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+ | <h4><b>Mingdao voice </b></h4> | ||
+ | <h4><b>Time : 9/26</b></h4> | ||
+ | <h4><b>Location : Mingdao</b></h4> | ||
+ | <h4><b>Objective : The Mingdao Voice</b></h4> | ||
+ | <h4><b>Contemporary Salon</b></h4> | ||
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+ | <h4>To understand what doubt people will react when seeing our product and to increase the extent of public acceptance, we invited The Mingdao Voice, an outstanding club for thinking and discussing. We introduced our project to them during the club time in the hope of getting inspiring feedback. </h4> | ||
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+ | <h4>The Mingdao Voice is a club organized by students themselves in Mingdao High School. Students there follow social issue with interest and hold lots of lectures, sharing thoughts with audiences. Quite unique this club is. </h4> | ||
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+ | <h4>This is the first time Mingdao iGEM jumps out of the field of science and collaborate with the elite in humanities and social science. The way they think against the holistic issue and the speech hitting the nail on the head made us realize more about the further influence our product will bring to the world if released. </h4> | ||
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The followings are what we discussed with The Mingdao Voice :</h4> | ||
+ | <h4>Research has indicated that there will be a subtle decline in weight by reducing sugar intake in daily diet. The study lasted for about 8 months. The average decline on weight is about 1.7 bounds. Participants who consumed more sugar gain not much weight than those didn’t. </h4> | ||
+ | <h4>“There is also evidence that the longer the study, the more striking the effect.” said researcher Jim Mann, DM, PhD, professor of human nutrition and medicine at the University of Otago. </h4> | ||
+ | <h4>But, there’s no correspondence between sugar intake and changes on weight found on children. That may be owing to the children’s ignorance on the advice for diet we gave. Nonetheless, if we just focus on their consumption of sugary beverages, there’s some relation be found. Their habit of having sugary beverages significantly influences their weight, leading to obesity. The research discovered that the obesity rate of children who took in the most sugary beverage exceeded those took in the fewest by 50%. </h4> | ||
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+ | <h4>However, in Taiwan, the prevailing of handmade drinks has made it easy for us to find shops selling them everywhere. It is relatively hard for people to resist the temptation of sugar. If we are to solve the problem of obesity, the most direct approach is to avoid our intestine from absorbing sugar. With such aspiration, 2017 Mingdao IGEM team has designed a kind of bacteria which boost a higher efficiency of sugar absorbing. It can survive in the intestine and absorb excessive sugar before the villus have done it. This is how we take biological means to tackle the detriments sugar may cause. The bacteria is designed with a suicide system, which it will be brought to death if the concentration of sugar is lower than a standard amount we regulate. It will be discharged from our body with excretes. </h4> | ||
+ | <h4> If the product is successfully commercialized, do you agree with the way we solve the problem? Or is there an alternative? And, in your opinion, what impact may be brought to the world?</h4> | ||
+ | <h4> | ||
+ | The bellows are viewpoints from the students in The Mingdao Voice. | ||
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+ | <img src="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2017/4/4e/Mingdaochuck1020-26.jpeg" width="100%"> | ||
+ | <h3><b>Jenny Yeh :</b></h3> | ||
+ | <h4>I don't approve of the way to solve the problem of sugar. I think it cures the symptoms, not the disease. Although it seems that this way can fast deal with the threat which sugar poses to health, the problem of high sugar foods flooding is still unsolved.Perhaps this can receive the result in a short time ,but this can't be a longterm solution. Those who use this product may think it's okay to increase the intake of sugar, so they won't control their own desire or resist the temptation of sugar. Instead, the uncontrolled intake of sugar attributes to the serious sugar flooding. As for the influence on health condition, I think users may reduce the consumption of nutrition and ignore the balanced diet because of the more intake of sugar foods. What's more, the harmful substances in high sugar foods are not only sugar but also much chemical addition or a large amount of oil. As a result, the product can merely solve the problem of sugar content, but it still makes users ingest even more harmful substances by changing their attitude. </h4> | ||
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+ | <h3><b>Leona Sun :</b></h3> | ||
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+ | <h4>I do not agree with it. The above referred preventing sugar as the clearest solution to avoiding obesity, so there are two ways to reach this goal--not to eat sugar or utilizing the transgenic bacteria. Why do we have to spend so much time on creating special bacteria when we already have a direct and easy way, which is to consume less sugar? Isn't this holding a candle to the sun and what we got eventually is the same outcome as the former? | ||
+ |
</h4> | ||
+ | <h4> Next, if we no longer suffer from obesity due to consuming sugar, then everyone will consume sugar unrestrained. Think about this, we may be able to eat a lot of sugar without gaining weight, but what is the benefit for human beings on general? Isn't embracing our own desires without any negative effects going to facilitate more desires? We all know that smoking may lead to lung cancer, and drinking too much can lead to Gastric Ulcer. So does it mean that we are going to fulfill all our desires blindly by creating more transgenic bacteria? </h4> | ||
+ | |||
+ | <h4> Furthermore, the ones who are now wealthy enough to eat sugar will as a matter of course consume huge amount of sugar without worry after the commercialization of this bacteria. It indeed will boost the dessert and food industry, becoming a great benefit for countries producing sugar. However, we should also be aware of the labors that might be exploited under the progression of sugar industry. I mean stories of child labors at Ivory Coast being exploited aren't uncommon. Plus that erecting laws and restrainments to stop these sad stories from happening takes long time. It will inevitably cause great impact on these labors.</h4> | ||
+ | |||
+ | <h4> To conclude, I reckon that the transgenic bacteria may be useful on medical perspective, but it may not act the same way when it comes to the cultural side, suffice to say that there are a few nomadic people who view being plump as beauty. I would like to share a story with you related to what I've just said: When expertises from Taiwan come to aid of several african countries in order to improve their agricultural condition, it doesn't really help much, because most meetings are for men only owing to their tradition, but the ones that do agricultural work are actually women. This prove that what we think are great for the world may not be that great in reality.</h4> | ||
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− | + | <h4><b>After reading and analyzing the two replies, we listed three questions below :</b></h4> | |
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− | + | <h4>1. Why not just ingest sugar directly instead of complexing the solution by creating Genetically Modified bacteria? </h4> | |
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− | + | <h4>2. What if people won’t absorb any sugar they eat? Does that mean we can have sugar as much as we want? </h4> | |
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− | + | <h4>3. if the quantity of consuming sugar is uncontrollably rising, won’t it cause any sugarcane-farmer exploitations?</h4> | |
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Revision as of 05:13, 30 October 2017
Overview
"Human Practices is the study of how your work affects the world, and how the world affects your work." — Peter Carr, Director of Judging. What’s Human practice? It is not just a work to confirm and strengthen what we think is right. Instead, we should learn to share our knowledge with the world. We can’t just instill our personal cognition into others, nor can we blindly believe in whatever others say. All in all, human practice is all about “gain, give and mutual interaction”.
First, we build up a system constructed by the three topics below: Project, Us and the World. What we found is that our activities can actually made up a comprehensive interaction (refer to the following picture beside) For example, we “gain” professional suggestions from experts in various fields, which have made us think of repositioning our project; To conduct educating, we “give” what we know to those who are laymen in synthetic biology and sugar controlling. Other examples of give and gain also includes marketing and sponsorships. It is also necessary that we set up mutual pathways for knowledges, which are also known as meetups, collaborations and cross-domain communications. Totaling up all of them, we’ve excellently completed human practice.
To achieve our goal, we consult experts in different areas of study
Expert Consultation
Nephrologist
-
Time
7/22
-
Location
Bio-Lab
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Consultant
Dr. Wu
Fitness Coach
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Time
7/29
-
Location
Smooth Fitness Studio
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Consultant
Coach Wei Qian-Fu
Nutritionist
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Time
9/11
-
Location
McDonald's
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Consultant
Nutritionist Liu Guan-Ling
Outreach
Science, not only the lab, but into into the public
The Poll
Time: 9/16
Location:
Taichung City
Participants:
The public
Walk into the public!
S&T Month
Time: 5/22, 23, 25
Location:
Lecture Hall & Bio-Lab
Participants:
Mingdao students
iGEM in Campus!
Elementary School
Time: 9/22
Location:
Chiao-Jen Elementary School
Participants:
Kids
Sow Seed of Science
Drink Sampling
Time: 10/3
Location:
Mingdao High School
Participants:
Mingdao staff and students
Just Drink It!
Food and Drug Administration
Time : 9/27
Location : TFDA Office Building
Participant : Section Manager Zhou
Food Industry Research and Development Institute
Time : 9/29
Location : FIRDI Research Building
Participant : Doctor Zhu Wen-Shen
Science that benefits reality
Cross Domain Integration
Forum - The Mingdao Voice
Not limited to laboratory, we make business approach
Enterprise Outreach
Visit to Chung Mei Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd.
Part Name [Number]:
- Pcar, synthetic promoter repressed by CRP [BBa_K861171]
- RBS + PhlF repressor + terminator [BBa_K1725041]
- PhlF repressible promoter + strong RBS + GFP [BBa_K1725001]
Triggering the suicide circuit
In our case of sugar hijacking, ideally, the tiny, living “agents” are supposed to kill themselves in the story to make a happy ending. Therefore, we introduced a glucose responsive elements and a repressor circuit to be connected to suicide genes (lysis and NucA).
Promoter Pcar [BBa_K861171] is a glucose responsive promoter created by WHU-China in 2012. Pcar promoter region was de novo designed with overlapping of CRP and RNA polymerase binding site. The initiation of transcription by RNA polymerase may be hindered by the binding of CRP, which occurs at the formation of cAMP-CRP complex in the low concentration of glucose. In other words, when the amount of glucose is high enough, Pcar would be turned on after the leaving of CPR due to the low concentration of cAMP, and vice versa.
PhlF repressor system contains the repressor PhlF [BBa_K1725041] and the PhlF repressible promoter [BBa_K1725001] created by Glasgow in 2015. PhlF could repress GFP fluorescence intensity by 83-fold according to the study of Glasgow’s work.
Glucose responsive repressor device
We’ve innovated this year a novel glucose responsive repressor system (Pcar-wRBS-PhlF-T-Pr-sRBS-GFP/pSB1C3 [BBa_K2230012]) by connecting these two system and extend the function of them.
Please go to DEMONSTRATION section below to check the function of this device in our experimental results.
- - REFERENCE -
- 1. Amount of colicin release in Escherichia coli is regulated by lysis gene expression of the colicin E2 operon. PLoS One. 2015;10(3):e0119124.
- 2. Characterization of a nuclease produced by Staphylococcus aureus. J Biol Chem. 1967;242(5):1016-20.
Conclusion
It took us quite a long time to think about how to respond to the questions above, since last time we had a meetup with NCKU_Tainan, one of their team members had already ask us a pretty tough question similar like these problems that we barely couldn’t answer, “aren’t you guys supporting the world to consume more sugar?” At first, we kind of think that they are right. After all, there’s no denying that these questions just hit the weak point of our project and present the realistic society problems our product might bring, but after a fierce argument between our teammates, we repositioned our project and have the conclusion in addition below :
Indeed. It is actually the way that gets straight to the point the most. However, it’s just like the reason why you prefer Mosquito-repellent lotion to wearing long sleeves and trousers when hanging out with friends in a hot day. You don’t like to sweat and become smelly, so you make the choice. Let’s have another example. If you have motion sickness, the most simple and direct way to solve it is get off the car, but that’s too inconvenient. As a result, you take motion sickness pills instead. The two examples convey the same meaning. Sugar is not merely an essential nutrient in our normal life, but it is also added into snacks、afternoon tea… and so on that people enjoy for relaxation. That is, avoiding eating sugar may probably not be very efficient to reach the goal of losing weight. At this moment, our bacteria come into use.
But here comes a question. Eating sugar without absorbing it? People will definitely run into sugar’s hug rather than resist the desire.
Yes. Thus, instead of the medicines put on the shelf that everyone can purchase, our product will be prescription medicines for assistant purpose. Whether patients can take it to help control their weight or blood sugar depends on doctors’ judgment. The customer base we set as target is mostly those who need to lose weight. By doing so, our product won’t be the permit to the heaven of sugar.
So we come to the third question. In fact, this situation won’t happen no matter whether our product is prescription medicines for assistant purpose. That is because the sugar nowadays we use is mostly Corn syrup. The growth of corn is all mechanized and at area of large scale of land, which is as they are like apples and oranges when it comes to sucrose farmers exploitation. That’s why most news about farmer exploitation focuses on cocoa beans or coffee beans instead of sucrose.
There are always two sides to one coin. Everything has its own defect no matter how perfect it is. Facing the fault, what we should do is manage to solve it in preference to leaving it to the unsure factors in the future. Thank The Mingdao Voice for helping us passionately. It is this bilateral communication between science and humanities and social science that makes our project more specific and more mature to be closer to come true.
© iGEM Mingdao 2017. Design: Kevin Li. All rights reserved.