Team:OUC-China/Project Policy Practise

Overview

As an iGEM team, we indeed gain an insight into synthetic biology, but for most ordinary people, any new way to break the laws of nature can’t be accepted easily.

Except for the design and experiments of project, we also have responsibility for promoting synthetic biology around people and solving the problems about biology safety

Start from the every drop, use our ability to affect the new generation, let them know the synthetic biology and related fields, view the problem with scientific vision. take this as a starting point, we hold the science summer camp in college, pass knowledge around Qingdao high school students, leading the students to swim in the sea of synthetic biology.

Exchanging ideas and communication are essential. We keep in touch with Peking University and Beijing Normal University, and we give a hand to Peking University. In order to make further improvement on the quality, we visit Qingdao Institute of Biomass Energy and Bioprocess Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences and The Affiliated Hospital of Qingdao University, taking a series of exchanging activities.

To link theory with practice, solve the applications of biology completely, we turn our attention to fish, and a specific survey scheme is made to perfect our project.

Communication

Qingdao Institute of Biomass Energy and Bioprocess Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences

Our project not only need the experiments, but also the digital simulation. To solve the problems, our team visit Qingdao Institute of Biomass Energy and Bioprocess Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. The Institute is devoted to providing a systematic and sustainable solution to the nation’s bioenergy development by integrating science, technology, and engineering in the fields of industrial biology, green chemical technology, and process engineering. So we had a communication with Dr. Huang who is good at digital simulation and applied biology, during the meeting, Dr. Huang made a professional lecture introducing the way we might use in the project, he stressed on the combination of simulation and practice in the lab. What we need most is how to solve the mathematical modeling in project result analysis. We exchanged the idea and he gave us some advice about the modeling, introducing the fundamental usage in R. After the meeting, we talked about our project and he praised our achievement so far. From the visiting, our team get a lot of information, we consider the different strategies to promote the completeness of project.

The Central China iGEMers’Consortium(CCiC),Wuhan,China

OUC-China has received the invitation mail from Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, China.

In 23th Aug.2014,We arrived at Huazhong Agricultural University, and begin the two days of communication and presentation.

It is a good chance for us to share our ideas with others, and then we got more advice and comments. These information we gain is the greatest wealth. Our project will get better in the other team's encouragement

In this time, we have established a link with the other team and promoted our friendship.

Communication with other iGEM teams

We invited Beijing Normal University iGEM team to visit our university. We had a discussion on our projects, and exchanged gifts to each other.

We activated and sent two standard biological parts of gas vesicle genes , GvpA and GvpC to Peking iGEM team. And we have helped Peking to test the function of the two parts to make bacteria float.

Camps & Class & Lecture

4th summer camp of life science and technology

This is our fourth year organizing the Science and Technology Camp, aiming at the new sophomore students. In order to let them know more synthetic biology knowledge, we gave them a speech about Synthetic biology. The speech is meanly about what is synthetic biology? What is iGEM? How synthetic biology benefits our life? What if synthetic biology is misused by terrorists? During the camp we gave them a small jamboree. We created the right atmosphere as a International meeting. We should believe the members get a lot about Synthetic biology.

In order to raise the association about team members, especially to the sophomores who are full of enthusiasm to study synthetic biology, we organized some games. It could make them get along better.

Small jamboree. In this spirit of harmony and peace，we talked about all kinds of things. The poster reception attracted many students around the campus, filling the members with satisfaction from completing their own project.

We did data analysis in the lab and Identified the species on our data statistics have great help on our data analysis .we can get a conclusion of that Environmental pollution does great harm to the biological diversity.

The data analysis is very important about our Biological diversity statistics. We did Biological acquisition by the help of Prof. liu in Huiquan Bay.

Practice

The investigation of biological products transport

There are several problems in the transportation of biological products at home and in international. The censor procedure takes much time in the international transport for the sake of the safety of the public. However, it is inevitable to bring barriers to the teams taking part in the iGEM competition. Even, some teams did not deliver the PARTS in time due to the transportation protocols. Therefore, we perform a series of research and surveys about the transportation of biological products and then provide solutions.

Part1:

During the delivering of the PARTS this time, we consulted most of the express companies. They all rejected due to the powder form of the biological products. Under the condition that the specimen was innocuousness, we concealed the fact. And fortunately, the officials received the PARTS we submitted.

After the successful submittal of the PARTS, we thoroughly considered the problems of the international transportation of biological products. We had no idea of the related restrictions due to our first time of the delivery of biological products. Hence, we inquired the Qingdao Customs through the phone. By the introduction of the Qingdao Customs, we consulted the Director Wang of Qingdao Entry-Exit Inspection and Quarantine Bureau through the phone, knowing that biological products belong to Special Articles. We should make an application to the inspection and quarantine administrations under the direct control of SIQSAQ, after getting the permission for the inspection of 20 working days, can we deliver the specimen with the approval.

After knowing the basic information, we found the Regulations for Administration of Entry and Exit Health Quarantine on Special Goods on the official website.

http://wsjyjgs.aqsiq.gov.cn/flfg/bmgz/201207/t20120717_225659.htm

Under this circumstance, the longtime of approval as well as the instability of the external environment may damage the PARTS submitted to iGEM officials. The most important is we may lose the competition due to the delay of the PARTS. We did not know the protocols in other countries, most teams in our country confronted with the same difficulties however. We figured out a solution to the problem.

Solution: IGEM could authorize the biotech firms, the teams submit their own specimen to the nearest authorized biotech firm. It is the biotech firms that evaluate the PARTS, then sending them to the iGEM officials. Thus, the work load of the officials will released and the difficulties of the submission of each team could be eliminated.

We sincerely hope that the iGEM officials could consider our proposal above.

Part2:

We were astonished that the stains HB101 provided by Professor Qiu we received was sent by the way of express. Consequently, we investigated the transportation situation of the biological products.

We inquired the 4 main express companies by the way of phone. The results showed that the reply varied according to each company and the standards were not explicit. Some claimed that it belonged to prohibited articles. Some required that we needed provide approval. Other claimed that we would designate a staff to decide whether it could be sent or not.

Then we found the State Post Bureau of The People's Republic of China, which is monitoring the express market. We dial the hot line, and then we received the answer that biological products belonged to the prohibited articles. Therefore, we went to the official website to figure out the relevant laws and regulations and there was no detailed classification of the biological products.

http://www.spb.gov.cn/bmfw/jxjwpml_15040/

For this case, we wrote to the State Post Bureau of The People's Republic of China and sent to the chief’s mailbox, waiting for the reply now.

The proposals are as follows:

1. Perfect the catalogue of restricted and prohibited articles. Explicitly classify the biological products which has potential hazard, relax the restrictions of the biological products which perform little or no hazards to human at the same time to make it more convenient for the communication of researchers;

2. There should be a uniform administration over the transportation of biological products, a uniform standard for transport, to eliminate the difference between each express company;

3. Open an express channel exclusively for biological products to ensure the safety.

Is it feasible to use feed as the carrier of DNA vaccines?

In the future, we hope to apply this system to social practice. We took the practice investigation to find whether the system is useable in actual production. We plan to use our project to promote and improve the design for serving human society better.

Nowadays recirculating aquaculture is developing to higher density and intensification. The outbreak of fish disease will result in huge losses. It’s best if we can take precautions against fish disease to reduce losses. We visited fish farms to find how to cure ill fishes and prevent the fish from catching disease.

ABOUT THE CURE:

1. They put the ill fish into another fishpond in quarantine.

2. Put CuSO4 or some medicine into the fishpond to kill the pathogens.

3. Feed the fish with food which includes antibiotics.

ABOUT THE PRECAUTIONS：

1. Using smart system to control the temperature of the water.

2. Periodically filter the water and disinfect water.

3. Treating the fish with potassium permanganate before they put the fry into the fishpond.

At present, Chinese aquaculture industry losses seriously because of disease and most of the solutions (such as delivering chemicals and antibiotics) are polluting the environment and have little effect. So we hope that we can apply our project on oral DNA vaccine of fishes in the future. But many researchers who study with DNA vaccine do not actually understand the needs of farms or markets. Actually, the feed is the key, as it is the simplest and most direct oral vaccine carrier, and it also is the most essential element of aquaculture industry. Now the question is whether we can use the pellets as a carrier for oral DNA vaccine？In order to solve this question, we visited Hu Haibin who is the most authoritative expert in aquaculture feeds in OUC-China, in the hope that they can find a reasonable feeding way for us.

In conversation, we learned that fish's feed selection is diverse, such as some fish like floating feed, while others prefer micro particles. But these feeds do not have DNA or living microorganisms. However, there are still some feed containing micro-organisms or micro-organism products, but these biological materials are inactivated. At present, the yeast is the most commonly utilized kind of feed; its main role is to improve palatability and to ameliorate the intestinal environment. Thus, experts recommend us to use yeast for chassis because it is easy to feed. But whether E. coli or yeast, there will be leaks if fed to fish on farm, and there will be some bio-security threat. Some fodder was wrapped with an outer coat which only can be digested in the intestine, such as sodium alginate, which was supposed to prevent contamination of food residues in aquaculture water. If it could be applied on our project, we could effectively solve the microbial leakage problems. But it also has drawbacks: the demanding production process requirements and high cost. Because of this, application is not very wide. Could our idea be blocked up with the high cost?

This lab is manufacturing chlorella. It's a nutrient-rich feed for some fish larvae.

In the ornamental fish industry, people don't care so much about the composition of the feed. We OUC-China came to the ornamental fish market and interviewed shopkeepers. We found that the price of aquarium fishes (both freshwater fish and seawater fish) is much higher than edible fishes, and they suffer from the same disease as the edible fishes. For ornamental fish, they have a higher death rate when they get ill, which is close to 90%. Fish amateurs are willing to bear relatively high expenses to prevent their pets from getting ill. We found there wasn't any feed with DNA vaccines or other drugs, but coated pellets which aims to prevent water from being polluted by the feed sells well. Therefore if we combined coated pellet technology with our projects and tried the feed with outer coat on the ornamental fish industry, it might represent a wide-open market.

These are normal pellets on the market now.

We think that our original problem has been solved: it would be manufactured if we use yeast as our chassis. At the same time, using coated particles to achieve oral vaccine will reduce the risk of biosafety hazards. If we apply our technology to ornamental fish industry, it won't develop so many problems. One day, this technology will become mature, and then there would be much fewer problems in aquaculture.

• Overview
• Communication
• Camps&Class&Lecture
• Practice