Team:JNFLS/Human Practices

Silver Human Practice

June 14th is the World Blood Donor Day, the theme in 2018 is “Give blood to others and share life.” In order to response to this meaningful day, our team members decided to take place in some voluntary activities, so we chose to go to the local blood donation bus just near the Quancheng Square in Shandong Province.

We went there on that day. Although there were many people on the square, there were not many people in the blood donation bus. After asked the staff working there, we started to work. Our job was to help the donors to fill the form before donation, record the donor’s information in the computer and put the blood bags in the fridge, etc.

Not only we helped a lot, but also learnt that there are some detections must be performed before the blood donation. They are as follow:

  • Blood type of the donor
  • Hemoglobin quantity
  • ALT detection
  • HBV antigen and Treponema pallidum antibody

These detections are really important, if one of these items is not qualified, the donor cannot donate their blood. These tests are just primary detection, the blood needs to be sent to the blood center for further detections, including HCV and HIV detection.

But now the question is that not all of the virus infected blood could be detected. If the infected blood is during “window period”, it cannot be detected due to the limitation of technology. If those undetected blood in the “window period” are transfused to the patients, it would increas dramatically the risk of virus infection, such as HCV, HIV, etc. This is very dangerous. So, we got an idea that if we develop a method to detect the infected blood in the window period, that would be very significant. This is the original intention our project.

For deeply understand the unpaid blood donation, our team members went to the blood donation bus again at the beginning of summer vacation and we did some survey concerning the blood donation. It was upset that there were still a few people at the blood donation bus during the holiday. So we went to the local book store near the square and science museum to give out the questionnaires regarding the knowledge of blood donation. We gave out about 200 questionnaires and collected some data as below.

1.From the first question, we found that not too many people know the items must be detected exactly, most of them just heard about two or three of them.

2.From the second question, we knew more than half of the public don’t know any about the window period. We thought this could be the normal phenomenon because this word is a kind of specialized.

3.The third question can reflect that only a small number of people know about the benefits of blood donation, most of them were just heard a little bit about it before, even some people think that blood donation is bad for their health, we were really concerned about this opinion.

4.The forth question is about whether healthy people would like to donate. We first thought that there would be a large number of people would like to join in the blood donation. By the contrast, the result was not as optimistic as we thought. There are only one third of the people would like to do so, and most of the public just not so sure about it or even totally refused.

From these results, we found that not so many people know about the blood donation well and there still was a large number of people held some perceptions. We started to think that maybe the shortage of blood supply mainly caused by the prejudice appeared among the public.

Integrated and Gold

In order to deeply understand how the blood being processed from the donors to the hospitals, our team visited the Blood Center of Shandong province. We were showed around the building and laboratories. The labs there use negative pressure to keep the environment safe and clean. And some detections can achieve automation, which can prevent some man-made operation. Therefore, some pollution possibility can be reduced. The automated equipment is very convenient, not only can save much more time, but also keep the tests into a sterile environment. So，the tests can be more accurate. All the processes of testing are traceable. Each blood sample has a barcode, which can correspond to the donor, the data of each step must be recorded, and stored in the computer system. This makes the blood use traceable for the source of problem.

After the visit, our team members had an interview with the expert of the blood center. We also understand the detections taken in the blood center, and some detections are performed two times. The five main detections are as follows:

  1. Markers of HIV, including HIV antibody and nucleic acid.
  2. Markers of HBV, including HBV antigen and nucleic acid.
  3. Markers of HCV, including HCV antibody and nucleic acid.
  4. Markers of Treponema pallidum, including antibody and nucleic acid
  5. ALT detection

From the interview with the expert, we also know that: ① Not all the people would like to donate blood, and the blood bank is frequently in shortage of blood supply. Today’s blood donation is facing a serious situation. ② HCV infected blood in window period have not been detected using nucleic acid method for HCV antibody detection negative samples for 4 years all over the Shandong province, although the window period is short viewed from nucleic acid level detection. However, the detection efficiency of HIV is 0.3 ‰ in the same condition. It means that there is a high possibility that some HCV infected blood in window period was delivered to the hospitals. It is very dangerous.

Combine with the interview and the questionnaire results, we focused these two things: ① We disseminated the blood donation knowledge since the public’s perception of blood donation is biased. We visited the government officials to know some policy and persuaded them to make a good policy for unpaid blood donation. It is that organizing unpaid donation blood is a required condition for evaluating advanced organization. ② Our project was decided to develop a biosensor for detecting HCV by nucleic acid aptamer, and the specific detection of trace HCV could be realized by rolling circle amplification, which has great significance to shorten the window period of HCV in clinic transfusion.

So, we distributed many leaflets (pictures showed as follow) to publicize the knowledge of blood donation and encourage more citizens (including team members’ parents) to join in the blood donation. We held a small lecture just beside the blood donation bus. The lecture was about the advantages of blood donation, and some preferential policies that made by the government to reward the blood donors. These activities were successful, there were many people came and donated their blood (shows as follows), and they said they would share these knowledges to their families and friends. We solved the blood supply shortage to some extent.

Education and Public Engagement

Using the club recruiting chance in our school, we advertised our project to the students who are interested in biology and nature science. We introduced synthetic biology to them about the concept, the significance and the future of synthetic biology with the E.coli cartoon designed by OUC-China, giving them a better perspective about the charm of synthetic biology. They learnt more about the blood donation and our project. Another purpose of this activity was to discover the potential members who want to take part in iGEM next year.

We also taught some students the simple biological technology, and held a competition of drawing picture on the agar plate, which caused a great repercussions. Many of them are very interested and wanted to join our team next year.

Here we would like to show some pictures as following that the students drew in the compitition of agar plate drawing. They are very fantastic，hope you like them and enjoy!

Summary for Human Practice

In summary, our project was born and perfected from the volunteer activity of unpaid blood donation. We are developing a biosensor to shorten the HCV window period for the blood detection. We broadened the effects of Synthetic Biology among the young students. And we solved the blood supply shortage to some extent.