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Team:NCTU Formosa/human practice
From 2014.igem.org
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Field Trip and Industry Collaboration
Cooperation with Sunnymorning Organic Farm
The owner of Sunnymorning Organic Farm helped us catch our target insects.
Sunnymorning Organic Farm is located on the boundary of Hsinchu and Miaoli in Taiwan, about a 40 minute distance from NCTU. "Due to the diversity of crops in the farm, hundreds of moths are attracted to the opening flashlight during summer evening", said the owner, amusingly. Thus, they are struggling hard by harmful insect problems. Because traditional organic farming methods do not allow using any pesticides, which will eventually harm the soil, they have developed many kinds of methods to reduce the number of harmful insects in their farm.
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They introduced many common insect-capturing tools to us, such as adhesive tool for catching moths and flies, also Full-net pheromone insect-capturing tools, etc. In addition, they also provided many treasured comments and advices for us to improve our project and device. This led a deeper consideration of our future testings and the problems we might encounter with the potential use of 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. We gained a lot afte cooperation with Sunnymorning. First of all, we began overwhelming with our project and with the process during capture. Second, we were got the advices and enthusiasm from farmer. Most importantly, we took a great leap forward and had accomplished some of the most significant progress in our project!
NCHU-Visit
Dinning Together in Feng Wu
Experience Sharing of Capturing Bloodsucking Flies in The Farm:
Dr. Tzeng told us livestock farmers used to borrow insect light traps from them to capture Bloodsucking Flies. To our surprise, light traps can capture even thousands of insects in just one night. Additionally, they also had some cooperation program with livestock farmers. At that time, they used many interesting approaches, such as altering light's color and intensity, to test the behavior of Bloodsucking Flies. This experience sharing provided us with some basic methods in testing insect behavior.
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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.
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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.
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Further Discussion about Our Project：
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
Wang Lai Farm & Eighteen Peaks Mountain
We visited the Weng Lai Farm to prepare moths for our experiment. The farm owner not only instructed us a suitable place but also showed us how his farm deal with the moth. Nowadays, they used a device with blue light to attract the moths. Besides, it is equipped with a fan for sweeping the insects into the device. We are inspired by those ideas and utilize it to improve our device.
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In order 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 to attract the insect. One night over, we caught full of insects and moths. It's a great success.
Fund Raising
Even with the funding support by our school, iGEM is still an economically taxing project. With our many spendings on materials for our device developing and testing, we need to find sponsorship. We planned reach out to several corporations and propose our project. We went to our alumni association for contact information of alumni founded enterprises.
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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.
Team Exchange
Conference
We hosted the 2nd iGEM Conference from August 3th to August 7th at the NCTU. More than 20 research teams were invited this year. Since this was the second time for us to host the Conference, how to make it better and more intriguing than the previous one had proved to be a great challenge and novel experience for all members of the NCTU_Formosa Team (2014).
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Chewing over the agenda.
Although we had encountered many problems at the beginning, we were extremely grateful that all the difficulties could be overcome with the assistance from our instructors and the team members of the NCTU_Formosa (2013).
We were more than delighted to see the iGEM 2014 turned out to be a wonderful and successful conference in that the whole meeting went smoothly, and more details and trivialities could be well taken care of throughout each individual section.
As a warm-up Asian Jamboree, the Conference set up a stage for each team to present their projects and posters for exchanging research ideas, sharing experiences, or acknowledging difficulties that all delegates have encountered.
We were not only grateful to acquire all the feedbacks and advices on our project, but were also deeply intrigued and impressed by the projects carried out by the other teams. Their endeavors and methods were indeed very inspiring that have helped us to generate more research ideas, and to raise the possibilities for collaborations with other teams.
In addition to the scientific sections, we also arranged several social events, including a welcome party, one-day trip in Taipei, and a roadside banquet as the farewell party. We believed the traditional Taiwanese cuisines and unique foods of night markets might be the most effective vehicle to make friends and strengthen our relationships with the delegates from abroad. Despite being exhausted in planning and hosting all these events, we hoped that all delegates felt entertained and welcomed.
Thanks to all the members of the iGEM, the Conference not only provided us with the opportunity to promote our project, but also created a valuable experience or ‘collective memory’ that may bind all iGEMers together in the forthcoming years.
Video Conferencing with Xiamen University
We had a video conferencing with the iGEM team of Xiamen University, China, in May. As both teams just started their own research projects at that time, the main topics of this video conferencing only consisted of a brief description or introduction of the protocols for each other’s project, how the research team was established and organized. According to this short conferencing, we knew the Xiamen team mainly consists of sophomores or juniors, whereas they were surprised to learn that almost 90% of our team members are freshmen.
See more photos here: Google Drive
MDHS-Conference
We invited Mingdao High school iGEM team to exchange ideas with us. We also held a pizza party to enhance more fun in this event.
We asked Mingdao high school to give a brief introduction to their project－Odor Let It Die. It’s really an interesting and creative idea. Although they are just high school students, their English presenters clearly explained what problems they want to solve. In the discussion section, we gave them several feedback and suggestions to perfect their project.
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.
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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
Investigator X iGEM
We went to China Medical University(CMU) to attend a forum which named "Investigator X iGEM" on October forth. In purpose of introducing iGEM to people in CMU and sharing our project with other iGEM teams in Taiwan as well. In this forum, we not only presented our project to NTU, NYMU and MDHS iGEM teams but also discussed with them. People who worked in Investigator were very surprised at our presentation. Through this forum, We not only got many good ideas about our project but were also glad to have a chance to introduce our project to more and more people.
See more photos here: Google Drive
Modeling Assisting TCU Taiwan iGEM Team
Best Team Friend: TCU Taiwan
It's our greatest honor to help TCU Taiwan iGEM Team in modeling. Thank TCU Taiwan for giving this opportunity. We all were very glad share our experience with you all.
iGEM Advertising
Biocamp
Biocamp in NCTU.
Biocamp in NCTU.
Biocamp in NCTU.
In the summer, our department held a bio-camp. We spent a morning teaching them what synthetic biology is and introducing iGEM to them. In the beginning, I thought they might fall asleep during our lecture, but it was totally different to what I thought. All of them were fascinated by the idea of using enzymes and different assemblies of biobricks to create new functions, and interacted enthusiastically with us. For high school students, it is hard to imagine how scientists transfer genes into bacteria and plants. So we used some easy ways to explain how we do those jobs and we also designed some games to help them learn the basics of biobrick assembly. After this class, I think they gained a deeper understanding of synthetic biology. Hopefully through our iGEM introduction, they are inspired to become future iGEMers or even synthetic biologists.
See more photos here: Google Drive
NTHU Green Market-Visition
NTHU Green Market-visition.
NTHU Green Market-visition.
NTHU Green Market-visition.
To further understand the real practicability of our device, we visited the Green Market in NTHU this summer. We had a good time interviewing with organic agriculture farmers. Through the interview, we could assess the feasibility of future development of our project as well. What's more, we designed questionnaires for farmers in green market in NTHU. The questionnaires were to publicize how our device works and we also learn from their advice.
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After we visited the green market, we knew 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 make this device more competitive on the market.
2. Technical Training
The working theory of our device is similar to pheromone traps.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 they reluctant to touch anything about 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.
More photos here: Google Drive
SNU-Visit
Welcome Seoul National University!
Welcome Seoul National University!
Welcome Seoul National University!
Few weeks after the iGEM conference, some researchers of the Seoul National University came to visit us at the NCTU. We delivered a short presentation of our project and showed them our lab settings. As they have not yet established an iGEM team, they appeared intrigued by our demonstrations and were very keen to set up a team next year. Therefore, we made a further introduction of synthetic biology to them, and shared them with our experiences in establishing an iGEM team.
More photos here: Google Drive
