Team Collaboration

iGEM at Jiangsu Normal University

For this year’s competition, our team collaborated with the iGEM Team at Jiangsu Normal University.

JSNU’s project aims at applying anthocyan to a potential cancer therapy. Their early experiments were conducted based on the (cell type) where (gives a reason why use that cell type). To better test their idea, cancer cells were required for the further explorations. However, in September when they turned to work on the cancer cells, they just realized that those commercialized cancer cell clones were not ideal materials for the experiments, because the pioneer cell generations soon after the reviving were usually not in good condition for the experiments. Only those later cell generations (normally after the fifth generation), could be applied in the test. Additionally, due to the high expense of the cell clone as well as the long time period of the cell culture, it seemed impossible for the team to conducted their further experiments in cancer cells within the time frame necessary.

Thankfully, our team just had the hela cell clone (the ninth generation) in stock which was originally prepared for our previous idea for the iGEM competition. Also, benefiting from some of the group members’ professional skills in cell culture, the cell clone demonstrated good viability. In response to the emergency request from the iGEM at JSNU, we very soon prepared the cell samples according to their needs, and sent the materials immediately.

Meanwhile, the wiki-design team at JSNU provided us assistance in creating avatars, where they drew a serious of cartoon bacteria characters based on the real photos of our team members. These avatars are used and also can be seen at the Team session on our wiki page.

iGEM at Tsinghua University

This year, our team launched the collaboration with the iGEM team at Tsinghua University.

To better illustrate our biofilm-based platform strategy, the wiki-design team at Tsinghua University helped us to depict the brief mechanism of our project in a cartoon style. This figure are used and also can be seen at the (where do we use the picture) on our wiki page.

Social Research on the Energy Issue

As we described in the introduction and background session, the importance and urgency to work on the energy issue is obvious. The energy issue is neither just a regional nor national problems, but instead a global. In response to the urgent need, lots of scientific researches have devoted vast efforts and time to those relevant studies, however, only few of which are really able to be put into real usage. Therefore, the key issue for the energy issue is not only the technological advancements, but also the awareness to integrate the scientific results into industrial application to yield concrete social values. With this idea in mind that also accord with the requirements for iGEM Human Practice, this year our team conducted the social research on the energy issue, along with our biofilm based artificial photosynthesis platform.

The main objectives of this social research aim at socially figuring out the background information of the energy issue as well as getting prepared for the further industrialization of our project. To understand the situation more comprehensively, we want to hear various point of views from different aspects, the public, the academic, the industrial, and also the authority. Only when opinions from all these parties are heard, could we fully understand the issue in reality and then figure out a series of feasible solutions to contribute to our society.

This social research were performed briefly in two parts, public questionnaire and interviews. A public questionnaire was firstly implemented to collect general information from the public. Then, we carefully analyzed the data collected. And according to the main concerns and opinions we found through the questionnaire, experts from different walk of life were invited to participate in the interview. Our interviewees included scientists working at the cutting-edge in the field, industrial representatives dedicating to the energy conservation, as well as from the administrative government. With the participation of not only the public and the academic, but also the industrial and the authority, we deeply explored the social background to prepare to integrate and industrialize our project as well as built up necessary social connections for the future supports.

Questionnaire

A questionnaire about the energy issue was designed and then distributed through the internet. All 37 questions were asked, and here, we performed the core analysis of the questionnaire. We have finally in all collected 231 samples, 15 of which were canceled as invalid samples due to their short answering time (less than 180 seconds). The rest of 216 samples were regarded as valid responds that qualified for further analysis.

1.Respondents’ Backgrounds

A variety of respondents from different age groups, different education backgrounds, and different occupations participated in our questionnaire research. Age distributions can be viewed from the following figure.

Among all, the biggest two age groups participating in the questionnaire are 18-25 and 41-50. About 39% of the respondents were from 18 to 25. 13% aged between 31 to 40. More than 35% were aged between 41 to 50. The diagram shows an ideal age distribution aged from 18 to 50, while there were few respondents under 18 or over 50. Based on the survey on education background, over 77% of the participants were well-educated with at least a bachelor degree who surely share sufficient social experience and intellects. These statistics here demonstrate and ensure the statistical significance underlying this questionnaire.

2. Awareness of the Energy Issue

When investigated on public awareness the energy issue, most respondents as 78% laid strong emphasis on the problem. They considered the energy issue as an extremely urgent social problem that needed to be solved, which strongly illustrates the huge potential value and promise for our project.

3.Knowledge of Green Energy

Asked about whether people were familiar with the green energy, only 13% of the participants chose the most familiarity. Over 51% of the samples showed insufficient knowledge in green energy, which demonstrates the need for more public propagation. And this assumption were then proved by the following question that whether it is necessary to publicly enforce the idea of green energy, with about 95% participants showed positive attitude.

However, when talked about the possible influence from the studies on green energy, over half of the participants declared the strongest attitude. And plus, another 35% were with the second strongest attitude. From this, the promising prospects to apply green energy to deal with the energy issue are apparent. Besides, our team believes that with a wider spread of the background knowledge on the topic, more and more people would be likely to support the study on green energy to solve the energy issue.

We tested on the kinds of green energy well known by the public, where the solar energy ranked first with nearly 88%. Also, we asked about the important characteristics for a good form of green energy; less pollution,strong sustainability, reasonable costs ranked at the top three. Obviously, the application of solar energy perfectly can meet all these three requirements. Also, when asked about the opinion on the application of solar energy as the main energy source, near 88% demonstrated positiveness.

4.Attitude towards Hydrogen

Speaking of the overall attitude towards the present application of hydrogen production, more than half of the participants showed a negative attitude, which was understandable due to the high costs and immature means of industrial production. However, when asked about whether the hydrogen could be a sustainable energy source, a substantial increase in positive attitude could be seen, which showed the huge potential for the further development of hydrogen. Although there were still 45% held a negative attitude towards the application of hydrogen, our team believes that people may become more and more confident about it as long as the technology are much maturer and they are more familiar with the hydrogen with their main concerns eliminated.

In terms of the concerns for the application of hydrogen as an energy source, the biggest two dominating concerns were laid in safety and costs. From a scientific point of view, as long as the transportation and storage of hydrogen is proper to avoid the explosion limits, the usage of hydrogen are relatively safe. (This point were verified by the field professor though the late interview.) Actually, this is pretty much similar to the usage of coal gas and nature gas. Since people can well deal with these two inflammable gas, with the further development of relevant technologies, we hold a pretty positive prospects with regards of the safety problem. However, based on our background search, the way to maintain a relatively low cost producing hydrogen are still not available; and this just demonstrates the huge potential value of our project.

5.About Our Project

We briefly described the idea and mechanism of our energy-conversion platform, gaining about 63% of the positive feedback.Therefore the real application of our platform in a big productive scale is relatively promising and deserves a try. However, we also noticed the 37% with a relatively negative feedback, which also reminded us of further improvements on our idea, especially with regards to the safety, cost, and efficiency based on the feedback from previous question. And we believe that as long as the technology are much maturer and their main concerns are eliminated, people would hold a more positive point of view.

To assist our further integration of our project into real social application, further questions on the necessity of collaborations with industrial partners, academic research groups, and the government were asked.

About 62% of the participants demonstrated the strongest necessity to cooperate with some green energy related enterprises. Near 87% supported to acquire more technological assistance from the academics. More than 62% of the participant thought the supportive policy from the authority was very important for the real application. In responses to these results, further interviews from these three aspects were then scheduled.

Interview

In response to the strong necessity to get connected with the industrial, the academics, and the authority, so as to better promote and prepare for the real application and integration of our energy conversion platform and sever the mankind, a series of interviews with the industrial community, academic scientists, and administration and supervision departments were carried out. Taking the chance here, our team would like to extend our sincere gratitude to all those individuals and groups for their assistance and cooperation.

Industrial Community

Established in 1985, Shanghai Energy Conservation Association (SECA) is a membership non-profitable organization that works on the sustainable energy development on behalf of the industrial firms. Most of the local industrial companies, including those very influential ones like Bao Steel, are the members of the association. The SECA is set for the potential industrial collaborations with regards of the energy issue, whose main duties include the industrialization of new energy technologies as well as the propagation of the idea of energy conservation. Most employees working at SECA, including the interviewee, previously worked in the real industry. With their sufficient experience in the field, and also benefits from their daily cooperation with industrial partners, the SECA is undoubtedly an excellent place for our team to seek more insights from the industrial point of view. Also, the comments from the SECA would be of great importance for the industrialization and scale application of our project to yield more social interests.

Our delegation visited the SECA in August, 2016, where we also organized an interview with Mr. Lan (Yujun Lan), director of the expert committee at SECA, and Ms. Chen (Meijuan Chen), vise director of the expert committee at SECA.

At the beginning of the meeting, team member Haolong delivered an brief introduction to our project first. Both Mr. Lan and Ms. Chen were deeply impressed by our dauntless but creative idea. As they commented, they had served for the energy industry for decades, but this was the very first time they heard about using biological platform to provide new energy source as hydrogen gas. From an industrial point of view, they could tell the great future potential and feasibility our project suggested to be further developed into real industrial application in a big scale, meanwhile they also point out that some modifications especially with regards of the working conditions as well as an adaptation to the flow line production would be necessary. Besides, as Mr. Lan further said, the mission of the SECA included the promotion and industrialization of new technology, with their abundant experience in the field, they were willing to assist our team to continuously modify the project and try to put it into industrial application.

Then, Mr. Lan and Ms. Chen briefly talked about the daily operation of the SECA. Additional to the modulation of the membership industrial companies that resulted in a series of collaborations, socially popularizing and promoting the idea of energy conservation was also one of their core objectives. Through their efforts, they were looking for a gradual improvement of social awareness of the energy issus, espceially among the young age group. Annually, a variety of theme activities were held by the SECA to achieve the goal. Every year, there is an Energy Awareness Week took place in Shanghai where the representative industrial delegates were invited to introduce their cutting edge energy technologies to the public, in communities, schools, or exhibitions. Mr. Lan warmly welcomed and invited our team to participate in the next year’s theme week. We were so much sure that this special chance would be an awesome opportunity for our team to not only further socialize and industrialize the project, but also integrate our own efforts into real social needs.

Finally, Mr Lan. And Ms. Chen again emphasized the creativity and huge potential of our project from an industrial aspect. They encouraged us to modulate in details and step further. They were willing to provide any necessary assistance from the industrial community.

Academic Scientists

Propagation of iGEM - iGEM Day for Public Interests (iDPI)

Aiming at spreading the iGEM as well as contributing to the local community, ShanghaiTech iGEM Day for Public Interests (iDPI) was found in 2016, along with the establishment of the first ever iGEM team at ShanghaiTech University. The iDPI at ShanghaiTech is set up to encourage every iGEM team to dedicate themselves not only into scientific researches, but also social practices. Sciences and technologies are used to serve people ant the society; therefore the awareness to contribute to the social interests is of equal importance with the research explorations. This year, iDPI collaborated with Shanghai Coordinate International School, holding an iGEM Lab Open House Day on Zhangjiang campus.

The activity took place in the early September. At noon time, alone with another iGEM team at ShanghaiTech, our iGEM team members warmly welcomed the visiting delegation from Shanghai Coordinate International School at the conference room. Leaded by Dr. (Name), a leading science teacher at the Coordinate, the delegation consisted of 8 high school students from different grades.

An introduction speech to the ShanghaiTech was first delivered by the team member Haolong. Then he continued to further talked about the background of iGEM as well as synthetic biology. After that, delegates from two of the iGEM team conducted a brief presentation on the iGEM project subsequently. Finally an open discussion session was held, where the high school students demonstrated strong interests about synthetic biology and actively asked questions about the iGEM and our projects. Some of them even showed strong willingness to participate in the iGEM in the following year. As we responded at the meeting, we would be very happy to try to provide all sorts of assistance they may need to build up their own high school team for the iGEM. Also, if any of them were interested in real experience of hand-on lab operations, our iGEM lab was always open to them to visit and explore. Additionally, last week we were just informed by (Name) that their school would be very likely to build up their first-ever high school iGEM team; hopefully they may officially participate in the competition in the following years. We would keep providing them sufficient assistance and support as long as necessary.

After the speech and discussion, a lab visiting was scheduled as the second session of the Open House Day. Our team members paired with the visiting high school students, guiding them around the research center at school. We introduced the equipment to them one by one, from the cell disruptor to the ultra centrifuge, from the FACS to TEM, explaining the mechanisms behind in popular and easy-to-understand language. Part of our lab results were demonstrated as well, so as to help them build a better understanding on our projects.

The Open House Day ended around 6 in the evening. As one of the visiting students commented, this lab tour was very impressive and amazing which greatly aroused his curiosity to explore the secrets of nature. And this was just the core value shared by iDPI to pass the knowledge and inspire the interests to the next young generations.