Human Practice Overview

Thinking beyond laboratory is one of the key factors that would affect the yield of scientific researches into real social interests. Thankfully, this idea has been recognized by the iGEM community for a very long time. Not only should every team participate in various social activities, but also we need to keep a real time interaction with the society, the place that we ultimately hope to create magnificence.

This year, our team applied the knowledge of synthetic biology to seek feasible solutions to the energy issue. Urgent as it is, the energy issue is more than a regional problem, but has raised global concerns. It is not just the difficulty we are now faced with, but the huge challenge that would greatly restrain the development of our future generations. Lots of researches and studies have been already devoted into the field. However, the challenge still remains, mainly due to the formidable gap between the research studies and the real industrial application. Thus, what our team wants to achieve is not only demonstrating our platform on the lab bench, but also gradually improving the system in the real social context. With this idea in minds, our team kept interacting with people from all walks of life, the industrial community, the academic experts, and the administrative governments, hearing their voice and learning from their comments.

At the very early stage, when we were still brainstorming the idea, our team members actively talked to several top research groups all over the world. It was their insightful words that continuously stimulated our inspirations and promoted our improvements. Some of those groups have closely worked with photovoltaic materials for long; some of them are the leaders in electron transferring in organisms. Also, some of the team members have relatives working in the energy-related industry, so we took the advantages of these connections, searching for advices from an industrial aspect. Through these social dialogues, we not only discussed about the relevant technological operations; besides the team also learnt about the biggest obscures dragging the real application and industrialization with regards of the energy issue. Three criteria for a feasible solution were figured in the conversations, which are reasonable cost, satisfying efficiency, and the most importantly sustainability. With these objectives in heart, we thought over and over again during the whole research process to keep modifying the idea and make it more and more adaptable to the real industrial application. In assistance of these social interactions, lots of progresses and breakthroughs occurred, including the ultimate application of biofilm, a self-assemble, high-resistant, adhesive bio-material, which realize the relative high conductivity as well as the regenerative ability of the system.

Then, soon after we finished the first version of the project, “Solar Hunter I”, we proposed and conducted a public questionnaire, where we further learnt about the public attitude towards the energy issue as well as our project. A serious of general and detailed topics was investigated. From the analysis of the questionnaire, we learnt the biggest two public concerns of the wide application of hydrogen, that was safety and expense. Also, further communications with the industrial community, the academic experts, and the responsible authority were suggested as well.

In response to the subsequent need for further field investigation from various angles, our team then carried out a series of interviews with people working with the energy issue but from different points of view. Not only did we continue to be connected with more and more field experts academically, but also we spared plenty of time and efforts to be in touch with people in the industrial community as well as the government. Through the talks and discussions, we further developed the understanding on the mainstream opinions with regards of the safety concern for hydrogen application both academically and industrially. As those field experts replied, benefiting from some of the characteristics hydrogen possessed, including low density nontoxicity, and zero pollutant emission, hydrogen demonstrated terrific potential as an ideal energy source. Also, with those mature techniques in hydrogen transport and storage, the safety concern is not necessary. However, in terms of the industrial application, most of them laid strong emphasis on the applicability, efficiency, expense and the sustainability about our platform. Reminded by these conversations, our team further considered our system in the context of real industrial use. After a series of brainstorming, we planned to try another co-culture approach where the anaerobic condition was not necessary, instead of the original strategy that extracted the target protein directly. With this improvement, our platform was able to operate under normal aerobic environment, where the manufacture would be much easier and also obviously cost less. Moreover, attracted by our passion as well as the feasible idea, future collaboration with these industrial companies and the local authority would be very likely to be put into real actions later on.

Later on, when we demonstrated the project to some of these field experts again, they were pretty impressed by our soon improvements. As they commented, our new system demonstrated huge potential in massive industrial application. For the next step, they suggested us to work more on the efficiency. Since the electron transfer operated as key step in our system, we then tried to cultivate the biofilm on some small beads, increasing the contact area to achieve a better efficiency. Also, with the application of these small beads, the NRs attached on the biofilm were more easily to be collected and recycled, simply by spinning down the beads.

Additionally, while conducting our research with the interaction in the social context, our team also participated in a variety of educational propagation and public engagements. As the first-ever iGEM team at ShanghaiTech, this year we established the iGEM Day for Public Interests (iDPI), where we held a Lab Open House Day for the visiting high school student from Shanghai Coordinate International School, aiming at arousing their interests in science, especially in synthetic biology. Meanwhile, we introduced the iGEM to them as well, and are now helping them to build their first-ever high school team. Besides, out team collaborated another two iGEM team in China, one at Jiangsu Normal University, and the other at Tsinghua University.

For more details about our Human Practice and Social Engagements, please find the following pages as well as the attached links.

Social Research on the Energy Issue

https://2016.igem.org/Team:ShanghaitechChina/HP/Silver 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.

Questionaire

https://2016.igem.org/Team:ShanghaitechChina/HP/Silver