Team:XJTU-China/Human Practices
Integrated and Gold
Interviews with corporate technicians and visits in their companies
Abstract
Our product, D-psicose, as a sweetener, has the advantages of high sweetness and low energy. To make our product D-psicose closer to the market demand, we organized company visits.
During the visit, we focused on understanding the current sweetener market and listened to professional insights and recommendations on our IGEM project. Besides, we learned from the company how to bring laboratory products to market. Through the visit, we have a profound understanding of the important value and development prospects of D-psicose.
Huanqiu Yuanyi, Yang ling
General Manager Zhao
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To understand more about the application of sweeteners in the market, we visited Huanqiu Yuanyi Company, a company that mainly deals with kiwi processes and sales.
We interviewed manager Zhao, and then visited the workshop and laboratory.
Keypoints
- The potential market of D-psicose is vast. Potential groups:
- people with diabetic go out, or travel
- People in the gym pay more attention to the healthy diet of people.
- people in First-tier cities prefer to purchase D-psicose than others.
- Sweeteners are a kind of food additives, which are misunderstood by Chinese public, which is a potential obstacle for the promotion of D-psicose. The reasons:
- Different food standards between Europe, America and China;
- The state deliberately pursues perfection;
- The state deliberately pursues perfection;
During this visit, we learned about current sweetener applications and people's perceptions of it. Besides, we listened to market professionals' thoughts on our IGEM projects.
Xinsheng Jixang, Weinan, Shaanxi Province China
General Manager Tan
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Our products, D-psicose, as sweeteners, have advantage of high sweetness and low calorie.
To better understand the current sweetener market, we visited Xinsheng Jixiang Biological Company, interviewed Director Tan to exchange enzymes and D-psicose and visited the factory. The company's main produce enzyme-based fermented food and manufacture products.
Keypoints:
- In the hearts of the public, the recognition of sugar is higher than recognition of sugar substitutes and artificial sweeteners. People know sucrose is extracted from sugar cane, so it's safe for them.
- About quality: It is important to ensure that the public recognizes the taste of the food made by D- psicose.
- About the price: The price of D-psicose in China, the market can accept, is about 20,000 yuan/ton. If you use D-psicose as a bottled beverage, the price of one bottle is about 10 yuan.
This activity allows us to better understand the needs of the market, which will better improve our products.
After learning about the market of D-psicose as a sweetener, how to bring D-psicose to the market?
Yesherb, Xi'an
Xi'an Shaanxi Province, China
How to promote the products in the lab to the market, so that more people can benefit from the IGEM project. For this reason, we visited Yesherb, a prebiotic development company that successfully transformed the lab's oligomannose into a terminal product in market.
Keypoints:- It is important to have a viable new idea. After the argument and repeated modification, the idea begins to enter the experimental stage.
- With the laboratory data, we need seek technology that can transform laboratory data into mass production.
- After having the product, we begin to think about the form in market, advantages of our products and other products the market have.
- Finally, the operation of the entire market.
Visiting Yesherb lets us know how to turn scientific research into products to market, which is very necessary for our product development in the future.
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Contact with the Old
Abstract
D-psicose has a certain role in controlling blood sugar and the metabolism of fat. Therefore, we organized activities in Xi'an Jinqiu Nursing Home, community and hospital. we visited elders, and patients to introduce scientific and reasonable eating habits.
In this activity, we not only let the elderly and patients feel the kindness, but also give them advice, which make them have some insight into scientific and reasonable eating habits. In spite of the fact that they may not understand what synthetic biology is, they can benefit from our IGEM project. From this perspective, our activities are very important and necessary. In these activities, we not only understood the problems they face and listened to their thoughts about our projects, but also tried our best to provide some advice that can effectively solve some problem they face
Jinqiu Nursing Home and community
Xi'an, Shaanxi Province, China
When people become older, diabetes have become common diseases. What we can do for all the people with diabetes? After community and Jinqiu Nursing Home interview, we got a deeper understanding of the real needs of the elder. Finally, we provided brochures written by our team, which covers the problems faced by them.
Keypoints：- In the activities, most of the elderly we meted have diabetes.
- With the improvement of living conditions, people's concern for physical health is increasing.
- The reasonable diet is important. More than half of the elderly say that they usually eat more vegetables and eat less sugar food，and are very focused on the stability of their blood sugar.
- Most of people support our project about D-psicose and have a positive attitude. Old people show interest in D-psicose, even support research and development, willing to buy,
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Brochure
Our project is about the production of D-psicose, which has low calorie and hypoglycemic properties. As is known that diabetes is a worldwide problem and the number of patients with diabetes continues to grow globally.
Based on the communication with the elderly and patients, our team designed and wrote brochures for them.
Keypoints:- Based on the literature, we summarized eight healthy eating habits and clinical manifestations and hazards of diabetes.
- Based on the current lifestyle of elders and diabetics, we proposed correct dietary recommendations.
- The brochure also covers other geriatric diseases such as hypertension, which provides reasonable dietary advice for various geriatric diseases.
- In this brochure, we introduced the Advantage and value of D-psicose we produced.
The distribution of the brochure makes people a better understanding of healthy eating methods and more people benefits from our projects, which has far-reaching implications.
Questionnaire about sweeteners
To understand the public's perception of sweeteners and predict the future market of our products, D-psicose, we used the online questionnaire to investigate the public, most of which are the young and middle-aged groups.
1. Here are some sweeteners, which are you familiar with?
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2. Will you notice the sweetener marked on the package, when you buy food?
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3. Do you know any alternatives to sucrose？
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4. Would you mind adding sweeteners to the food?
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5. D-psicose is a nature sugar with low energy and good taste. Would you like to add it into your food or drink?
For this part，We received a total of 1121 questionnaires.
After analysis, we found that everyone buys things subjectively without choosing sweeteners, and more than half said they would mind the use of sweeteners. However, they all want their food to have sugar and low energy.
D-psicose is a kind of natural sugar, but less person knows this sugar. This sugar with a sweetness of 70%-80% of sucrose, has very low energy and a good effect on diabetes. So, when we ask, if D-psicose is added to the food, do you want to try. More than half of them choose "Yes". Therefore, we believe that the outlook for D-psicose in food will be very good.
Meetups with other teams
Hefei meetup
Location: School of life science in USTC, Hefei; Teams: XJTU-China, USTC, BNU, Jilin-China
Some of our team members were invited to participate in a student academy communication meeting in USTC, Hefei. We contact with Jilin-China, USTC, BNU igem teams to hold a meeting in School of life science in USTC. Each team presented their ideas and we discussed about them later. Then we talked about competition details and how to collaborate with each other. From this meeting, we know how to prepare our project and how to present our ideas.
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CCiC
Location: Shanghai; Teams: More than 60 Chinese teams
CCiC(the Conference of China iGEMer Community)is a seminar attended by China's iGEM teams. As a communication platform for Chinese synthetic biology enthusiasts, CCiC develops in reform and innovation during 5 years. The 5th CCiC was hosted by ShanghaiTech University. There are more than 60 teams participated in the conference, with several more than 500 people. During the five-day meeting, we met and communicated with other iGEMers, exchanging our knowledge and experience. Meanwhile, some seniors in synthetic biology such as Dr. Haoqian Zhang provided us valuable advice. We experienced a grand feast of thinking.
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Xi'an meetup
Location: in NPU, Shannxi; Teams: XJTU-China, NPU-China and NWU-China.
This summer, three teams in Shaanxi came together and shared their thoughts in the first stage of the iGEM season. It was a great chance for us to share the sparks we had in brainstorming and the obstacles we met during lab (especially in InterLab, by then), to share the resources we have, and to talk about the experiences we had in building up the team and managing all the experiments
During the meetup, we all shared our conceptions of iGEM projects. After it, NPU and NWU teams have shared their experiences in attending the Giant Jamboree. We have learned some very useful tips in Boston. At last, we shared our thoughts about how to pass our knowledge to younger iGEMers, and how to involve them in our current labs, so that they will be familiar to the protocols when building up a team of themselves.
In summary, it is very important to get in touch with the teams nearby, solve the problems together and share wonderful ideas.
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