Partnership

As COVID-19 continues to ravage the world around us, China still follow the country's “dynamic zero-case policy”. Fortunately, we are in the same city with HZAU-China, as well as, we have a similar topic, it's very convenient for us to communicate and help each other solving the same problems together. We are satisfied to contact with each other every month, whether it is online or offline, our communication is effective and valued.

1. Face-to-face Meetup (in the early stage)

As we have kept a good relationship with HZAU-China since 2018 iGEM. In July, we contact with HZAU-China and went to the campus of Huazhong Agricultural University. Both aimed at diagnostic about blood, we held a face-to-face team meeting, and we two teams got better understanding of each other.

Figure 1. YiYe-China and HZAU-China had a face-to-face team meeting

At first, HZAU-China shared their project, Curer of Vessel Disease, which was based on the treatment for thrombi. A thrombus is a small piece of blood flow that forms on the surface of a spalled or repaired inner surface of a blood vessel in the cardiovascular system. HZAU-China chose a novel treatment named intestinal flora therapy, which focused on the Trimethylamine Oxide (TMAO). TMAO is an enteric-derived flora metabolite, serving as a potential risk factor for blood clots and other chronic diseases. The higher level of TMAO, the more likely that cholesterol in the arterial walls would accumulate and that the blood clots would form. HZAU-China designed a new type of probiotic powder to reduce the concentration of Trimethylamine (TMA) in the intestine so as to prevent the formation of blood blots. As well as, we YiYe-China team also shared our project to them, which aimed to find a cheaper diagnostic way for MDS.

Figure 2. Our team members were introducing our project.

During this meet-up, we exchanged our suggestions for each other's project. Our team members noticed that AI, the by-product in their Pathway B, is detrimental to human health and is not a safe substance, and we wondered how they dealt with it. They explained that they controlled the amount of AI in the safety range and make sure that it would not have any side effects for humans. At the same time, HZAU-China challenged the effectiveness of our detecting method for MDS, since gene mutation is not the sole cause for MDS, and our teammates admitted the existing limitation in our testing method and still contended that the recent diagnostic methods focused on the symptoms of MDS, while our method would detect the gene mutations in an earlier stage, which provided MDS patients with more time for therapy. Moreover, HZAU-China recommended us to refer to more recent, up-to-date papers, as we cited essays published in 2014.

Because both of our projects focused on the blood diseases that influenced the elderly, we reached an agreement to have further cooperation of the activities to promote basic scientific knowledge.

2. Virtual Public Science Lecture (in the middle stage)

In the process of the collaboration, we hope more people to know about the MDS and thrombus. We invited HZAU-China to participate in the public science lecture together on Bilibili Live. Both of our projects focus on blood diseases which primarily affect the elderly population. To explain, incidence-rate and mortality-rate of MDS are extremely high with old people over 60 years old; it is estimated that there are 330 million people suffering from cardiovascular diseases, including 11.39 millions with coronary heart disease and 245 million with hypertension, with an average of one in four people suffering from the disease and most of them being middle-aged and elderly people over 50 years old. Therefore, we decided to hold an online lecture to promote the knowledge about MDS and cardiovascular diseases, so the public, especially the old, can be equipped with the basic knowledge of those diseases and learn about some ways the prevent them. On top of that, we also wanted to share our projects to the public and allow them to keep pace with the developments of treatments of these diseases.

Figure 3. Audiences actively cast their doubts on the bulletin screen

Finally, the Bilibili live-streaming was quite successful. Our broadcast room attracted 9532 viewers, and all the audiences were actively involved in the lecture, casting their doubts and asking for detailed explanation for their puzzles. We illustrated the knowledge in the easiest way to make sure that everyone can form an insightful understanding of these two diseases. We were delighted for the audiences' appreciation and felt that we'd done such a meaningful thing.

3. Troubleshoot about Mathematical Modeling with HZAU-China

Apart from the communication during the meet-up, we YiYe-China team and HZAU-China team formed a Wechat group for further discussions and communications. We encountered a problem in mathematical modeling: because our sample size was small, P-value for linear regression was near to 0, which meant that the result of our experiment had a weak linear relationship. On account of our situation, HZAU-China explained that result of modeling did not have a significance in mathematical meaning if the sample size was only three experimental data. They suggest us try to use interpolation algorithm method, through cubic spline interpolation for interpolation to expand the amount of data before regression analysis.

Figure 4. The problems that our team encountered in mathematical modeling

Additionally, they came up with the idea of adding a detection indicator in the MDS diagnostic test for hypertension, such as the concentration of TMA or TMAO in the blood. In this way, the patients can be detected for 2 diseases for one test. We discussed the practicality of this suggestion and then draw the conclusion that our method was based on the gene mutation in RNA splicing to detect MDS, while we were not sure whether gene mutations happened in hypertension patients, adding detection of hypertension to our existing testing method seemed not pragmatic.

Figure 5. Discussions about the practicality of combing the detection of both hypertension and MDS

We've learned a lot from the communication with HZAU-China. Thanks to their doubts on the limitation of our existing testing method, we are attempting to refine our project; with the help of their suggestions, we have successfully solved the problem that we encountered in modeling; from their advice of binding two detections together, we've got some inspirations to make diagnostic methods much more convenient for the patients.