Team:BFSUICC-China/Human Practices


BFSUICC-China

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Overview of Human practice

 

Investigate current detection methods

On Sept. 30, students in charge of the human practice section of the BFSUICC-China team followed the instructor to visit a professor of water pollution research at China Forestry University. We came to Forestry University for several reasons:

1. Because our project is to detect copper pollution and there will be some copper in the water, so we also pay attention to who this aspect, so we also came to visit professors in the university.

2. We still have problems in the application of our project, so we came to the school to consult professors.

 

Professor just started telling us about some copper standards in water and helped us collect some international and domestic standards. The professor also talked about standards for different waters, different sources of water, and different regions, such as Northwest China, which requires higher rainfall than southern China, and South China, which requires much more rainfall than northwest China, because copper concentration is higher after the water evaporates, so northwest China. The requirement is higher than that of the south. The professor also talked about the standard of water application in different aspects, as well as some processing processes. For example, the discharge of industrial wastewater, as well as the preparation before discharge, such as reducing the amount of copper in the water to what standard, in the sewage treatment plant into the next stage of treatment, and finally discharged. China still has high demands on this aspect.

 

 

In addition, the professor showed us their instrument for measuring copper content, which was very expensive and very large, and the residues were discharged from a pipe into the air. The professor suggested that we could apply our project in this direction, such as a kit or test paper because the test paper and test kit would be cheaper and more portable, and he gave us an example, such as measuring the copper content in the water when the tester could drop water into it. On the kit or test paper and then observe the colour changes of the test paper and test kit because this is also the way our project measures the copper content in water. This greatly reduces unnecessary trouble.

Explore safety of biosensor application

 

Professor introduce two safe ways of using biosensor: paper based biological circuit and glucose metabolism relative reporter HXT.Paper based biological circuit can keep cell function but is cell free. If the reporter gene HXTis used, the change in the glucose concentration of the culture of yeast would be easy to detect by glucometer .

Investigate customer's feedback on biosensor

We went to the Beijing Foreign Studies University, to interview some professors and relatives of teachers. Do you really know about copper contamination? What are their opinions about our products? One professor told us, he really wants us to keep going what is us doing now, it is about human and environment. So we feel so proud of our product. Most of them care about the safety of biosensor, we explained paper based biological circuit, and HXT reporter gene to them. Later they are excited about synthetic biology.

Investigate supplement containing copper

 

Our Human practice group went to the drugstore, asking and finding some health products which is about copper. A waitress answered and introduced some of our questions of which is the best copper health products.In real life, there are many things that are prone to copper poisoning, such as copper supplements in pharmacies. So we went to the pharmacy to investigate.

Propagandize our project

 

On October 8th, our team went to Beijing foreign studies university affiliated middle school to tell students who are interested in biology and synthetic biology about iGEM.

First of all, Tina and Tom introduced to students what iGEM is and what iGEM is about. Then, they introduced the development history of iGEM, the spirit needed to participate in iGEM, the distribution of awards and the requirements of awards. At the same time, it also introduces what kind of sub-projects iGEM will do, and what you have gained in previous years during the competition. After all, the results are not important, but the spirit and knowledge learned in the process are the most important. Although we have not introduced our own projects yet, students have developed a strong interest and actively asked about the details of participating in iGEM competition, such as how to form a team and how to complete the experiment of their own team. I believe that our answers can help them very well.

 

After that, we told the students about the projects we participated in, such as the background introduction, experimental methods，and social activities. Will we brainstorm the ideas presented to the students, and we will build our genetic chain told the students, although most of the time we looked at all of them is what all don't understand, after we finish propaganda and the part about parts they are eagerly raised questions, we'd be happy to answer.

We can see from their active questions that they love biology and synthetic biology very much and would like to participate in iGEM competition to broaden their knowledge of biology. After that we told them we are prepared to how to combine our project with real life, the future how will our project, the practical use of produced products, such as kit and test paper, contribute to the social environment pollution, classmates and their biological teachers are also very interested in this, after all, in the Chinese mainland academic and social game like this is very less. In this activity, we are glad to share our ideas with classmates and recommend iGEM to students. The purpose of this activity is that we hope that more people who are interested in biology or synthetic biology and other aspects can understand iGEM and participate in iGEM to provide more ideas for the genetic aspect.