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Scientific researches and the masses should never be separated; in fact, there are close interactions between the two. It is hard for a product serve human well if it was made in a closed door.

Part one: Absorb nutrients from the outside world

Many of Chinese students are taught to study alone in order to avoid external disturbances, but it is better to listen to outside voices when doing researches. For just standing on others’ shoulders will lifted a project a lot. This part contains:

Consultation with expert

Staying in the lab won't let us know what technical issues of production and circulation should be considered, an experienced CTO of a biology company will offer really useful advice. Click here for detail!

Product evaluation

We investigated similar products available on the market, and scored our product. Click here to see what makes our product stands out in the market.

Interviews concerned on important application fields

Our project is mainly for academic uses. However, miRNA inhibitors’ role on medical treatment cannot be ignored but another main possible application of our product. Click here to see more information of the interviews.

Cooperation among groups:

In the end of August, we attended Conference of China iGEAMer Community, idea exchange meet for China region).click here to see what we have done!

Part two: Bear social responsibility

This year our project is to develop a novel approach for miRNA inhibiting, but that is not all. As an integrated project, in addition to pure research, it has several tasks needed to be done in practice:

Open that black box

Scientific research has never belonged to only a few people; we are responsible for science popularization of our product and its related contents. This year we did something different! Click here to check them out.

Moving our glow sticks for synthetic biology

Participating in a synthetic biology competition, we wanted to exchange our ideas on synthetic biology with other interested schoolmates, thus we gave a presentation carefully prepared to them. Click here for detail.

Attentions on policy-making

So far, no policy mentioned how to standardize the microRNA antagonist therapy has been made, so we will have to wait for it, however, we consulted professors and had a general idea of policy. Want to see? Click here.

Consultation with expert

We went to GenetalksGenetalks is founded in Santiago by a team of young scientists in North America. Since 2009, the clinical transformation of gene testing has been carried out, and it was formally established in Beijing in 2014. With the core of gene technology and other advanced technologies such as information technology and machine learning, the company is committed to technological innovation, application development and services in the field of medicine and health.Hope to receive some professional、market-based suggestions from technicians there, and we were lucky enough to have their technical director Dr. Song Zhuo interviewed. As the CTO, he really considered more than we students, which inspired us a lot.

The most important point we realized lays on safety. If a product or a technology is put into use, the very first thing is to ensure its safety. Thus, he put forward two questions:

Will the sponge affect the normal function of cells?

Will MicroRNA inhibitor work in positive correlation with level gradient?

These provided us new ideas of safety inspection of product beyond the mainline; to fully solve these questions, we added cytotoxicity test and concentration gradient experiment to our future work.

As for application, he mentioned the market of MicroRNA inhibitor is not limited to research or the treatment of human diseases, agriculture and animal husbandry are also potential and untapped areas for MicroRNA inhibitor. Moreover, market sense is also important for a project; a streamlined and efficient experimental method with a lower cost will make our project more popular.

Product evaluation

Prices of similar products

We made a research on the prices of similar products, and we summed up the results in the following table, this table can roughly show the market prices for miRNA inhibitors existed:

Company	Product	product's name	Price（rmb）
Sigma Aldrich	TuD RNA	MISSION Lenti microRNA Inhibitor	6,961.50
Guangzhou RiboBio Co.	micrOFF™ miRNA Inhibitors are synthetic antisense oligonucleotides, which is complement to mature miRNAs sequence , for loss-of-function studies of miRNAs.	micrOFF miRNA inhibitor	500/nmol
Shanghai Integrated Biotech Solutions Co.,Ltd.	it is a special designed RNA molecule that can bind with specific miRNA.	miRNA inhibitors	300(2OD),500(4OD)
Suzhou GenePharma Co.	an 21-23nt RNA molecule, and was Inhibitoryeffectsof2'-O·—Methoxyethyl-Modified ,can serves as an efficiently microRNA inhibitor	GMR-miRTM microRNA inhibitors	350（2OD）
Biomics Biotechnologies.	This is a miRNA inhibitor, which is especially chemical modified, so that it can serves as an efficiently and specifically inhibitor.	miRNA inhibitor	650/10nmol
BIONEER Trade(Shanghai) Co.,Ltd.	This specially designed RNA molecule, which has been specially modified, can bind with specific miRNA.	ccuTarget™ miRNA Inhibitor	5 n mole	368
			10 n mole	544
			20 n mole	720
GeneCopoeia Inc	This specially designed RNA molecule, which has been specially modified, can bind with specific miRNA.	miArrest™ miRNA inhibitor	4000-12000

Cost evaluation of our own product

Name of reagents	Unit price	Use level	Equivalent
Oligo	$0.12 / base	25.4 bases	$0.000302
EcoR I	$19.55/4000U(15U/µL)	0.1µL	$0.0073
Spe I	$19.55/150U(10U/µL）	0.1µL	$0.13
T4 Polynucleotide Kinase	$25.87/200U(10U/µL)	0.2µL	$0.26
T4 DNA ligase	$25.87/28000U(350U/µL)	1µL	$0.32
2×Tap Master Mix	$102.27 / 5mL(3 pieces/mL)	10µL	$0.05
Tiangen Plasmid Microkit Kit	$102.27 / 200 times	One time	$0.51

 

Interviews concerned on important application fields

Nowadays, miRNA inhibitors play an important role in medical treatment. To know more information of miRNA antagonist therapy, we interviewed professor and teaching assistant in different medical universities.

Cooperation among groups

In the end of August, we attended FAFU_CCICFujian Agricultural and Forestry University Conference of China iGEAMer Community, and spent three days there.

The meetup is held for teams to share ideas and help each other. When communicating with other teams, we heard team BGIC-Union need plasmids which we designed a year before, then we decided to offer the plasmids, click here for details in collaboration page. In a few words, we had a fulfilling time in CCIC!

Exactly at this meeting, we found the project of team Lanzhou has some relevance to our project; their project is A novel method in controlling weeds and pests by tandem RNA Interference. Then we made communication in specific experiments at the venue. Thanks to CCIC, it provided a nice platform for teams to get together, know each other and discuss the possibilities of cooperation.

After CCIC, we made deeper online interaction with team Lanzhou with more team member participated.

In this online interaction, we talked about each teams’ project mechanism, new situations encountered in experiments and progress of modeling and human practice.

Open that black box

Publizing with new media

Our track this year is foundational advance，and the product---miRNA inhibitors is not familiar with the public. Therefore, if we want to have the public engaged in our work, the very first thing is to let them make friends with miRNA and our project!

In order to achieve a greater influence and outreach, we decided to have our popular science article pushed by WeChat subscription (The WeChat ID of the subscription account is zaxue8, it aims to spread knowledge to the masses). In addition, we used many internet memes in this article for a more vivid expression, and it worked just as we expected!

By now, 2666 people have read this article, and the number is still increasing. Since it is on the internet, people can open it not limited by time and space. And we can acquire the effectiveness of the publizing conveniently by reading rate and top comments.

Scan the QR code by WeChat to read our articles on your phone:Read this article!!!

Since we estimate miRNA is not popular among masses, we attached a small survey at the end of the article, and the result is:

This result shows that the miRNA popularization still has a long way to go, and it might take a long time before taking the second step.

Do you want a picture book?

Many people, like me, will probably feel bored to read something contain nothing but words, especially when the words is about learning. I realized it after I entered college to find there are too few illustrations in textbooks. We do not want others to feel the same when they try to read our pamphlets, so we made it a beautiful picture book, printed and separated.

Lecture in high school

High school students are young, vibrant, and always open to new things.

Last year, our team had Lab open day for some high school students. One named Zhang Herui, showed great interest in iGEM competition and synthetic biology and was recruited into our team. This year, considered there are few references of miRNA mentioned in textbooks, we walked into her school to fill the blanks and introduce our project.

Moving our glow sticks for synthetic biology

In June, our team was invited to give a lecture on iTED Sharing held by the Squirrel Club of NUDT, the theme of the lecture is biotech 2.0-the synthetic biology and iGEM in my eyes. Through this lecture, we gave the present students an introduction of our research field. We aimed to share our ideas with undergraduates and get feedbacks form the interactive section. Also the popularization of synthetic biology is achieved.

Attentions on policy-making

MiRNA antagonist therapy is a brand new area that there is no policy to regulate it; however, we decided to grasp the trend of policy. As the product developer, we also shoulder the responsibility of advising the government when needed. Thus, we consulted Professor Li Ling and teaching assistant Tu Shuo on wht should be paid attention to when making a policy for miRNA antagonist therapy.