Team:NCTU Formosa/human practice

　They introduced many common insect-capturing tools to us, such as fly and moth catching adhesive tool; Full-net pheromone insect-capturing tools, etc. In addition, they also provided us with many treasured comments and advise about our project and device, which led us deeper considerations of our future testings and problems of the potential use in our device.

　We appreciate Sunnymorning organic farm with huge gratitude, for they are willing to help us out on testing our device, along with capturing our target female moths, which is a very critical portion of our project, and also letting us evaluate the number of female moths needed in order to test the basic effects of our PBAN. This cooperation with Sunnymorning not only let us enjoy our process in capturing insects, but also we were very glad to know the farmer’s enthusiasm about our project. Most importantly, we took a great leap forward through this cooperation and had accomplished some of the most significant progress in our project!

The Art of Insect Rearing for Them：
　Dr. Tzeng told us insect rearing is not only a branch of knowledge, but also a kind of art. For example, when malaria was a pandemic disease all over the world, some related research had difficulty in obvious progression, because Anopheles gambiae had not been reared successfully at that time. However, since a researcher from United Kingdom successfully reared Anopheles gambiae in lab, the malaria disease had been completely researched, and the health life of human beings had been improved significantly. This concept provided a great inspiration for us to know the research direction and goal of our project.

Suggestions on Harmful Insect-Bactrocera dorsalis：
　Dr. Tzeng told us the bactrocera dorsalis is a serious problem in modern Taiwanese agriculture, which causes 17 billion dollars of loss every year. Our government had used many methods (such as air dropping many non-fertility bactrocera dorsalis to the farm), trying to solve the problem, but eventually failed. Dr. Tzeng suggested Bactrocera dorsalis as the target harmful insect of our project, which is responsible for the main problem causing Taiwanese agricultural insect damage.

Discussion about Ecological Equilibrium Problem of Our Project：
　Since ecological equilibrium might become the main issue that we will face in our project, due to the insect loss in a habitat. Dr. Tzeng mentioned a fundamental question of why human keep on farming, while it is obvious that farming causes environmental damage. Dr. Tzeng gave us a special view point, highlighting in the beginning, we human, do farming in order to survive, although it causes harm to the environment, we too should not inspect the ecological equilibrium problem of capturing insects, but instead keep working our work on assisting human to survive by improving the farmer's farm.

Experience Sharing of Dengue Fever Prevention and Control：
　Dr. Tzeng shared the interesting experience of his presentation about Dengue Fever Prevention and Control at many city offices and also introduced the two kinds of dengue fever vector mosquito, one is Aedes albopictus outdoors and the other is aedes aegypti indoors. We not only learned simple knowledge of dengue fever but also realized the feeling of helping people with professional knowledge.

　　　　　　　　

Fig.5-1-2 Entrance of NCHU university.

Fig.5-1-3 Dr. Tzeng's Lab of Entomology.

Explanation of the Real Function of Mosquito PBAN：
　In fact, the mosquito PBAN is activated during spreading wings when the mosquito emerges from its pupa. Initially, the mosquito wings are all living cells and when its PBAN regulates some hormones to make some cells apoptosis, just leaving few cells alive on its bone of wings, it finally forms transparent wings. This explanation about mosquito PBAN gave us a deeper realization about PBAN.

Take a Glimpse at The real Mosquito Breeding Cage and Insect Light Trap ：
　Dr. Tzeng let us take a look at Culex pipiens molestus (the underground house mosquito) breeding cage, and also introduced the behavior of many kinds of mosquito. This mosquito breeding cage inspired us many new ideas about our insects testing box. In fact, we mimicked the same concept of mosquito breeding cage to test our PBAN effect simply.

　　

Fig.5-1-4 This was the testing box which was filled with mosquitos.

Fig.5-1-5 The box has a special design which allows us inserting hands to touch the mosquitos.

Further Discussion about Our Project：

Fig.5-1-6 further discussion and experience exchanging with each other.

　Dr. Tzeng have enthusiasm on discussing our project. To prevent any problem from happening, Dr. Tzeng and we inspected all the probability which may cause our project failed such as PBAN degradation in insects’ intestine (whether we have to use little thuricide to cause some holes on insects’ intestine to make it absorb our PBAN easily) and the restriction of our project (we have to capture the first “female” insect in our device, and proves that our project can actually work.). In the discussing process, we again encounters another problems, and obtain many suggestions from Dr. Tzeng as well. We hoped we can overcome all the problems, and improve our project.

Advantages Discussion of Our Device：
　Referring to our project, we use PBAN to make the harmful insects produce pheromone for us to help us attract many same kinds of insects. Dr. Tzeng was very interested in our project, and thought to compared it to the commonly use methods (Pheromone Trap & Pesticide ) in the market, since the main advantage of our project is that we have no drug resistance issue (PBAN is insects’ physiologically natural substance) and have no worry on the problem of running off our PBAN (PBAN can be mass produced from E.coli.). It is a very user-friendly、eco-friendly and perfect project.

　In briefly conclusion, our team and Dr. Tzeng had deep discussion in this visit. Not only experience sharing but also project inspection that made us learn so much and obtains many new ideas which let us realize how to make use of our project to achieve the best result.

More photos here: Google Drive

　On another day, to test the efficiency of our insect capturing device, we also went to Eighteen Peaks Mountain near our school. We put several bottles with sugar solution and the blue bulbs in it to attract the insect. After a night, we found full of insects and moths inside. It's a great success.

Due to privacy concerns, we were not granted this information. However, our team member Rachel, who proposed to the alumni association and met with the CEO, was invited to an alumni dinner meeting. She was given a five minute timeslot onstage to explain the iGEM competition, the workings of our team, and how we need their support. This immediately drew the interest of the many successful entrepreneurs who graduated from NCTU. We successfully raised five hundred thousand NT dollars that night, right at the venue.

We also received emails showing giving encouragement and support to our team from many alumni who went on to tell more alumni who were not present about iGEM and us. It is this spirit of always helping out one of our own that established NCTU’s excellence. We cannot be more thankful to their help. There are also several other corporations that we are still communicating with. The whole experience really allowed us to get in touch with the real world and society.

Fig.5-2-10 After the presentation, we invite the students of MDHS to visit our laboratory.

As for our presenting section, we successfully caught their eyes with our creative project－Operation Debug, which is to attract pests in the farm with PBAN. After our amazing presentation, we believed they not only learned more knowledge about synthetic biology but also impressed by the future development potential of this field.

Because some high school students are pretty curious about our laboratory, so we guided them to pay a visit to lab at the end of this event. We introduce the equipment we usually use in the process of DNA synthesis.

More photos here: Google Drive

　　After we visited the green market, we know that pest plague is surely a big problem for them, especially for those who grow fruits and vegetables.

In the end, we came to few conclusions :

I. Analysis

After a whole day of investigation, we listed 4 main problems required to be solved before our device hits the market:
1. Cost
　　Pest traps are actually pretty low at price on the market, if we still use acrylic material, the entire device might not be as economical as we had predicted. Farmers suggested us switching to another kind of material such as PET or PP that are easier to acquire to make this device more competitive on the market.
2. Technical Training
　　The working theory of our device is similar to that of pheromone trap, however, not every farmer has related experience. It’s necessary to simplify the steps to operate device.
3. Safety of Genetically Modified Products
　　Although we are not growing GMO, some farmers still can’t hold a positive attitude toward our device since it’s relevant to gene modifying technique. So it’s not for sure whether our device would be accepted by the market in the future.
4. Efficiency
　　Wonderful as the idea may seem, our device still has to be more powerful than other pest traps on the market. II. Achievements One of the farmers indicated willingness to provide us with the targeted insects. Also many welcome us to test our device efficiency on their farmlands. For them, as long as our device does not contain any hazard pesticide or harm the environment, our project would be another good choice for them to solve pest plague.

II. Achievements

　　One of the farmers indicated willingness to provide us with the targeted insects. Also many welcome us to test our device efficiency on their farmlands. For them, as long as our device does not contain any hazard pesticide or harm the environment, our project would be another good choice for them to solve pest plague.

More photos here: Google Drive