Hosting a talk on synthetic biology, iGEM, our project and its application on stray cat problem

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We gave a bilingual talk named ‘SynBio, Cats and ChangeMakers’ at Chaihuo Maker Space on synthetic biology and its application, introducing our iGEM project in specific as one example of what synbio was capable of doing. Then we discussed our ultimate scheme of building a street cat shelter with biosynthesized nepetalactone as attractant that could aid volunteers in helping feral cats. (See Applied Designfor the development of our design.)

Introduction to our talk

It all began with the story of a feral cats rescue team run by a 65-year-old woman named Li Feng-hua. She has helped hundreds of cats in Beijing since 1998. To bring cats to the vet, they need to be put into a cage, which proves to be a very time-consuming and challenging task. Attracting the cats into the designated cages is difficult using only cat food. This year, International Genetically Engineered Machine Competition (iGEM) team GreatBay_China, consisting of 13 high school students, found a solution to the above-mentioned problem. They have found a way to mass-produce nepetalactol, the precursor of nepetalactone — the active ingredient in catnip. Nepetalactol is a platform molecule, meaning we can synthesize other valuable natural compounds from nepetalactol, such as vinblastine, an anti-cancer alkaloid which is one of the most widely used anti-cancer drugs nowadays. Due to its complex structure, chemosynthesis is rather difficult, so it is mainly extracted directly from the plant. The cost of extraction is high because of the low content of vinblastine in plants. Therefore, if we can mass-produce nepetalactol through microorganisms and then synthesize vinblastine from nepetalactol, we can lower the cost of production and selling price of such anti-cancer drugs. This will require the team to put their knowledge of synthetic biology into actual use. Synthetic biology is one of the most rapidly developing fields in the 21st century, a rising star in STEM. It engages engineering thinking, and combines biology with other subjects like computer science, chemistry, physics and mathematics in order to design and construct artificial biological systems to tackle real-life issues such as energy, environmental protection, and more.

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The iGEM is the world’s top academic competition of synthetic biology, founded by MIT. Every team must use standardized biological parts to construct bio-bricks with certain functions, thus generating a whole synthetic biology project. Apart from using the characterized biological parts, teams can also develop new parts, bringing more possibilities to future teams. This Friday, team members of GreatBay_China will come to x.factory, sharing this amazing project with you. Come learn about the splendor of synthetic biology and the experience with constructing engineered organisms. Hopefully, through this meetup and your input, we can all move a step forward on the path toward creating a better life for the street cats.”

Our audiences include students, neighborhood committee members, engineers, designers, artists and investors, who demonstrated great curiosity at the field of synthetic biology and engaged enthusiastically in discussions concerning synbio and our project after the talk. We had audiences who inquire about the possibility of initiating their own synbio project at the maker space or at home, so we gladly filled in knowledge about biosafety lab requirements we had, shamefully, missed out a bit on during the talk. Some asked in details how we found the desire pathway of biosynthesizing nepetalactol and whether computer simulation could aid the design, and we offered several databases that might be of help. Though we must admit due to lack of sufficient knowledge in computational tools, we were unable to explore further concerning the latter question. Afterwards, many participants demanded us to tell them more interesting iGEM projects, which we shared with delight.

During this experience, we noticed how starting with innovative iGEM projects and the application of synbio can help engage audiences before we filled them with the engineering principle behind. However, it was necessary to discuss biosafety and bioethics, especially facing listeners who enjoy creation.

More offered keen advice on the Kitty Wonderland prototype, such as how volunteers could supervise the shelter and how the shelter might be able to alert volunteers when several cats are present, so volunteers can come, feed or trap cats for neutering and vaccination.

Long-term collaboration with Chaihuo’ s engineer and artist

After the talk, we engaged with Henry Zhang and Yu Li from Chaihuo to build the Kitty Wonderland. In exchange, we also welcomed them to our lab, answered their questions on synthetic biology and introduced plate painting.

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Discussions with animal-welfare groups, neighborhood and local government on the applied design of our project

Our applied design, the cat shelter, aims to help volunteers who care about the welfare of feral cats. So aside from engaging with Fenghua Li’s volunteer group in the first place, we also participated in an event advocating civilized rules for pet keeping, in which we interviewed participants, who were considering adopting pets, about their opinions on a cat shelter using nepetalactone as attractant being placed in their neighborhood. They pointed out we could organize residents who fed feral cats occasionally to manage the shelter through connecting with neighborhood committees. Aside, some said their neighbors might not want feral cats gathering near their residents, so we needed to consider where the house should be placed cautiously.
Together with a talk on our design at an animal welfare event, we gained more insights into the problem of feral cats and how our design might be of use to the volunteers and feral cats through conversing with members from welfare groups including the director of SCPA, Karuna Rescue. Also joining the panel is Darren Wang from the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
(Download a pdf version of our presentation at Shenzhen Greenz Drinks Event on Sep 26: Animal Welfare Advocates In Shenzhen powerpoint here.)

Driven by these suggestions and questions, we went on to consult urban management agencies as to know how and where we might place the cat shelter in the neighborhood.

Innovative engagement through arts at Maker Faire

With the prototype of Kitty Wonderland, we exhibited at an international Maker Faire, in which we introduced our synbio and our project to viewers based on previous content at Chaihuo and asked them to decorate the wooden cat shelter by drawing elements such as cats, E.coli, yeast, pipettes and structural formula of DNA and nepetalactol.

Special: Documentaries!

Our design and the whole story of our human practice is in fact, not merely confined in the 1,000 words we have written above. During the way to the proceeding of our lab project as well as our endeavor to let the world improve our project and meanwhile influencing the world, we have done a lot. We record and recall the entire story and make it into a documentary series. The documentary shows how we spared no efforts to conceive our human practice and communicate with the externality to contribute to solving the stray cat problem.
Episode 0: Fenghua Li, we intimately call her ‘Aunt Li’, is the sponsor of the organization ‘Li Fenghua stray cat rescue’ in Beijing. She persists in feeding, neutering and saving stray cats for 20 years without a single day-off. She rescues cats as a full-time profession. However, the cat shelter she built was destroyed by an arsonist two years ago and after that the government was prohibiting the construction of new cat shelters. Thence she had to roam across the city to feed those helpless creatures and to catch and to neuter them as well as to treat them when they are injured or sick, whereas when Aunt Li was injured or sick she had to carry on. Moreover, Aunt Li is suffering from osteoporosis for many years. Her life is a hardship even though a lot of people gave her hands. GreatBay_China helped her in raising funds and public awareness.
This video starts with Rocky on his way to interview Aunt Li and ends with Aunt Li’s future expectations and how we helped her.
Episode 1: The stray cats roaming in the city is actually a very serious problem in many parts of the world because they can transmit diseases, annoy human by their calls for mate and disrupt the ecological stability. The current solutions to the stray cat problem are not very effective.
Episode 2:The idea of our human practice and hardware design—‘the kitty wonderland’ emerged when we heard that capturing stray cats is difficult and we found the potential of nepetalactone to attract cats. However, to make the ‘wonderland’ come true is hard. This episode starts with a stray cat seeing our hardware and sighs light-heartedly.
Episode 3: We collaborated with professional designers in a maker space—X factory to consolidate our design of the ‘kitty wonderland’. We have made several improvements.
Episode 4: In order to ensure our kitty wonderland’s safety and smooth implementation, we surveyed a lot of people including citizens, NGO administrators and government officials. We made several improvements after the survey.
Episode 5:We draw out, model and demonstrate our final design.