Difference between revisions of "Team:Tianjin/HP/Silver"

Line 253: Line 253:
  
 
    
 
    
<h2>Engagement</h2>
+
<h2>About Social work</h2>
<p> During these months,we have done some activities that involved all parts of people in society to increase people's knowledge about Synthetic Biology, to make iGEM known to more people and to make our project more influential among people of various jobs. In order to achieve the first goal, we took use of the platform of Begonia Festival of our school to hold up a propaganda involving intriguing games. For the second goal, we set up a Lab-Open day which allows high school students, college students and adults to visit our labs and do some easy experiments in person and to take part in the teach-ins held by our team to know more details of iGEM. We also went to TUST to take part in their iGEM promotion activities to increase the popularity of iGEM in their school and to promote the amicable relationships between our team and team of TUST.</p>
+
<p> This year, our social work is divided into two directions, one direction is which area our project is good for, the other direction is to find what benefit our project can bring to the community. we mainly contacted the staff of the government (EPA), Industry ( Iron and steel plants), state-owned enterprises (sewage treatment plants) and private enterprises (heavy metal processing companies) to carry out surveys and assessment of our project. During the process of the survey, we are constantly adjusting our ideas and direction under the premise that our project is really good for our planet.</p>
 
+
 
+
<div class="zxx_zoom_left"  style="left:25%;">
+
                    <div class="small_pic">
+
                        <a href="#pic_seven">
+
                            <img src="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2017/5/54/%E5%BE%AE%E4%BF%A1%E5%9B%BE%E7%89%87_20171003130153.jpg"></a>
+
<div style="padding-left:20%;"><p></p></div>
+
                    </div>
+
                   
+
                    </div>
+
                  <div id="pic_seven" style="display:none;"><img src="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2017/5/54/%E5%BE%AE%E4%BF%A1%E5%9B%BE%E7%89%87_20171003130153.jpg"/></div>
+
                 
+
                 
+
 
                  
 
                  
  
<div id="middle" name="middle">
+
<h3>Contact with the Ministry of Environmental Protection</h3>
<h3>more</h3>
+
        <img>
<p>I What's more, we developed a public research involving people across China on the platform of Wechat for the sake of the third goal.</p>
+
<p>To find out whether the things we do is really useful to the world, we must first investigate the seriousness of the problem to be dealt with, so we visited the highest environmental authority in China's government departments: the Chinese Ministry of Environmental Protection. The vice Minister of the State Environmental Protection Department told us that Yangtze River whose water quality is the best of all the rivers in China has been polluted by heavy metals, and among 21 cities near river, 6 of them, s heavy metal accumulation percentage reached 65%. This result is not optimistic, so the control of heavy metal pollution is imminent.</p>
</div>
+
 
+
 
+
 
+
 
+
 
+
 
+
 
+
<div id="two" name="two">
+
+
</div>
+
 
+
 
+
<h2>Begonia Festival</h2>
+
<p> On April 3rd, about thirty thousand people stepped in TianJin University to take part in the Begonia Festival and to enjoy the bueaty of spring. Our team decided to take advantage of this opportunity to make public know more about Synthetic Biology. We let people joining our activities inoculate bacterias in culture medium in any pattern they want, during which they can enjoy the happiness of doing biology experiments and get more interested in biology study.</p>
+
 
+
<div class="zxx_zoom_left">
+
                    <div class="small_pic" style="float:left;">
+
                        <a href="#pic_one">
+
                            <img src="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2017/9/9c/692217429000843970.jpg"></a>
+
<div style="padding-left:20%;"><p></p></div>
+
                    </div>
+
                    <div class="small_pic" style="float:right;">
+
                        <a href="#pic_two" >
+
                            <img src="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2017/d/d7/U%3D1152125923%2C4139993263%26fm%3D117%26gp%3D0.jpg"/>
+
                        </a>
+
                    </div>
+
                    </div>
+
                  <div id="pic_one" style="display:none;"><img src="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2017/9/9c/692217429000843970.jpg"/></div>
+
                  <div id="pic_two" style="display:none;"><img src="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2017/d/d7/U%3D1152125923%2C4139993263%26fm%3D117%26gp%3D0.jpg"/></div> 
+
 
+
<div class="zxx_zoom_left">
+
                    <div class="small_pic" style="float:left;">
+
                        <a href="#pic_three">
+
                            <img src="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2017/c/cf/291519661563138743.jpg"></a>
+
<div style="padding-left:20%;"><p></p></div>
+
                    </div>
+
                    <div class="small_pic" style="float:right;">
+
                        <a href="#pic_four" >
+
                            <img src="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2017/d/d8/Tianjin2.jpg"/>
+
                        </a>
+
                    </div>
+
                    </div>
+
                  <div id="pic_three" style="display:none;"><img src="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2017/c/cf/291519661563138743.jpg"/></div>
+
                  <div id="pic_four" style="display:none;"><img src="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2017/d/d8/Tianjin2.jpg"/></div> 
+
 
+
 
+
 
+
<div id="three" name="three">
+
<h3>After</h3>
+
<p> A few days later, when the bacteria they inoculated grew mature, we put these pictures of the pattern bacterias grew onto our Wechat subscription, which received a good feedback among people who joined it. </p>
+
</div>
+
 
+
 
+
 
+
 
+
<div class="zxx_zoom_left">
+
                    <div class="small_pic" style="float:left;">
+
                        <a href="#pic_five">
+
                            <img src="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2017/f/f7/896358115638089642.jpg"></a>
+
<div style="padding-left:20%;"><p></p></div>
+
                    </div>
+
                    <div class="small_pic" style="float:right;">
+
                        <a href="#pic_six" >
+
                            <img src="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2017/0/00/495808992225298876.jpg"/>
+
                        </a>
+
                    </div>
+
                    </div>
+
                  <div id="pic_five" style="display:none;"><img src="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2017/f/f7/896358115638089642.jpg"/></div>
+
                  <div id="pic_six" style="display:none;"><img src="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2017/0/00/495808992225298876.jpg"/></div> 
+
 
+
 
+
 
+
 
+
 
+
 
+
 
+
  
<p><a class="ref" href=""></a></p>
+
<h3>Prof. Hongyan Qu</h3>
     
+
<p>At the same time,we also consulted the professor of School of Environmental Sciences of Tianjin University-Qu Hongyan, she told us that the research of removal of heavy metals from groundwater is a very important issue.</p>
<h2>Lab-Open Day</h2>
+
<p>In order to promote the popularity of iGEM and Synthetic Biology among people who are interested in biology. We released the information of this activity in our Wechat subscription and received many entry blanks from high school students, college students and the parents of this high school students. First of all, we held a teach-ins taken part by these students and parents. During the meeting, we talked about what is iGEM, its origin and rules. What is more, we talked about the projects of TianJin iGEM in recent years with easy- to-understand way. In the end of the meeting, there was a question-answer session, which means that we threw out some questions based on the contents of we had talked, the student with the highest score can abstain our special gifts. By this session, we knew that students joined our meeting already had a rough understand of iGEM and Synthetic Biology.</p>
+
<div class="zxx_zoom_left">
+
                    <div class="small_pic" style="float:left;">
+
                        <a href="#pic_eight">
+
                            <img src="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2017/2/26/%E5%BE%AE%E4%BF%A1%E5%9B%BE%E7%89%87_20171024213351.jpg"></a>
+
<div style="padding-left:20%;"><p></p></div>
+
                    </div>
+
                    <div class="small_pic" style="float:right;">
+
                        <a href="#pic_nine" >
+
                            <img src="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2017/5/5c/%E5%BE%AE%E4%BF%A1%E5%9B%BE%E7%89%87_20171024213355.jpg"/>
+
                        </a>
+
                    </div>
+
                    </div>
+
                  <div id="pic_eight" style="display:none;"><img src="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2017/2/26/%E5%BE%AE%E4%BF%A1%E5%9B%BE%E7%89%87_20171024213351.jpg"/></div>
+
                  <div id="pic_nine" style="display:none;"><img src="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2017/5/5c/%E5%BE%AE%E4%BF%A1%E5%9B%BE%E7%89%87_20171024213355.jpg"/></div> 
+
  
 +
<img>
  
<h3>after meeting</h3>
+
<p>After talked with her, we decided to carry out our topic in this area. While carrying out the project, we went to some places involving heavy metal treatment, such as the Environmental Protection Agency, life / industrial sewage treatment plants, heavy metal processing companies and state-owned enterprises such as steel mills, hoping to get some advice, according to which we can adjust our experimental direction.</p>
<p>After the meeting, we took them to our labs. We showed them the experimental process of Synthetic Biology such as PCR, inoculate bacterias on the culture medium, centrifugation and extract plasmid. By this visit, both students and parents got a closer understand of biology science and the process of doing scientific research. Because these parents told us that they were concerned about the prospect of doing scientific research and they were afraid of the tedium of science, we gave them some information about our experience during taking part in iGEM, and told them that doing scientific research was not as scary as they imagine.
+
</p>
+
<div class="zxx_zoom_left">
+
                    <div class="small_pic" style="float:left;">
+
                        <a href="#pic_ten">
+
                            <img src="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2017/c/ca/%E5%BE%AE%E4%BF%A1%E5%9B%BE%E7%89%87_20171024213338.jpg"></a>
+
<div style="padding-left:20%;"><p></p></div>
+
                    </div>
+
                    <div class="small_pic" style="float:right;">
+
                        <a href="#pic_eleven" >
+
                            <img src="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2017/1/15/%E5%BE%AE%E4%BF%A1%E5%9B%BE%E7%89%87_20171024214841.jpg"/>
+
                        </a>
+
                    </div>
+
                    </div>
+
                  <div id="pic_ten" style="display:none;"><img src="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2017/c/ca/%E5%BE%AE%E4%BF%A1%E5%9B%BE%E7%89%87_20171024213338.jpg"/></div>
+
                  <div id="pic_eleven" style="display:none;"><img src="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2017/1/15/%E5%BE%AE%E4%BF%A1%E5%9B%BE%E7%89%87_20171024214841.jpg"/></div> 
+
  
<div class="zxx_zoom_left">
+
<h3>the situation we saw in Sewage treatment plant - Pingdingshan Kangxing Environmental Protection Water Limited Company</h3>
                    <div class="small_pic" style="float:left;">
+
                        <a href="#pic_twelve">
+
                            <img src="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2017/8/80/%E5%BE%AE%E4%BF%A1%E5%9B%BE%E7%89%87_20171024213343.jpg"></a>
+
<div style="padding-left:20%;"><p></p></div>
+
                    </div>
+
                    <div class="small_pic" style="float:right;">
+
                        <a href="#pic_thirteen" >
+
                            <img src="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2017/c/cd/%E5%BE%AE%E4%BF%A1%E5%9B%BE%E7%89%87_20171024213347.jpg"/>
+
                        </a>
+
                    </div>
+
                    </div>
+
                  <div id="pic_twelve" style="display:none;"><img src="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2017/8/80/%E5%BE%AE%E4%BF%A1%E5%9B%BE%E7%89%87_20171024213343.jpg"/></div>
+
                  <div id="pic_thirteen" style="display:none;"><img src="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2017/c/cd/%E5%BE%AE%E4%BF%A1%E5%9B%BE%E7%89%87_20171024213347.jpg"/></div>
+
  
 +
<img src="">
  
+
<p>Life sewage treatment plants use multiple-bacterial system to settle heavy metal down, to which our project can be utilized. But the leader told us that its ability to settle down the heavy metal is very low because these bacteria are intolerant of metals. Because China's sewage treatment plants generally do not have technology to deal with heavy metal, once the content of heavy metals in water exceeded the standard, treatment plant will stop all process, submitted the sewage to the government, which will make the efficiency and the benefit of sewage treatment plant very low. If the sewage treatment plant have the genetically modified yeast we have done, they can have a higher efficiency.</p>
<h2>Public Research </h2>
+
<p>In order to know whether people around China know about pollution of heavy mental and make information about this problem known to more people, we developed a public research on the platform of our Wechat subscription. This questionnaire was filled by people in various province of China, and we can get the information that most people have a rough understand of heavy mental pollution but few of them start a research about how is the heavy mental discharged into the environment and how to reduce this pollution. According to the results of the questionnaire, we also knew that people are more willing to use biology method to settle heavy mental down than using chemical or physical method. </p>
+
  
 
<p>Our research had also published on the iGEM official collaboration website. We had received 1000 answers in roll.</p>
 
  
 +
<h3>The Survey of Zhongtiao Mountain Heavy Mental Factory、Steel Group Wugang company in Henan Province, and telephone conference with Environmental Protection Agency </h3>
 +
<p>First of all, we visited the Zhongtiao Mountain Heavy Mental Factory and iron plant, learned that all the waste water will be discharged into a large place called "tailings", similar to the artificial lake , built in sparsely populated area.</p>
 +
<img src="">
  
 
<h3>contact with experts</h3>
 
<p>Apart from the activities we have done above, we also have a good contact with experts in Synthetic Biology to obtain more neoteric ideas. On March 7th, the founder of SynBioBeta-John Cumbers came to TianJin University to have a talk with our mentor-professor Yingjin Yuan to talk about the development of Synthetic Biology in China and the projects of our team in recent years. This meeting attracted a lot of students to come.  John Cumbers listened to the speech of our team leader-Mingzhe Han carefully and he said that it was amazing how big progress our team had made during these years. During the meeting, the investor of FressVC shared with us the broad prospects of Synthetic Biology and he told us that he was hoping us to realize the commercialization of Synthetic Biology and industrialization. In the end of the meeting, the members of our team asked some question about Synthetic Biology such as how does Synthetic Biology as a newly emerging subject realized the promotion across the world and what is the future trend of Synthetic Biology. John Cumber said that iGEM played an important part in the promotion of Synthetic Biology and in the future, Synthetic Biology may create some biological tools like computer to simulate the process of the evolvement of biological species. We learned a lot during this meeting and had a more clear assessment of Synthetic Biology.</p>
 
  
 +
<p>We learned that the EPA is responsible for the treatment of the tailings, so we contacted the local EPA, hoping to explore the benefits of our bacteria can bring. the EPA disclosed that microbiological treatment is unusual. And the tailing use physical method which is of high cost and low efficiency. What is more, tailings have service life, and physical method can not completely settle heavy metal down. So if we use biological treatment, we can make the tailings return to the original state and we can recycle the heavy metal in it.</p>
  
 +
<h3>ZhongKeDingShi heavy metal treatment company</h3>
 +
<p>And then we had a telephone conference with the doctoral of heavy metal processing company, he told us that the most common approach is using physical and chemical, biological method is not common because bacteria need oxygen, nutrients and energy, which is a big cost. The most important thing is that there is no such high microbes with high resistance to heavy metal, so microbial methods are difficult to achieve, although it is friendly to the environment. So we introduced them our genetically modified SCRAMBLE strain and they showed a interest in our subject, and he told us that if our strain were able to achieve high resistance, it would be more environmental friendly and economical than physical and chemical methods. </p>
  
   
+
<h2>About safety</h2>
<div class="zxx_zoom_left" align="center">
+
<p>Our problem about safety is that, in order to obtain highly tolerant strains, we are using yeast with synthetic chromosome 10, which have many cre-loxp sites to make it mutate, so that if the artificial modified strains leak, they may be mating with the wild-type yeast, Their offspring may have the artificial chromosome. In this regard, we consulted some experts in this area.</p>
                    <div class="small_pic">
+
<h3>Yi Wu</h3>
                        <a href="#pic_fourteen">
+
<p>We asked Dr. Wu Yi, the main person responsible for the synthesis of chromosome 10, and he told us that it was possible to exchange genetic information with wild-type yeasts, but this was far from gene drive. He also recommended to us an article that they have published in the genome research on ethics and biosecurity.</p>
                            <img src="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2017/0/09/Qqqqqqqqqqqqqqq.jpg"></a>
+
<h3>The professor of Tianjin Huanghe institution -Li Yuanying</h3>
<div style="padding-left:20%; font-size:1.2rem;"><p>Group photo of our team and John Cumber</p></div>
+
<p>We also consulted the staff of the Huanghe institution-Li Yuanying who is an expert in evaluating the safety of projects. She told us that if the modified microbes leak into the natural environment, it will easily lead to gene drift. It may also have a long-term impact on other species. It is recommended that we should carefully read the policy regarding to genetic engineering. We listened to the proposal of Li Yuanying and realized that our engineering strain is likely to have an impact on the environment, so we decided to only promote our project ideas and innovative points. Only promote this project when we find ways to inhibit their leakage.</p>
                    </div>
+
<h3>Communication of Five schools </h3>
                   
+
<p>We had a meeting with the team of NKU, TUST, JLU and NPU. At the meeting we showed our experimental ideas and the leader of NPU pointed out that we can add a lethal gene which can make the synthetic yeast die when it is mating with wild-type yeast. We thanked them for their comments and are looking for the best solution.</p>
                    </div>
+
<h3>Jef.D.Boake</h3>
                  <div id="pic_fourteen" style="display:none;"><img src="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2017/0/09/Qqqqqqqqqqqqqqq.jpg"/><br>Group photo of our team and John Cumber</div>
+
<img src="">
                 
+
<p>On June 10th, Jef.D.Boake came to TianJin University to give a speech about Synthetic Biology. During the speech, our leader-Mingzhe Han asked him the ethical issues of SCRaMbLE, he answered that the future trends of SCRaMbLE are very likely to go in the higher biological direction, but in the present, many people may not be able to accept this kind of major breakthrough in synthetic biology. But with the time changes, maybe one day this could be acceptable even of great help for people. He also suggests us to do some investigation for our safety, comprehensive our project.</p>
<div id="four" name="four">
+
  
</div>
 
  
 
<div id="gobottom" name="gobottom">
 
<div id="gobottom" name="gobottom">

Revision as of 13:32, 27 October 2017

/* OVERRIDE IGEM SETTINGS */

Silver


About Social work

This year, our social work is divided into two directions, one direction is which area our project is good for, the other direction is to find what benefit our project can bring to the community. we mainly contacted the staff of the government (EPA), Industry ( Iron and steel plants), state-owned enterprises (sewage treatment plants) and private enterprises (heavy metal processing companies) to carry out surveys and assessment of our project. During the process of the survey, we are constantly adjusting our ideas and direction under the premise that our project is really good for our planet.

Contact with the Ministry of Environmental Protection

To find out whether the things we do is really useful to the world, we must first investigate the seriousness of the problem to be dealt with, so we visited the highest environmental authority in China's government departments: the Chinese Ministry of Environmental Protection. The vice Minister of the State Environmental Protection Department told us that Yangtze River whose water quality is the best of all the rivers in China has been polluted by heavy metals, and among 21 cities near river, 6 of them, s heavy metal accumulation percentage reached 65%. This result is not optimistic, so the control of heavy metal pollution is imminent.

Prof. Hongyan Qu

At the same time,we also consulted the professor of School of Environmental Sciences of Tianjin University-Qu Hongyan, she told us that the research of removal of heavy metals from groundwater is a very important issue.

After talked with her, we decided to carry out our topic in this area. While carrying out the project, we went to some places involving heavy metal treatment, such as the Environmental Protection Agency, life / industrial sewage treatment plants, heavy metal processing companies and state-owned enterprises such as steel mills, hoping to get some advice, according to which we can adjust our experimental direction.

the situation we saw in Sewage treatment plant - Pingdingshan Kangxing Environmental Protection Water Limited Company

Life sewage treatment plants use multiple-bacterial system to settle heavy metal down, to which our project can be utilized. But the leader told us that its ability to settle down the heavy metal is very low because these bacteria are intolerant of metals. Because China's sewage treatment plants generally do not have technology to deal with heavy metal, once the content of heavy metals in water exceeded the standard, treatment plant will stop all process, submitted the sewage to the government, which will make the efficiency and the benefit of sewage treatment plant very low. If the sewage treatment plant have the genetically modified yeast we have done, they can have a higher efficiency.

The Survey of Zhongtiao Mountain Heavy Mental Factory、Steel Group Wugang company in Henan Province, and telephone conference with Environmental Protection Agency

First of all, we visited the Zhongtiao Mountain Heavy Mental Factory and iron plant, learned that all the waste water will be discharged into a large place called "tailings", similar to the artificial lake , built in sparsely populated area.

We learned that the EPA is responsible for the treatment of the tailings, so we contacted the local EPA, hoping to explore the benefits of our bacteria can bring. the EPA disclosed that microbiological treatment is unusual. And the tailing use physical method which is of high cost and low efficiency. What is more, tailings have service life, and physical method can not completely settle heavy metal down. So if we use biological treatment, we can make the tailings return to the original state and we can recycle the heavy metal in it.

ZhongKeDingShi heavy metal treatment company

And then we had a telephone conference with the doctoral of heavy metal processing company, he told us that the most common approach is using physical and chemical, biological method is not common because bacteria need oxygen, nutrients and energy, which is a big cost. The most important thing is that there is no such high microbes with high resistance to heavy metal, so microbial methods are difficult to achieve, although it is friendly to the environment. So we introduced them our genetically modified SCRAMBLE strain and they showed a interest in our subject, and he told us that if our strain were able to achieve high resistance, it would be more environmental friendly and economical than physical and chemical methods.

About safety

Our problem about safety is that, in order to obtain highly tolerant strains, we are using yeast with synthetic chromosome 10, which have many cre-loxp sites to make it mutate, so that if the artificial modified strains leak, they may be mating with the wild-type yeast, Their offspring may have the artificial chromosome. In this regard, we consulted some experts in this area.

Yi Wu

We asked Dr. Wu Yi, the main person responsible for the synthesis of chromosome 10, and he told us that it was possible to exchange genetic information with wild-type yeasts, but this was far from gene drive. He also recommended to us an article that they have published in the genome research on ethics and biosecurity.

The professor of Tianjin Huanghe institution -Li Yuanying

We also consulted the staff of the Huanghe institution-Li Yuanying who is an expert in evaluating the safety of projects. She told us that if the modified microbes leak into the natural environment, it will easily lead to gene drift. It may also have a long-term impact on other species. It is recommended that we should carefully read the policy regarding to genetic engineering. We listened to the proposal of Li Yuanying and realized that our engineering strain is likely to have an impact on the environment, so we decided to only promote our project ideas and innovative points. Only promote this project when we find ways to inhibit their leakage.

Communication of Five schools

We had a meeting with the team of NKU, TUST, JLU and NPU. At the meeting we showed our experimental ideas and the leader of NPU pointed out that we can add a lethal gene which can make the synthetic yeast die when it is mating with wild-type yeast. We thanked them for their comments and are looking for the best solution.

Jef.D.Boake

On June 10th, Jef.D.Boake came to TianJin University to give a speech about Synthetic Biology. During the speech, our leader-Mingzhe Han asked him the ethical issues of SCRaMbLE, he answered that the future trends of SCRaMbLE are very likely to go in the higher biological direction, but in the present, many people may not be able to accept this kind of major breakthrough in synthetic biology. But with the time changes, maybe one day this could be acceptable even of great help for people. He also suggests us to do some investigation for our safety, comprehensive our project.