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.<p></p>

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.<p></p>

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.<p></p>

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.<p></p>

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.<p></p>

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.<p></p>

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 they 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.<p></p>

To better illustrate our strategy and mechanism behind the Solar Hunter, our team self designed, filmed and edited a movie. The movie can be viewed in the following to help you build a better understanding on our project.<p></p>

Meanwhile, this video is used as propagational and educational tools to spread the iGEM competition as well as synthetic biology. Multimedia approach is undoubtedly the best way to arouse interests when it comes to the young generations. Through our efforts, we expect more and more people, especially young kids could know deeper about synthetic biology, eventually resulting in more social contributions and significances.<p></p>