From 2014.igem.org

Research: Formaldehyde in cars

Concentrating On the Safety, Leading Our Design

Before we started our project "formaldehyde terminator", we aimed at detecting the existence of formaldehyde in the houses, but as time went by, we realized that high formaldehyde level is a more serious problem in cars. "Although we can tell whether the level of formaldehyde is high or not, we have almost no methods to eliminate formaldehyde in cars quickly." So we improved our design by adding Street Cleaner System, so we could not only detect formaldehyde but also remove it continuously.

Introduction

As we know, formaldehyde exists not only in factories and some extreme environment but also in our daily life, but at the same time we often ignore the formaldehyde in some basic area around us, we aim nat finding what we used to ignore, and finally we have done the research of detecting formaldehyde in cars. In this program, we use formaldehyde kits to help both teachers and our classmates to detect formaldehyde level in their cars. 34 cars have been tested and finally almost one third of these cars’ air-formaldehyde condition is excessive. Besides these, we have also done some other analysis about different factors’ influence on formaldehyde level.

You can download the detail information from here.

Analysis

After we have collected series of data, we did a lot of analysis. For the reason that our data are influenced by different factors, we set groups of two-variables analysis (other factors are ignored when analyzing one group). Here are our data:

Table 1.1 The rate of excessive cars and compliance cars

Figure1.1 The rate of excessive cars and compliance cars

The cars which have excessive level of formaldehyde are about one third to all cars tested.

Figure1.2 Time and cars Red line stands for Cordon - It is the content of formaldehyde higher than 0.1mg/m³ that is excessive.

Using years is related to level of formaldehyde in cars closely, through the graph we can find that there exists a clear boundary between the excessive group and the normal group, new cars are of high possibility to have excessive level of formaldehyde while old cars may remain normal. (For the reason that quantity of our data is limited and unknown factors may also influence the research, we can only get the rough conclusion)

Table 1.2 Countries and cars

Figure1.3 Rate of cars produced from different countries

Besides the quantity, we also did the analysis of the relationship between countries and average formaldehyde level of cars.

Figure1.4 Average level of formaldehyde in different groups.

From this graph we can know clearly that cars from different countries have diversity in the level of formaldehyde, so we may think it over before deciding which one to buy.

Conclusion

From this program we have finished, we can find that the basic vehicle - cars may have higher concentration of formaldehyde than we thought before (For the reason that nearly 30 percent of cars may have excessive level of formaldehyde). It alerts us that we should focus our attention on what we may ignore before, even the basic one around us. Through this program, teachers and our classmates have got access to our iGEM project, almost all of them participated in it happily and finally found what was ignored before. This is not only good for communication between teachers and students, but also can help more people to realize environmental problems in our daily life. We feel sorry for that kits can only detect but not remove formaldehyde at the same time, if our iGEM project could come true, we can solve this problem easily. More than one teacher have shown their interest in our project of using E. coli to detect and remove formaldehyde at the same time, we will work harder and try all we can to make our dream come true!

Helping other teams

Giving iGEM14_NUDT_CHINA A Biobrick We Constructed

We give iGEM14_NUDT_CHINA a new biobrick we constructed this year. The part number is BBa_K1334030. They used this part in their project and test its function. Thanks for their acknowledgement in theri Experiment Support.

Helping iGEM14_HUST-INNOVATORS Constructing Their Biobrick

In September in 2014, after we finished our project probably and went to the last step, we helped iGEM14_HUST-INNOVATORS construct a biobrick BBa_K1551000.

The biobrick: BBa_K1551000.

The reference page of iGEM14_HUST-INNOVATORS (Please click Team-intro.-Special Thanks)

iGEM14_HUST-INNOVATORS is a team which consists of intelligent guys whose major are not biology-relevant. They made a piece of fascinating software and found a biological company to synthesize a part in pUC57 backbone to generate delta-5 fatty acid Elongace while they had difficulties in transforming the part into pSB1C3. We changed the backbone for them and helped them by adding the part to the registry.

Figure2.1 Detail information of plasmid pUC57

After days of hard working, we finished this project successfully, here shows the final result of electrophoresis.

Figure 2.2 We digest Bba_K1551000 with restriction enzymes EcoR I and PstI . The Elongace coding sequence (with prfix and suffix)is 2064 bp while the pSB1C3 is 2070 bp so that there is only one bar near the 2000 bp region, which shows that we change the plasmid backbone successfully.

Participating in other teams' human practice

In June, we got an e-mail from the team Virginia, from this e-mail we knew that they were preparing for a global survey about synthetic biology, we participated in their survey actively and finally helped them to collect nearly 50 surveys, they provided us with a nice badge and thanked us for helping.

Email from Virginia:

Besides, we also helped XMU-China to finish their Newsletters, we were very happy to see their Newsletter every week.

Email from XMU-China:

Helping other teams after CCiC:

Besides the information mentioned above, after the CCiC(Central China iGEMer's Consortium), we amplified our communication with other teams such as HZAU-China, NJAU-China, NUDT-China and so on, we also provided them with help, here is the brief introduction:

Before the CCiC, we convened a preparation meeting in WHU-China, and helped HZAU-China to formed CCiC. We also exchanged some parts with HZAU-China, such as dCas9 device(BBa_K1081000)(we constructed this part last year), and luxI generator： BBa_K1334030(we constructed the part this year)

Special thanks from HZAU-China

After communicating with NJAU-China, we knew that their program is related to dCas9 device, which we had constructed the last year, so we also provided them with BBa_K1081000.

Thanks from NJAU-China

After communicating with NUDT-China, we knew that both of our projects would use N-(3-oxododecanoyl) homoserine lactone (AHL for Las system), at that time we had gotten AHL, so we sent AHL to them, besides, we provided BBa_K1334030 to them. Similar situation happened to BIT, which team had also received AHL from us.

Address from their teams

Popularization

During our process in finishing the project, we had also tried to introduce iGEM to more people around. To achieve our goal, we had hosted series of wonderful activities.

In May, at the very beginning of our project, we hosted Scrawl Competition in Microorganism, in this competition, every participant would get a culture plate and E. coli which contained GFP, they could use inoculating loop to draw what they like on the culture plate.

In September, we utilized the chance of welcoming the fresh to our university to advertise iGEM, in order to bring them knowledge about iGEM as well as happiness, we hosted series of activities. When the fresh come to university to register, they will get a bag which contains books about the university, card they will use in daily life and other guide that can help them to adapt the university. We added our poster and an exquisite badge into each bag, they were very happy when getting gifts. In addition, we also hosted a meeting to welcome them and advertise iGEM, our header Sun Haoyuan gave them a wonderful speech and told them a lot about his experience in university and iGEM.

Further than advertising to students around us, we have taken other ways to expand our influence. One way is through the internet, we have set up our own Xinlang Weibo, public pages on Renren and QQ groups, we keep telling the public about iGEM and the process of our experiments. Till now on ,we have a lot of fans, and they can learn numerous knowledge from us. Another way is participating in competition hosted by our school, in the early October, we took our program to Creation Competition in our school, and we showed our idea to many teachers in different majors and finally got a great score.

Communication

We have communicated with a lot of universities and organizations. First of all we will introduce you CCiC here. CCiC is Central China iGEMer's Consortium. In the early April, HZAU-China, HUST-China and WHU-China ,WHU-Pharm worked together to prepare for this great meeting, and CCiC finally began at 23rd August successfully in Huazhong Agriculture University. Almost 20 universities from all over the China came to Wuhan to attend the meeting. We made friends with students from these universities and at the same time we communicated and exchanged our great ideas with each other.

Besides CCiC, we also communicated with a lot of teams. Here is a list that notes the wonderful experience:

Our leader went to Jilin University and had a nice communication with them, besides exchanged our ideas, he invited Jilin_China to join in CCiC and have a visit to Wuhan University.

Our advisor Jia Hangxing was invited by friends from SCU to visit SiChuan University and they had a wonderful talk in May.

Friends from OUC-China, SCUT and SCAU-China visited Wuhan University after CCiC. Students from WHU-China and WHU-Pharm welcomed them and guided them a wonderful trip.

Team:WHU-China/Footages/practice