Team:SIAT-SCIE/HP/Gold Integrated
Overview:
For synthetic biology, to reshape the world requires not only revolutionary techniques, but also adequate social interactions and a broad consensus for science in the masses.
Consulting with two experts
We interviewed two experts, Dr.FU Xiongfei who specializes in quantitative synthetic biology and Dr.HUANG Shuqiang who specializes in analytical chemistry and microfluidics for their professional prospectives about synthetic biology prospect and technology commercialization.
Overview
On Oct.30th, we were honored to have the opportunity to hold a short interview with Dr. FU Xiongfei, who specialises in quantitative synthetic biology, and Dr.HUANG Shuqiang, who specializes in analytical chemistry and microfluidics, at Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology. The consulting interview was separated into 3 sections: 2 individual interviews and a general discussion. The main topics of the talk included prospect of synthetic biology, technology commercialization and suggestions for fledglings in the scientific biological field.
Extract of the interview (translated)
Q: Could you please share some suggestions for high school iGEMers with us?
Dr.F: To begin with, for high school students, having decided to participate in iGEM competition is a great, commendable action. iGEM provides an excellent chance for you to show dispositions to and cultivate makings of being professionals in scientific research field. Moreover, different from other academic competitions, iGEM requires adequate knowledge in a variety of disciplines and this is especially beneficial to high school students since your points of interests are not yet limited by specific majors. By being exposed to miscellaneous subjects, you may find your favorite field and therefore you will be able to develop a more concrete goal in college.
Q: Since you are the advisor of the collegiate team SUSTech_Shenzhen, I wonder what are the main differences between collegiate teams and high school teams in iGEM?
Dr.H: Speaking for myself, high school and university are actually two distinct periods. For high school students, the significance of participating in iGEM lies in the exploration and expansion of interests. If you find yourselves quite intrigued by the field of biology, you could start to dig deeper into this discipline so that later on in your academic journey, you may be able to reach an outstanding achievement. However, for undergraduates who have already specialised in certain fields, iGEM provides an opportunity for them to unite with peers from different disciplines. As a result, the professional expertise of separated fields can be fully played and the complementary strengths could further ameliorate the performance of the whole team
Q: Until now, synthetic biology has been a hot topic over the pass decades. Could you share your anticipation of its development in the next decades? Or what do you expect to see in the future?
Dr.H: From my perspective, we may be able to understand more about the origins and nature of life, as well as accomplishing more complicated scientific challenges on a deeper level. Synthetic biology is a very special field because the research techniques employed within it differ from traditional ones. So, for me, I am really looking forward to further development in this aspect.
Q: What opinions do you hold for commercializing techniques in scientific research?
Dr.H: For any technique, the process of developing from laboratory to society requires a reasonable period. Even though synthetic biology is a relatively new field, its promising prospect in technical commercialization can be shown from a number of aspects. For instance, the industry of synthetic artemisinin has progressed through a complete period, including stages like laboratory, entrepreneurship and production. Recently, there are also many interesting tryouts of applying methods in synthetic biology to medical science but still, it will take some time for them before actually dominating the market.
Q: Moreover, do you have any suggestions for high school students who are interested in biology?
Dr.F: The first and the most important thing is general education, which means that you need to cover a wide range of subjects during your learning journey. Especially, nowadays, a lot of influential breakthroughs are in interdisciplinary field, such as artificial intelligence and synthetic biology. Given that traditional educational models are built on the sorts of disciplines, the knowledge you learnt is relatively limited so that in order to catch up with the current trend, you need to expand your horizon as much as possible. Thus, if you are developing further in scientific research, the investigative methods and thinking pattern of yours will surely be a lot different than otherwise.
Dr.H: I think that during high school, you should communicate more with others if you have the time and the vigor. Developing your interested fields of study is the most important thing during high school and by communicating with different people in different fields of study such as biology, engineering or chemistry, you will
Q: Before the end of today’s interview, I want to ask a not-so-academic question. If you are asked to summarize biologist using one word/phrase, which one will you choose?
Dr.H: I think it is persistence.
Dr.F: Actually, for all of the scientists “curious” is definitely a vital disposition. Unlike commercializing professional techniques, doing scientific research should start off from the origin of hunger and curiosity instead of materialism.
Introductory Guide for new iGEMers
At the beginning of our iGEM journey, we found our that there isn’t such a suitable introductory guide book or series of courses designed for new, high school iGEMers. Being inspired by this, we decided to write a “dummies guide”, compiling useful information from textbooks, lab manuals and previous iGEM experiences, for the fledgelings biologists.
The brochure is separated into several sections:
- General introduction to synthetic biology and iGEM competition
- Basic knowledge about genes
- Central dogma
- Introduction to important synthetic biology experiments
Thanks to the artists in our team, we have accompanied each different knowledge point with adorable illustrations to help understanding. Considering our limited preparation time and the urgent need for such a guide in China, unfortunately, we wrote this guide in Chinese only. However, we are ready to compose another one next year with more details and deeper knowledge, in both English and Chinese to make it more internationally influential and useful. With the help of this introductory brochure, we are aiming to make these knowledge of synthetic biology easily accessible for fledgling iGEMers from all over China, or even the world, so that more people will get to know about this amazing realm of synthetic biology. Click the link below to download a Chinese version of our dummies guide!
Social evaluation
Comprehensive Evaluation
Health
The drought resistance proteins will make the transport of bacteria much easier, which helps the development and popularity of certain medicines using therapeutical probiotics. For example, intestinal probiotics can be made into dry powder and put into capsules to treat digestion disorder.
Environment
As a result of the expanding population, a great portion of the forest is destroyed and the number of green plants drops dramatically, resulting in the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration increasing and desertification. With this drought-resistant gene (protein), plants would be able to survive in the extremely dry areas. The plants prevent the further expansion of the desert and stabilize the climate, so we believe that our product will help to relieve the concerning issues of global warming and desertification.
Economic & Social
We can now preserve and transport the bacteria more easily, so the price of buying bacteria may go down. According to the price elasticity, the demand will consequently increase. Therefore, there may be more new companies entering this market. The cost of those bacteria-based medicines will decrease, making it cheaper and more available for people, which promotes the public health and well-being. Moreover, we can genetically modify the crops using this drought resistance gene, solving food shortage in regions with little precipitation.
Risk Assessment
The gene we put into the E.coli that makes it able to withstand radiation means that we cannot kill the bacteria effectively using UV which is the most common methods of sterilization applied in public areas like hospitals nowadays. In a word, human loses one of its powerful weapon to fight against the microbes. For patients that in need of surgery, this means that their chances of getting infection increases. For biology researchers especially, their experiment outcome will possibly be affected by microbes contamination. We might need to redesign a way to sterilize the clean bench in our lab.
