Difference between revisions of "Team:AHUT China/HP FOR SILVER"

3 . iGEM(Linkoping_Sweden)

We saw the cooperation request issued by Linking University's iGEM team (Linkoping_Sweden). Linkoping_Sweden has a new idea of cooperation. They want all the teams to use letters or emails to show interesting things happening inside and outside the team. So we participated in this cooperation. This is an interesting collaboration, as it may be boring during the experiment, but the stories that happen in the experiment make the experiment fun. And by organizing these stories, we learn more about our experiments.

Fig.3 Mail sent to Linköping University

Fig.4 Reply email from Linköping University

4. Our Meeting

Background: Each team's project in IGEM is not perfect at the start.In order to make project perfect and make the team members cooperate with each other more and more smoothly,each team holds the team meeting to discuss again and again. So it is important for us to hold meetings to make some discussions.The members of the IGEM in our college held a conference every week to discuss how to solve our current problems and how to do next.

The text: Our members of iGEM keep the habit of discussing at meetings once a week since March 10.

On March 10, the conference included that:

    ①Division of labor at that time.
    ②Members of the experimental group introduced the carbon dioxide capture project
    ③We made a plan for the next step.
    Through the discussion at this meeting, our division of labor has become more rational and the efficiency of work among members has been fully improved,and at the same time, our team members got a preliminary understanding of the project that we are going to carry out.

  

Fig.5 Our Meeting

On March 17, the conference included that:

    ①The most common type of CO2 fixation technology in the current stage.
    ②The expression and the Catalytic reaction mechanism of carbonic anhydrase in human, animal and plant;
    ③The living environment of carbonic anhydrase and how to maintain catalytic activity of carbon anhydrase.
Through the discussion at this meeting, we learned that traditional CO2 fixation technologies include chemical/physical solvent absorption, membrane absorption, deep-sea fixation, etc.

However, these methods have been proved to be extremely expensive in practice, and they further prove that the use of carbonic anhydrase as a potential biocatalyst is a promising fixation method.

On March 24, the conference included that :

    ①The basic knowledge of biological brick.
    ②The main function of carbonic anhydrase in our project;
    ③We arranged the mission about HP and Collaboration.
Through this meeting, we knew that it was helpful for the experimental group to design and transform the biobricks in the later stage. And some other works were arranged, so that we can be prepared for the following assignments.

On March 31, the conference included that ：

    ①The experimental group summarized the basic professional knowledge related to the competition
    ②We initially summarized the schemes of HP and collaboration.
    ③Our instructors tell the students who go to the United States how to get the visa .
Through this meeting, we made our parts of HP and Collaboration more complete and detailed.

On April 14, the conference included that ：

    ①The experimental group needs to understand the basic knowledge of genetic engineering.
    ②The activities of hp-related are determined by the group of HP and collaboration.
    ③Interpretation of the standards of the Medal.
Through the discussion in this meeting, we have listed the ways of expert discussion and external communication for the activities of HP and collaboration. Meanwhile, the members of the experimental group are planned to start the research of Interlab, and some members decided to participate in CCIC held in Shanghai during the summer vacation.

On April 21, the conference included that :
    ①We should complete the preliminary research of Interlab:We need to test the device which is in the DNA KIT needs to be sent to the United States, and GFP fluorescent protein expression may be required.
    ②The members of the group of HP and Collaboration gives us some feedback on opinions of relevant government officials of the municipal environmental protection bureau.
    ③Our instructors tell the students who decide to go to the United States to fill out forms of DS160. Through the discussion in this meeting, we planed to complete the test report of Biobrick and submit the Excel data form before the registration time of Interlab on July 9 (as of September 29). Meanwhile,the members of the group of webpage should begin to design wiki pages and other related contents.

Fig.6 Our Meeting

On April 29, the conference included that :

    ①The experimental group should complete the ot-2 application before May 1.
    ②The group of the HP and Collaboration should continue to work on related activities.
Through the discussion in this meeting, we asked the experimental group to conduct a detailed research on Interlab in the next stage. Meanwhile, the members of the group of HP and collabarbitration need to investigate the previous Collaboration projects and make a summary.

On May 13th,the conference included that :

The Interlab research of the experimental group was completed, and the instructor should plan for the following projects.The members of the group of HP and Collaboration had completed the research of the collaboration.Through the discussion in this meeting, we planed to continue to improve the website design of the wiki in the next stage,and the website design needs to conform to the theme of this year. Meanwhile, the experimental group should pay attention to collecting some relevant experimental pictures used on the wiki when conducting experiments.

On May 19th，the conference included that :

The tasks of each group are still in the completion stage, and we should discuss the existing problems in the next conference.Through the discussion in this meeting, we planed to complete the exhibition of posters of CCIC in Shanghai in the next stage and complete the presentation of related projects.

On June 8, the conference included that :

    ①The experimental group needed complete the four forms online,the Data Form and Project Description, and the Safety Form (referring to the completion of 17 years) before June 29;
    ②The group of HP needed to hold a lecture in our college.
Through this meeting, our team members had a high degree of tacit understanding, and the atmosphere of the discussion became more and more lively.

On July 27, the conference included that :

    ①The experimental group completed the uploading of Interlab experiments and records.
    ②The Logo production is completed by the group of art layout.
    ③One of the HP activity is completed by the members of the group of the HP and Collaboration.
Through this meeting, we planed to meet the requirements of IGEM gold award for the next phase of the experimental .Two different wiki designs should be prepared for the web page team,and the modeling group needs to dock with the experimental group to find a solution to implement mathematical modeling.

Fig.7 Our Meeting

On August 23, the conference included that :

    ①The experimental group completed a certain of Biobrick designs, and the experimental group estimated that two improved biological bricks and two new biological bricks will be submitted.
    ②We voted on the wiki design.
Through the discussion in this meeting, we asked the modeling group to model the reaction of carbon dioxide airflow with saturated carbonic anhydrase solution after the investigation is made clear. The work of each group will set the Deadline mechanism and strictly stipulate the completion time.

Conclusion: Our IGEM team of Anhui University of Technology discussed and solved various problems in the progress of our project through conferences.And our final project has been improved;the members have more and more trust in each other.The conference is still going on, and our story is still going on.I believe that IGEM team will be able to achieve success in this year's competition!

    5. Meeting of four schools

September 9, 2018, We arranged a video conference with members from northeastern university, Shandong University and northwestern University. During this time, we briefly introduced our project background and project ideas and planned the agenda of the meeting. As the greenhouse effect has become a common concern in recent years, how to effectively capture carbon dioxide has become a worldwide problem. At present, carbon dioxide capture mainly includes absorption, adsorption and membrane method,which are renewable energy consumption of high cost and have twice as many pollution problems. The use of CO2 to capture the high catalytic efficiency and environmental friendliness of the carbon anhydride has aroused wide concern.

Fig.8 Meeting with three other universities

So our Anhui University of Technology team put forward a project on the generation of carbon anhydride through E. coli to absorb carbon dioxide. First of all, our project successfully expressed the Wide-type carbonic anhydride enzyme in Escherichia coli, however, due to its poor stability and ease of deactivation, its industrial applications were limited. Therefore, based on the molecular simulation technique, the effect of mutation of amino acid residues on the conformation and activity of enzymes was studied, and the mutant carbonic anhydride with high thermal stability was obtained. The experimental results show that the purified mutant carbonic anhydride has higher stability and activity than the wild type of carbonic anhydride enzyme, which realizes the effective capture of CO2. Northeastern university, Shandong university, and the members of Northwestern University have expressed their strong interest in the project of Anhui University of technology, so we have the highlights of our project and other members of the school exchange. Highlights: 1, Instead of the high cost, high efficiency and poor circulation of traditional methods, we choose a safe and environmentally friendly method with low cost and high catalytic efficiency for trapping CO2 with carbon anhydride. 2,By using the molecular simulation technique, the amino acid as the basic unit, the effect of remnant radical mutation on the two-stage structure of the carbonic anhydride enzyme, and the influence of the molecular conformation, the best amino acid mutation site was obtained, and the thermal stability of the enzyme was improved without affecting the enzyme activity. 3, We obtained the expression of wild type and mutant carbonic anhydride enzyme strains of Escherichia coli, and two kinds of carbon anhydride enzyme in vitro purification, wild-type carbonic anhydride enzyme has a certain CO2 capture efficiency, more importantly, the mutant than the wild type of carbonic anhydride enzyme has better stability and activity, realize the CO2 efficient capture.

Fig.9 Meeting with three other universities

Students from Tohoku University also briefed members of our other schools about their projects, and the Tohoku University project was inspired by the prevalence of fast food and the acceleration of urbanization, with the number of inflammatory bowel diseases (inflammatory bowel disease, IBD) rising in Asia, And the risk of developing colorectal cancer (colorectal cancer, CRC) in patients with IBD also increased. There are no drugs that are better for ibd, so they want to use engineered probiotics to treat IBD and prevent crc,by using synthetic biology. The rest of us were very interested in the project, and our Anhui University of Technology team actively asked them for details about their project, and they briefed them on the background and main contents of their project. The background of their project is that inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is caused by inappropriate immune responses, which in general trigger a series of events that can disrupt the barrier when the immune system reacts excessively to the bacteria in the gut, eventually causing IBD when the immune imbalance persists without intervention. There is no cure for IBD at present,and the best treatment now is to use anti-inflammatory drugs such as TNF inhibitor treatment, but the patient's drug treatment effect is of huge difference.And it is ineffective to more than 50% of the patients . Probiotics are beneficial to the host of active microorganisms, colonization in the human intestinal tract, reproductive system, oral cavity and so they can produce the exact health effects of the microbial group.They have been beneficial to bacteria such as boulardii yeast used in clinical diarrhea treatment. The Tohoku University team aims to design a biological system for ANTI-IBD and CRC prevention through the use of engineered Probiotics. Because the concentration of NO in the intestinal tract of IBD is about 100 times than that of normal people, NO molecule acts as their inflammatory signaling molecule, and probiotic Escherichia coli (nissle 1917) is selected as their chassis organism. The project consists of two sets of devices, one of which is an anti-inflammatory device, which includes a sensor for detecting inflammatory signals, a high-efficiency enhancer, and an effector that secretes interleukin (IL-10); the second is an anti-cancer device, which is expressed through engineered probiotics, which is derived from a cross-flowered vegetable ( Cruciferous vegetables (myrosinase), which converts the natural component of Thio-glucoside (sinigrin) from a cross-flowered vegetable into a turnip (sulforaphane).The product of radish is a kind of organic molecule with anticancer activity, and it can inhibit oxidative stress (oxidative stress), so it can also inhibit the intestinal inflammatory reaction. In addition, they use cold-shock kill switches (cold-excited expression lysis and Maz-ef) to prevent their engineered bacteria from escaping into the environment and causing DNA contamination.

Members of the Northwestern University team introduced their project background that saline soils may affect the growth of crops such as wheat and rice. Because traditional saline soils are difficult and inefficient, they have decided to address this global challenge in new ways. Several parts of the bacterium are designed to reduce the concentration within the range. Their project is to modify potassium channels by using non-natural amino acid d-alanine,and they obtained a new channel protein, which allows K + to be considered in a high concentration of K + and allows Na + to be considered in a low concentration of K +. Because of the use of d-ala, a part of the introduction of unnatural amino acids into bacteria was established. They analyzed proteins and tested them by molecular dynamics simulations and quantum chemistry, and established mathematical models of the relationship between cells and salt concentrates. They will use patch clamps and a new method to test proteins and bacteria in the solution. After their cell experiments, they will use it for agricultural and water purification processes.

The project of Shandong University is about PHB an environmental bio-plastic Project. At the same time, we will carefully analyze the problems in the experiments and the modeling that are currently encountered in our project, so that we can better understand our project and excavate the parts that we may need to cooperate. In the course of the discussion, we talked about our understanding of synthetic biology, including its great potential for human benefit and the recent astonishing breakthroughs scientists have made. Then we showed and explained our project in depth, and they gave us some good suggestions, such as the improvements in cell secretion pathways that are practical, valuable and meaningful. We are really looking forward to our late-stage cooperation and exchanges with the United States to participate in the event of grand camping meetings.

  

Fig.10 Meeting venue