningful events and how to make teamwork efficient.
July 2022
Finding the organizations that we belongs to; finding partners that have high similarity in project content; intensifying team-team communication.
China iGEM Online Meetup 2022.7.17
Again, we attended another online meetup. The organizer put the teams with similar topics together. By this chance, we met GXU-China and XJTLU-China which introduced us to join the freshwater bioremediation alliance.
Inviting corporations to be our supporting partner
We hoped there will be some corporations which are willing to be our partner as giving us implement suggestion and sharing practical experience. Especially, we have limited marketing knowledge, but marketing can be exerted in implementation. Thus, we wished a corporation can help us design our implementation and marketing plan for the future application. But sadly, only snapgene were willing to be our partner as giving us free license.
Contacting team Puiching_Macau and Jiangnan-China to be our team partner
These are the two partners that we have deep collaboration throughout the year. We have high similarity so that we can sharing a lot of idea and experience on different aspects. Our project can’t be so integrated without the help of them.
Joining Freshwater Bioremediation Alliance
The members in this alliance all share similar project topics about freshwater treatment. We are so grateful to have the chance to join this alliance. We helped each other on solving problems and improve our projects.
August 2022
Having funny collaboration with teams all over the world; making a promotion video for better integrity of our project.
Promotion video
Due to the limitation of the technique, we chose to make stop-motion animation. Though it took us a long time to draw all the shooting materials and take pictures of them, we were quite a pleasure and enjoyed the sense of achievement. Our promotion video is really cute and easy to understand.
Instagram collaboration
Thanks for the well-running of our Instagram account by our human practice member Angela, there were so many schools asked us for collaboration. We chose three of them. All the collaborations are very impressive. The works from all over the world combined together. In the picture-sharing parts, we saw the foreign team members smiled so happy, and we were impressed by their happiness.
download the comic book
Outreach budget
After several consultations, we determined the articles and souvenirs used in outreach. However, the collage rejected our application because one of our articles, the banner, is not allowed. By persistently consulting with collage, we decided to use the posters as the alternative.
September 2022
Trying to use our project solving real life problem; promoting our project and synthetic biology to people without biology background.
Promotional events on UM campus
The painter in our team designed both gifts, the badges and brochures. Then we booked the premises and customized our souvenirs. Finally, we held two outreaches in 28th September and 6th October, respectively. The outreaches seemed very successful, as most of the passersby were interested in our project and fond of the souvenirs we prepared, especially the badges with the picture of Oceanus.
Holding the conference of HydroAqua Simulator
On 11.9, we held a online conference with Puiching_Macau. The participants in the conference all shared their project then we all used our own projects to solve the problem in aquaponic agricultural system, which inspired us on our implementation again.
October 2022
Doing promotion towards middle school and primary school for further education.
Online class facing students from remote area in mainland China
We joined in an online class contacting with students from Guangxi province in mainland China. The project was organized by FAFU-CHINA, and the goal was to announce the idea of our own project, and let these students have a basic and comprehensive understanding of water pollution. Educational event in local primary school Luckily, there’s one international primary school which is so willing to let us do our educational event toward their student. We prepare to let them color our coloring brochure then have a competition for who makes the best coloring. We also prepare to have a introducing class to them about what is synthetic biology and why ocean deacidification is important to us.
Educational event in local primary school
Luckily, there’s one international primary school which is so willing to let us do our educational event toward their student. We prepare to let them color our coloring brochure then have a competition for who makes the best coloring. We also prepare to have a introducing class to them about what is synthetic biology and why ocean deacidification is important to us.
Reflection
Through Human Practices, our iGEM teams consider whether their projects are responsible and good for the world. Our goal is to improve the problem of ocean acidification, which is an environmental issue to be solved in today’s world, in an environmentally friendly and renewable way. Therefore, our team conducted public engagement through outreach to different age groups of students and field visits to sewage treatment plants. Professionals and stakeholders are invited to input to shape the direction of our work.
With students from both biomedicine and bioinformatics, we have an interdisciplinary collaborative working environment and are able to appreciate different views. Students majoring in biomedicine participated in wet lab work positively, while the bioinformatic students and the instructor in the IT department were in the charge of building of mathematical models of our product. Students of the two majors have participated in the work of the human practice department, which makes the team work more efficiently, to have a harmonious and cooperative working atmosphere, and co-develop solutions that best serve the concerned communities.
At the design stage of our project, with the help of Professor Leo Lee and Professor Kin Yip Tam, we conducted environmental impact analyses, understood relevant regulations and codes of conduct. In this way, we tend to develop a responsible and impactful research project.
After starting the project, we considered the issue of popularization and promotion of the product, as well as related policies. At present, most of the treatments for seawater acidification are chemical reactions, so the relevant policies on the use of synthetic organisms for treatment are still not sufficient. At the same time, if we want to take our new products to replace the existing treatment, the relevant departments need to consider the expenditure in this regard.
As for the viability and desirability of feedback, if possible, we will regularly visit the company that has purchased the product, conduct horizontal comparison of water quality from multiple indicators, and purposefully improve the product according to the feedback.
Through these activities, our team has engaged with topics and issues including ethics, safety, risk assessment, environmental impact, product design and much more. In each case these activities have helped to shape the goals, execution and communication of their projects.