Human Practices (Silver / Gold)

Silver

Hangzhou is widely known by water- related UNESCO World Heritages – West Lake and Grand Canal, however, severe water pollution has been received more and more attention in recent years. Another environmental pollution problem that is as important as water is soil pollution, especially heavy metal pollution. Hence, we want to design a operability device to solve the above environmental problems.
Our topic inspired by the paper published in Science, 2018, March. It mainly talked about the gene expression of methanobactin which is originated from methanotrophy, which triggers us the idea of using this gene to eliminate the heavy metal (copper) pollution in surrounding environment.

Public Survey

In order to understand the public’s opinion of our project, we first carried out a marketing research with 1000 pieces of surveys handed out. Overall, there is considerably high expectation over our copper-binding product but relatively low awareness over the synthetic biology. More detailed analysis would be displayed for the following.

The impact of heavy metal pollution on the general public’s life

For the survey, including 1067 recycling questionnaires from16 different regions, we have enough sources to reveal how statistically those heavy metal pollutions jeopardize our environment and economics. According to the results of questionnaires, we found that the impact of heavy metal pollution is impalpable by a large group of people, even people living near industrial districts (Figure 1 and Table 1).

Table 1 and Figure 1

However, when the question focus on “food safety induced by soil pollution”, it is astonishing that with more than half of the informants are “very anxious” towards the issue of food safety (Figure 2) (85.5% of the informants are either very serious or serious about the food safety issue), unlike our expectation which their life will also be largely affected by “soil pollution”, they are way less serious about that issue.

Figure 2

It could be reasonably argued that people are more attentive towards the food problem that is directly relative to the health problem than soil pollution problem which is more distant. But generally, they are concern about soil pollution by heavy metal as a whole. And thanks to the issue and their concerns, the outlook of our project seams bright.

Concerns (expectation) over the biological products

However, as a new form of purging product, the biological method to decompose soil pollution will probably be resisted by consumers. Based on our research, we could conclude several reasons why the consumers would have negative attitude to ameliorate polluted soil by biological methods.

The imparted micro-organisms may be unmanageable.

As shown in Figure 3, about 26.3% informants fear that those micro-organisms would remain in the soil (or water) and then be indirectly brought into our human body, causing unpredictable disease.

Figure 3

Even if the product does ameliorate the soil, people fear that there are insalubrious micro-organisms remaining in the soil, leading to further new pollution (Figure 4).

Figure 4

To sum up, according to the results mentioned above, the core issue of public concern is not the new method itself, but the unknown harm and actual effect that new method or things may bring. Realizing this point, we have improved the project from the following two aspects.

1. Public Science Activities

Against insufficient public understanding of synthetic biology and gene erringeering, our team organized four public science events at Hangzhou Low Carbon Science and Technology Museum (China), Zhejiang Science and Technology Museum as well as Zhejiang Museum of Natural History, Ningbo Foreign Language School.

In AST Space activity, at least 6 iGEM teams participated in the provincial science and Technology Museum activity. We take children to play games which help them to touch base with the science like we led them to finish the extraction of artificial colors. We also give a speech on the stage to summary the project of each team and its contribution to society. Moreover, we brought out two education lectures about metal contamination and synthetic biology in the main hall of Zhejiang Natural Museum. For both lectures, around fifty audiences participate to the lecture. The first part of the lecture explained the destruction of metal contamination and how our product can solve it. The second disseminates the basics about synthetic biology and genome biology. Moreover, we set out an experiment for banana DNA extraction which helps to support the participants to understand. In Hangzhou Low Carbon Science & Technology Museum of China we educate the public on the benefits of a low carbon lifestyle and provides space for exhibitions relating to science and technology. ASTWS-China worked in conjunction with the Museum, as well as three other IGEM teams, on a public engagement event. Eventually, three events ended consummately and successfully.

2. Adjust our proposal

We adjust our project in several ways in response to these concerns. For example, the strain selection of engineered microorganism, additional design of self-suicide parts, and so on. See the “Integrated HP” part for the details.

Gold Integrated

First, based on the results of the survey, we have fully considered the public's apprehension about the impact of geneticCom modification and microorganisms on the natural environment. We chose Escherichia coil BL21 strain which is low toxicity and low sensitivity to human and environment. Besides, we designed a self-suicide part target those abnormal conditions including overpopulation and low copper concentration. This assures the safe management over genetically modified organisms.

Additionally, from our initial idea, the design of our working parts and our prototype to the future applications of our project, the opinions of specialists have been vital in influencing our work. Details as follows.

Prof. Ruo He

Professor from Environmental Science department of Zhejiang University

Our initial plan was to clone the Mbns gene from the methanotrophs. However upon sequencing the amplified inserts, none of the sequences were what we expected to find. And we have learned the methanobactine's mechanism inside methanotroph but is not yet fully understood.

We asked Prof. Ruo He, an expert who mainly worked on methanotrophs, for advice. She told us as an anaerobic bacteria, methanotrophs are really hard to operate in normal conditions. So finding the corresponding sequence and synthesizing it and then transferring the Mbns gene into E.coli would be more efficient and helpful. Combined with the results of survey mentioned above, we chose Escherichia coli BL21 strain which is low toxicity and low sensitivity to human and environment. And we also successfully constructed the new basic part MbnABC which is submitted to Registry (BBa_2826000).

Prof. Jiyan Shi

Professor from Environmental Science department of Zhejiang University

Initially, we have a big plan about using biological methods to copper treatment basing on Mbn, but we were lack of recognition of exsiting sewage treatment methods.

We consulted prof. Jiyan Shi, as one of the top researchers in the field of sewage treatment, for advice. He listed the ways heavy metal polluted waters could be treated, which are very efficient and environmental friendly already. However, the regular testing of water quality is not as easy as treating them. Especially for those poor villages in the middle of nowhere. They don't have good access to the testing equipment, and they are among the group of people with lest health care in the nation. So we adjusted our design of proposal, changing from Methanibactine synthesis and real-world application to find a more accessible way to moniter copper pollution (by naked eyes).

Visiting local sewage treatment plant

Other than the interview of both professors, we have also visited a local urban sewage treatment plant, to learn the modern treating methods of sewage by bacteria. This urban sewage treatment plant uses bacteria to process the sewage from Hangzhou, which gives us inspiration in designing our own processor for our product. For example, when designing our prototype, we extra added the use of germicidal lamp and the settling basin to eliminate the public fear of bioengineering methods.

Dr. Guanda Lu

Professor from MIT

During the time section of experimenting at Zhejiang University, we are lucky enough to listen to the report of Dr. Lu, a professor from MIT who has extensive experience in the field of synthetic biology, about genetic engineering. We also have asked him for the opinion about our project, such as how does he see the suicide system we designed in our project. Dr. Lu first affirmed our thoughts and pointed out that the design of synthetic biological components must meet the actual needs. Based on his useful advice, we have further improved our project plan, including biosafety of placing the engineered bacteria into environment, further improved the parts design to more closer to actual needs, etc.

Team:ASTWS-China/Human Practices