Integrated Human Practice
Mr. Jinghang Ji, Curator of Hangzhou Low Carbon Science & Technology Museum and vice general director of Green Zhejiang
Before we started discussing possible experiments we could perform in order to help the issue of global warming, we decided to consult Ji, curator of Hangzhou Low Carbon Science & Technology Museum.
Curator Ji was very welcoming and was also very curious about what direction we wanted to take with our experiment. We started off by introducing the general topic we had set for our topic, then he elaborated upon the current pressing issue of global warming on our world and how it is significantly damaging our environment. Afterwards, he introduced us present regulations and effort in China to handle this worrying trend, which he felt promising. When we asked his idea on the main obstruction between humanity and a world with less carbon dioxide, his idea was enlightening: the need for economical sources of energy (fossil fuels) will not end in recent years, and people’s lifestyle also played a big role in climate change. At this moment, our determination in active absorption of CO2 was strengthened and we found the loophole in education towards public on this matter.
Then, we moved on to possible ways we can use genetic engineering in order to help tackle global warming. After a good hour of thoughtful discussion with Ji, we finally came to a mutual agreement upon strategy to approach our experiment. Our experiment would focus on genetically modifying a type of organism to absorb CO2 and then eradicate it in some way to prohibit it from entering the carbon cycle again. Ji also suggested that algae would be good candidates although they might lead to tremendous workload during selection process.
We knew this would not be an easy task, however Curator Ji was confident that through hard work and collaboration, we would be able to have successful results.
Mr. Qifeng Zhao, Founder of Carbonmeasure
As an insider of our national carbon emission regulation, Mr. Zhao is the founder of Carbonmeasure, a company established under the instruction of National Development and Reform Commission. During our telephone conversation, he briefly introduced the work done by him and his company – scaling carbon emission for private sectors, planning low emission strategies for them, verifying new technologies fighting global warming. And their ultimate goal was the same as ours – stopping global warming. To help us gain insight into China’s policies, regulations, and technologies about climate changes, Zhao introduced ideas of carbon emission quota implemented in different provinces and carbon trading among governments and private sectors. From our conversation, we learnt that our nation has been carefully handling the issue yet stayed mainly on the level of reducing emission. Stating that commercially viable gadgets haven’t yet emerged in the market, Zhao sincerely hoped our project could come together in the end and join the force fight global warming.
Dr. Jindong Zhao, Academician of Chinese Academy of Science and professor of Peking University, as well as his assistant, Dr. Tao Lee, associate professor of Peking University We were extremely lucky to get in contact, through emails, with our nation’s leading phycology specialist, who discussed the prospects of our projects with us. He wrote that our work was tremendously meaningful yet challenging in many aspects. Also, he shared with us some parts of his ongoing researches to give enlightenment. Besides giving us his encouraging words and sharing knowledge about algae, he also shared his own thoughts about experiments and researches – to take a little detour when facing seemingly insurmountable difficulties. It was this very idea that helped us to test our metal-binding plasmids in E. coli when we were having trouble to transfer them into algae, which later produced promising results.
Dr. Xiaoling Miao, professor at Shanghai Jiaotong University
We were also very fortunate to contact Xiaoling Miao, a professor whose academic interest focuses on using algae to fix CO2. She was surprised on hearing that we were genetically modify algae to enhance photosynthesis efficiency. Her sharing on characteristics of algae greatly helped us narrow the search for our algae candidates. Also, she was so warmhearted that she instructed one of her students, Yi Gong (Ph.D candidate), to help us in laboratory when we reached out to her.
Dr. Chang Cui, advanced researcher at Jiangsu Clinical Medicine Research Institution In the process of our project, we were lucky to have a conversation with an advanced researcher, Chang Cui, from Jiangsu Provincial Hospital, who does similar work in manipulation at cell level. After hearing about our project, Dr. Cui was surprised by our goal of dealing with the global warming. However, he illuminated us that, even though the genetic engineering is an advanced technology that would largely benefit our society, we had to pay attention to the ethic issue by having a comprehensive understanding of relevant laws to avoid some ethic problems. In addition, Dr. Cui told us that we had to make sure that the transgenic organism we created was safe to the environment. In other words, the newly created organism should not destroy the environmental stability and the biological diversity. Even though the biological safety is a relatively complex and strict issue for young researchers, Dr. Cui still emphasized the importance of it as all scientific researchers had to take the social responsibility. Through the conversation with Dr. Cui, we had a deeper understanding of our project and felt the sense of mission as researchers.
