Difference between revisions of "Team:RDFZ-China/Engagement"

 
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                         <li><a href="#section1">What are we facing?</a></li>
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                         <li><a href="#section1">Club activity</a></li>
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                         <li><a href="#section2">Predecessors</a></li>
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                         <li><a href="#section2">Forum of community development</a></li>
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                         <li><a href="#section3">Project Xscape</a></li>
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                         <li><a href="#section3">Forum of biosafety</a></li>
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                         <li><a href="#section4">For Fermentation</a></li>
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                         <li><a href="#section4">After iGEM</a></li>
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                        <li><a href="#section5">For Therapy</a></li>
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                        <li><a href="#section6">Metabolic Stress</a></li>
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                        <li><a href="#section7">DIY Bio and Biosafety</a></li>
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                        <li><a href="#section8">Community and Future</a></li>
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                        <li><a href="#section9">References</a></li>
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         <div class="description">
 
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            <h1>Public Engagement</h1>
 
             <div class="topic-title" id="section1">
 
             <div class="topic-title" id="section1">
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                 <h3>What are we facing?</h3>
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                 <h3>Club activity</h3>
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                 <p>Biosafety has always been a major concern to the public, to the companies and to the researchers. Doubts and worries were raised just as genetic technology was invented. With the rapid growth of synthetic biology and the iGEM community, and more and more synthetic biology products being built with widely distributed DNA toolkits or the inexpensive DNA synthesis service(Synthetic and Will); we are facing the unprecedented biosafety issue of unwanted leakage of synthetic biology products to the environment that may cause unexpected but likely disastrous problems. </p>
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                 <p>We organized a club dedicated to iGEM in our home school, The High School Affiliated To The Renmin University, called the Genehack Club, and it soon became the base for our public activities. Many team members were selected from this club, and we give lectures that taught various basic knowledge of life sciences. Besides, we launched a series of meetings in which our members shared their knowledge of forefront topics related to iGEM competition with other students in RDFZ, not necessarily restricted to our club members.</p>
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<div style="text-align:center;"><img src="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2018/1/11/T--RDFZ-China--HPPE2.jpeg"/></div>
 
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             <div class="topic-title" id="section2">
 
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                 <h3>Predecessors</h3>
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                 <h3>Forum of community development</h3>
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                 <p>For decades, researchers were striving to build biosafety devices through auxotrophy or external inducive kill switches(Lee et al.); of the latter holins and restriction enzymes are most commonly used. Most failures of the previous devices were due to mutations and evolution of immunity(Moe-Behrens et al.) . </p>
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                 <p>Public engagement should not stop at school. Beyond this arena, on 21st June, we co-organized a forum of Biology Olympians and high school iGEMers from all over China, and discussed ways to promote the development of Chinese high school biology communities. We reached several conclusions:</p>
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                 <p>The two major threats of engineered microbes’ leakage are the possible horizontal gene transfer which will lead to the spread of recombinant DNA to the ecosystem, or the fact that engineered bacteria could contaminate or overrun the natural habitat.(Wright et al.))</p>
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                 <p>(1) Current development of high school biology communities often suffer from a lack of resources and attractions, and a “club and competition” model such as Genehack is probably a good attempt to alleviate this problem.</p>
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                <p>(2) A single campus is inevitably limited in human resources and capital-intensive establishments. Therefore communities, even if spatially and temporally seperated, should actively seek to help each other to promote the development of all of them.</p>
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<div style="text-align:center;"><img src="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2018/9/99/T--RDFZ-China--focp1.jpg"/></div>
 
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             <div class="topic-title" id="section3">
 
             <div class="topic-title" id="section3">
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                 <h3>Project Xscape</h3>
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                 <h3>Forum of biosafety</h3>
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                 <p>Under this circumstance, this year we decided to be a fundamentalist to synthetic biology, using genetic circuits and logic gates to establish biosafety devices which can apply to real-world situations.</p>
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                 <p>Biosafety is our project’s foremost theme. To better understand the current situation, we participated in a forum of biosafety on 4th October. We obtained a few important informations from Peking and Tsinghua iGEMers. We found that we are now in a very precarious situation, and the Internet poses new problems for monitoring the sale and distribution of biological products that are still not well solved, and DIYbio is rapidly developing with a considerable population base in China that creates novel safety and security concerns. But much progress was made in the field of college laboratory safety and regulations went from nonexistent to systematized with classes, test and zonation in lab. Yet Chinese universities still have a long way to go compared with top-level US colleges.</p>
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                <p>Since cell death and lysis mean there is a continual presence of free DNA in the environment, holins, which are most widely used are excluded from our choices, and colicin E2 nucleases (Darmstadt iGEM2016) came into our site. We choose site non-specific nucleases since the entire genome and plasmids needed to be entirely digested to prevent the spread, and we use nucleases from a different family to prevent the possible evolution of nuclease inhibitors. Artificial DNA, RNA, and amino acids are a good solution, but due to its high cost so far, it is not applicable to most of the user.</p>
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             <div class="topic-title" id="section4">
 
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                 <h3>For fermentation</h3>
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                 <h3>After iGEM</h3>
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                 <p>The first device we build is for the fermentation; we want to execute any escaped engineered bacteria from the fermenter, whether the escape happened accidentally or intentionally. We used two environment factors to monitor the bacteria’s situation: temperature and population density, thet are both high and tunable in the fermenter, so our device will initiate when temperature and density are both low. We used thermal sensitive regulator (NUS iGEM2017)(Piraner et al.) and quorum sensing regulator (MIT iGEM2004) (Canton et al.)as our sensor, with sRNA(Storz et al.) and tetR family repressor PhlF(Glasgow iGEM2015)(Stanton et al.) as the signal inverter. We added an integrase (Peking iGEM2017) controlled by the thermal sensitive regulator which will enable the promoter of a lethal gene to potentially express when temperature rise in the fermenter so that bacteria can survive at the very beginning. Also, we built a model to stimulate the minimum autoinducer required at the beginning of the fermentation, same as the purpose of integrase. This model is for keeping bacteria alive at the very beginning of fermentation. Together they form a NOR gate that will lead to cell death through genome degradation when both temperature and density decrease.</p>
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                 <p>As our experiments progressed, we took significant consideration in biosafety, one of the major global issues related to synthetic biology. According to the interview with Jianwen Ye, Chief Engineer of Bluepha, we realized that bacterial strain leakage from fermenter was merely a tip of the iceberg, and kill switch was one of the various anti-leakage systems. Therefore, our journey does not end with Giant Jamboree. We will continue to adjust our kill switch in response to the current demands in medical or industrial fields. Furthermore, from those social researches mentioned above, it is revealed that not only do civilians possess inadequate awareness of biosafety, but some of the doctors and nurses in local clinics also lack of understanding of biosafety. So, we decide to popularize biosafety-related knowledge in the future time, targeting upon a great variety of audience, ranging from schools to communities and eventually to the society.</p>
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            </div>
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            <div class="topic-title" id="section5">
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                <h3>For Therapy</h3>
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                <p>The second device we build is for therapeutic bacteria. The device can carry out noninvasive tracing through ultrasound imaging of the gas vesicle(Shapiro et al.), release the drug (from SHSBNU 2017) controlled by a thermosensitive regulator at nidus by ultrasound tissue heating, and heat to a higher temperature to release nuclease and kill the bacteria after it finishes its mission. </p>
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            <div class="topic-title" id="section6">
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                <h3>For Metabolic Stress</h3>
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                <p>We applied capacity monitor (Ceroni et al.) to quantify the expression burden of all our systems, and to reduce the metabolic stress, we designed another device for fermentation which used a LuxR repressive promoter (Peking iGEM2011) and cold-regulated 5’UTR region (Ionis Paris 2017). This device only involves one transcriptional regulator, which will be less energy consuming. </p>
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            <div class="topic-title" id="section7">
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                <h3>DIY bio and Biosafey</h3>
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                <p>Back to the growing and glowing synthetic biology community, despite the current majority doing it on campus, more and more people are starting it at home, and they call themselves Genehacker or DIY biologists. The lack of sufficient training and efficient surveillance will be a time bomb for which we do know that monstrous harmful bioproducts will be made someday in the future, and indeed, it will be a significant threat to the current biosafety basis. Recall our memory to iGEM2009, Peking surveyed DIY bio, almost ten years later, we conducted a similar DIY bio-survey. We tried to order materials for molecular experiments, using the delivery address to our home, and the result was quite shocking that we can buy almost everything for the molecular experiment, from the internet. Then, we went through relevant laws and regulations throughout the world, in which we found no laws related to credit certification and the address certification about the people who book the biology reagent. Most of the laws are about the quality certification and how they would serve the user after they bought this. We interviewed the Director of a center for disease control and prevention. He said that in his experiment with the disease caused by the bacteria leak, vast impacts such as environmental pollution had been observed. and our country has been making great effort towards elimenating such leakage accidents and incidents. He said it is not easy to solve the problem with hard work, rather it needs the cooperation between all the countries. He made an example of 731 army during the second world war two, in which the outbreak of pathogens caused significant physical and social harm. We are still on our way to win the battle, and the effort still needs to be put in.</p>
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            <div class="topic-title" id="section8">
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                <h3>Community and Future</h3>
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                <p>Also, we hosted two major meeting in Beijing. In a biosafety forum in October, we invited a team leader who runs his high school lab, lab teachers from a university lab, and a former team member from Peking iGEM2009, who participated in their DIY bio investigation ten years ago.</p>
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                <p>We concluded that the development of DIY bio should be taken seriously, and the permanent way to solve its safety and security concerns is through implanting biosafety awareness into our academic culture. Also, as iGEMers, we should strive to be the considerate and responsible leaders in our community, to ensure the biosafety issue has been taken properly. Another meeting was with biology Olympians all over China, in which we discussed the future of biology community during the meeting, especially with more and more high school iGEM teams coming up in China contrasted with the lack of relevant instruction and education to the students. We came up with the idea of setting up a collaboration between schools to share and overcome difficulties hand in hand. This kind of meeting will be continued after iGEM2018, since the community usually grows fast after every iGEM season. </p>
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                <p>Hopefully, years later, biosafety awareness and considerations can be seriously taken in communities, laboratory studies, and real-world applications.</p>
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            <div class="topic-title" id="section9">
 
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                <h3>References</h3>
 
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                <p>Canton, Barry, et al. “Refinement and Standardization of Synthetic Biological Parts and Devices.” Nature Biotechnology, vol. 26, no. 7, 2008, pp. 787–93, doi:10.1038/nbt1413.</p>
 
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                <p>Ceroni, Francesca, et al. “Quantifying Cellular Capacity Identifies Gene Expression Designs with Reduced Burden.” Nature Methods, vol. 12, no. 5, 2015, pp. 415–18, doi:10.1038/nmeth.3339.</p>
 
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                <p>Lee, Jeong Wook, et al. “Next-Generation Biocontainment Systems for Engineered Organisms.” Nature Chemical Biology, Springer US, 2018, p. 1, doi:10.1038/s41589-018-0056-x.</p>
 
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                <p>Moe-Behrens, Gerd H. G., et al. “Preparing Synthetic Biology for the World.” Frontiers in Microbiology, vol. 4, no. JAN, 2013, pp. 1–10, doi:10.3389/fmicb.2013.00005.</p>
 
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                <p>Piraner, Dan I., et al. “Tunable Thermal Bioswitches for in Vivo Control of Microbial Therapeutics.” Food, Pharmaceutical and Bioengineering Division 2017 - Core Programming Area at the 2017 AIChE Annual Meeting, vol. 2, no. November, Nature Publishing Group, 2017, pp. 695–702, doi:10.1038/nchembio.2233.</p>
 
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                <p>Shapiro, Mikhail G., et al. “Biogenic Gas Nanostructures as Ultrasonic Molecular Reporters.” Nature Nanotechnology, vol. 9, no. 4, Nature Publishing Group, 2014, pp. 311–16, doi:10.1038/nnano.2014.32.</p>
 
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                <p>Stanton, Brynne C., et al. “Genomic Mining of Prokaryotic Repressors for Orthogonal Logic Gates.” Nature Chemical Biology, vol. 10, no. 2, 2014, pp. 99–105, doi:10.1038/nchembio.1411.</p>
 
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                <p>Storz, Gisela, et al. “Regulation by Small RNAs in Bacteria: Expanding Frontiers.” Molecular Cell, vol. 43, no. 6, 2011, pp. 880–91, doi:10.1016/j.molcel.2011.08.022.</p>
 
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                <p>Synthetic, How, and Biology Will. “Regenesis: How Synthetic Biology Will Reinvent Nature and Ourselves.” Choice Reviews Online, 2013, doi:10.5860/CHOICE.50-3835.</p>
 
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                <p>Wright, Oliver, et al. “Building-in Biosafety for Synthetic Biology.” Microbiology (United Kingdom), vol. 159, no. PART7, 2013, pp. 1021–35, doi:10.1099/mic.0.066308-0.</p>
 
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Latest revision as of 03:29, 18 October 2018

Public Engagement

Club activity

We organized a club dedicated to iGEM in our home school, The High School Affiliated To The Renmin University, called the Genehack Club, and it soon became the base for our public activities. Many team members were selected from this club, and we give lectures that taught various basic knowledge of life sciences. Besides, we launched a series of meetings in which our members shared their knowledge of forefront topics related to iGEM competition with other students in RDFZ, not necessarily restricted to our club members.

Forum of community development

Public engagement should not stop at school. Beyond this arena, on 21st June, we co-organized a forum of Biology Olympians and high school iGEMers from all over China, and discussed ways to promote the development of Chinese high school biology communities. We reached several conclusions:

(1) Current development of high school biology communities often suffer from a lack of resources and attractions, and a “club and competition” model such as Genehack is probably a good attempt to alleviate this problem.

(2) A single campus is inevitably limited in human resources and capital-intensive establishments. Therefore communities, even if spatially and temporally seperated, should actively seek to help each other to promote the development of all of them.

Forum of biosafety

Biosafety is our project’s foremost theme. To better understand the current situation, we participated in a forum of biosafety on 4th October. We obtained a few important informations from Peking and Tsinghua iGEMers. We found that we are now in a very precarious situation, and the Internet poses new problems for monitoring the sale and distribution of biological products that are still not well solved, and DIYbio is rapidly developing with a considerable population base in China that creates novel safety and security concerns. But much progress was made in the field of college laboratory safety and regulations went from nonexistent to systematized with classes, test and zonation in lab. Yet Chinese universities still have a long way to go compared with top-level US colleges.

After iGEM

As our experiments progressed, we took significant consideration in biosafety, one of the major global issues related to synthetic biology. According to the interview with Jianwen Ye, Chief Engineer of Bluepha, we realized that bacterial strain leakage from fermenter was merely a tip of the iceberg, and kill switch was one of the various anti-leakage systems. Therefore, our journey does not end with Giant Jamboree. We will continue to adjust our kill switch in response to the current demands in medical or industrial fields. Furthermore, from those social researches mentioned above, it is revealed that not only do civilians possess inadequate awareness of biosafety, but some of the doctors and nurses in local clinics also lack of understanding of biosafety. So, we decide to popularize biosafety-related knowledge in the future time, targeting upon a great variety of audience, ranging from schools to communities and eventually to the society.



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