Human Practices (Silver / Gold)

Silver

Hangzhou is widely known by water- related UNESCO World Heritages – West Lake and Grand Canal, however, severe water pollution has been received more and more attention in recent years. Another environmental pollution problem that is as important as water is soil pollution, especially heavy metal pollution. Hence, we want to design a operability device to solve the above environmental problems.
After a series of brainstorming as well as literature research, the project direction was becoming clear. Our topic inspired by a paper published in Science, March 2018 ^[1]. It mainly talked about the gene expression of methanobactine which is originated from methanotrophy, which triggers us the idea of using this gene to eliminate the heavy metal (copper) pollution in surrounding environment.

In order to confirm the project direction, we launched the human practice research carefully. The research included 3 parts: general background investigation, public survey, field trip and professional interview; the research objective focused on two aspects:

1) Whether the heavy metal pollution problem, especially copper, is very important to environment and public health.

2) Whether synthetic biology method could be accepted.

General Background Investigation

Heavy metal pollution refers to the environmental pollution caused by heavy metals and their compounds. Although some heavy metals are essential trace elements, most of them can be toxic to all forms of life at high concentrations due to formation of complex compounds within the cell. Unlike organic pollutants, heavy metals once introduced into the environment cannot be biodegraded. They persist indefinitely and cause pollution of air, water, and soils. Thus, the main strategies of pollution control are to reduce the bioavailability, mobility, and toxicity of metals. Methods for remediation of heavy metal-contaminated environments include physical removal, detoxification, bioleaching, and phytoremediation^[2][3].

Heavy metal pollution is a worldwide challenge, recently, because of industrialization, heavy metal pollution has become a serious problem in China^[4]. There were lots of heavy metal pollution accidents have been reported frequently^[5]. Moreover, according to Investigation report on nationwide soil pollution 2014, the soil heavy metal pollution points rate has been 16.1%, especially in mining area and populated areas. Copper is one of important heavy metal, and copper pollution has been a serious problem in Guangdong province and Hebei province, especially in Baoding, the copper content in soil is 165 times higher than national standard^[6].

[1] Kenney et al., Science 359, 1411–1416 (2018)
[2] Heavy Metal Pollution: Source, Impact, and Remedies, Mohammed A.S., Kapri A., Goel R. (2011) Heavy Metal Pollution: Source, Impact, and Remedies. In: Khan M., Zaidi A., Goel R., Musarrat J. (eds) Biomanagement of Metal-Contaminated Soils. Environmental Pollution, vol 20. Springer, Dordrecht
[3] Hadia-e-Fatima & Ambreen Ahmed, Heavy metal pollution – A mini review, J Bacteriol Mycol Open Access. 2018;6(3):179‒181.
[4] http://www.hjxf.net/zt/heavymetal.html
[5] Tieqiao Ye, Heavy metal pollution accidents occurs frequently, China Youth News, 2012.02.01.
[6] Duan Q., Lee J., Liu Y., Chen H., Hu H., (2016) Distribution of Heavy Metal Pollution in Surface Soil Samples in China: A Graphical Review. Bull Environ Contam Toxicol. Jun 24.

Public Survey

In order to understand the public’s opinion of our project, we first carried out a marketing research with 1000 pieces of surveys handed out. Overall, there is considerably high expectation over our copper-binding product but relatively low awareness over the synthetic biology. More detailed analysis would be displayed for the following.

The impact of heavy metal pollution on the general public’s life

For the survey, including 1067 recycling questionnaires from16 different regions, we have enough sources to reveal how statistically those heavy metal pollutions jeopardize our environment and economics. According to the results of questionnaires, we found that the impact of heavy metal pollution is impalpable by a large group of people, even people living near industrial districts (Figure 1 and Table 1).

Table 1 and Figure 1

However, when the question focus on “food safety induced by soil pollution”, it is astonishing that with more than half of the informants are “very anxious” towards the issue of food safety (Figure 2) (85.5% of the informants are either very serious or serious about the food safety issue), unlike our expectation which their life will also be largely affected by “soil pollution”, they are way less serious about that issue.

Figure 2

It could be reasonably argued that people are more attentive towards the food problem that is directly relative to the health problem than soil pollution problem which is more distant. But generally, they are concern about soil pollution by heavy metal as a whole. And thanks to the issue and their concerns, the outlook of our project seams bright.

Concerns (expectation) over the biological products

However, as a new form of purging product, the biological method to decompose soil pollution will probably be resisted by consumers. Based on our research, we could conclude several reasons why the consumers would have negative attitude to ameliorate polluted soil by biological methods.

The imparted micro-organisms may be unmanageable.

As shown in Figure 3, about 26.3% informants fear that those micro-organisms would remain in the soil (or water) and then be indirectly brought into our human body, causing unpredictable disease.

Figure 3

Even if the product does ameliorate the soil, people fear that there are insalubrious micro-organisms remaining in the soil, leading to further new pollution (Figure 4).

Figure 4

Field Trip and Professional Interviews

From our initial idea to a clear research plan, in order to have a picture on design of our working parts and our prototype to the future applications of our project, the opinions of specialists have been vital in influencing our work. In one hand, we took two field trips to the sewage treatment plants, one is treating domestic sewage and the other is treating industrial wastewater; in the other hand, we went to College of Environmental and Resource Science of Zhejiang University and interviewed two professors, and a visiting professor from MIT.

Field Trip to Local Urban Sewage Plant

Four team members including wet team leader Rongjian Tang visited Hangzhou West sewage treatment plant, to learn the modern treating methods of sewage by bacteria. This urban sewage treatment plant uses bacteria to process the sewage from west of Hangzhou, which gives us inspiration in designing our own processor for our product. For example, when designing our prototype, we extra added the use of germicidal lamp and the settling basin to eliminate the public fear of bioengineering methods. Moreover, we learned from the engineer that the domestic sewage treatment plant had no capacity to treat any heavy metal wastewater, however they were responsible to monitor these values, from his point of view, heavy metal detection devices should have broad market.

Field Trip to Industrial Sewage Plant

Justin Yan, the dry team leader, visited Baoding Baoyun Plate Making Co.Ltd located in Baoding, Hebei, China. This company mainly focused on producing intaglio roller for printing. During the manufacturing process, copper is needed to polish the surface of the metal. So industrial waste water is produced during the process. The original copper inside the water before filtering is 5-184mg/L. Currently, the sewage treatment system is composed of 7 different units: neutralization, settlement, sand leach, carbon-filtrating, resin exchange, ultrafiltration, and antiosmosis. After the process in the system, the waste water could have a copper level lower than 0.15mg/L. Although the process meets the government’s requirement, it takes to much space and the electrical usage is huge. The cost is high, and the working environment is unpleasant.

Interview to Prof. Ruo He

Professor of Environmental Science department of Zhejiang University

Our initial plan was to clone the Mbns gene from the methanotrophs. However upon sequencing the amplified inserts, none of the sequences were what we expected to find. And we have learned the methanobactine's mechanism inside methanotroph but is not yet fully understood.

We asked Prof. Ruo He, an expert who mainly worked on methanotrophs, for advice. She told us as an anaerobic bacteria, methanotrophs are really hard to operate in normal conditions. So finding the corresponding sequence and synthesizing it and then transferring the Mbns gene into E.coli would be more efficient and helpful. Combined with the results of survey mentioned above, we chose Escherichia coli BL21 strain which is low toxicity and low sensitivity to human and environment. And we also successfully constructed the new basic part MbnABC which is submitted to Registry (BBa_2826000).

Interview to Prof. Jiyan Shi

Professor, Chair of Environmental engineering department of Zhejiang University

Initially, we have a big plan about using biological methods to copper treatment basing on Mbn, but we were lack of recognition of exsiting sewage treatment methods.

We consulted prof. Jiyan Shi, as one of the top researchers in the field of sewage treatment, for advice. He listed the ways heavy metal polluted waters could be treated, which are very efficient and environmental friendly already. However, the regular testing of water quality is not as easy as treating them. Especially for those poor villages in the middle of nowhere. They don't have good access to the testing equipment, and they are among the group of people with lest health care in the nation. So we adjusted our design of proposal, changing from Methanibactine synthesis and real-world application to find a more accessible way to moniter copper pollution (by naked eyes).

Interview to Dr Timothy Guanda Lu

Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering MIT

During the time section of experimenting at Zhejiang University, we are lucky enough to listen to the report of Dr. Lu, a professor from MIT who has extensive experience in the field of synthetic biology, about genetic engineering. We also have asked him for the opinion about our project, such as how does he see the suicide system we designed in our project. Dr. Lu first affirmed our thoughts and pointed out that the design of synthetic biological components must meet the actual needs. Based on his useful advice, we have further improved our project plan, including biosafety of placing the engineered bacteria into environment, further improved the parts design to more closer to actual needs, etc.

Conclusion

1. Heavy metal pollution is a serious problem especially in China because of the industrialization;

2. Copper is an important heavy metal which may result water and soil pollution;

3. Heavy metal (copper) detection and treatment are very important, and biological method based on synthetic biology could be a good solution;

4. General public lacked knowledge on heavy metal pollution but really concerned any potential health risk from pollution;

5. General public lacked knowledge on synthetic biology and had concerns genetically biological products.

Gold Integrated

To sum up, according to the research results mentioned above, we have improved the project from the following two aspects.

Public Science Activities

we found the core issue of public concern is not the new method itself, but the unknown harm and actual effect that new method or things may bring. Against insufficient public understanding of synthetic biology and gene erringeering, our team organized four public science events at Hangzhou Low Carbon Science and Technology Museum (China), Zhejiang Science and Technology Museum as well as Zhejiang Museum of Natural History, Ningbo Foreign Language School.

In AST Space activity, at least 6 iGEM teams participated in the provincial science and Technology Museum activity. We take children to play games which help them to touch base with the science like we led them to finish the extraction of artificial colors. We also give a speech on the stage to summary the project of each team and its contribution to society. Moreover, we brought out two education lectures about metal contamination and synthetic biology in the main hall of Zhejiang Natural Museum. For both lectures, around fifty audiences participate to the lecture. The first part of the lecture explained the destruction of metal contamination and how our product can solve it. The second disseminates the basics about synthetic biology and genome biology. Moreover, we set out an experiment for banana DNA extraction which helps to support the participants to understand. In Hangzhou Low Carbon Science & Technology Museum of China we educate the public on the benefits of a low carbon lifestyle and provides space for exhibitions relating to science and technology. ASTWS-China worked in conjunction with the Museum, as well as three other IGEM teams, on a public engagement event. Eventually, three events ended consummately and successfully.

Adjust our research project

We adjust our research project and product design in several ways in response to public concerns and professional suggestions:

1. Clarify the project direction step by step, from solving water pollution problem to heavy metal pollution, then copper pollution in water and soil;

2. The strain selection of engineered microorganism and additional design of self-suicide parts for the final version product, so as to minimize the potential bio risks might bring to the natural environment.

3. Proceed the project in two phases: phase one, copper pollutant detection; phase two, copper pollution and copper industrial wastewater treatment. Add copper detection parts as a very important component of the project.

4. For application, design both a low-cost and easy-carry copper detection device as well as a low-cost and environmental friendly copper wastewater treatment system.

Team:ASTWS-China/Human Practices