Inclusivity
From the beginning of our team formation, we at CGE have been upholding the principle of respecting the diversity of our team members, giving full play to each member's strengths and highlights, and practicing the concepts of inclusiveness and cooperation in order to achieve the team's goals together.
The team consisted of 21 members from different high schools in China and the United States, with different nationalities and cultural backgrounds, which allowed us to bring together cultures and ways of thinking from different regions. This diverse cultural background allowed us to better understand and respect different perspectives and values, and to collide innovative sparks in communication and cooperation. The differences in age and grade levels of our team members bring a wealth of experience and diverse perspectives to the team. In practical cooperation, younger members bring vitality and innovative thinking, while older members provide mature experience and steady judgment, and we all learn from each other and make progress together.
In addition, the professional development of the team members is extremely diverse, covering a wide range of fields such as biology, business, psychology, medicine, biochemistry, and many others. This allows us to think deeply from multiple perspectives when solving problems. For example, in the discussion of the future application of our research project in reality, the biology majors explained in detail the biological principle of synthesizing flavonoids from cucumber epidermal hairs, pointing out the technical difficulties and challenges to improve the synthesis efficiency and ensure the stability of flavonoids. The business majors made suggestions from the perspectives of market demand and commercial feasibility. Through market research, they analyzed the market demand for flavonoid substances in the fields of food, health care products and cosmetics, and considered factors such as marketing strategies and competitive advantages to provide a feasible solution for the commercialization of the project. Students majoring in psychology paid attention to the impact of the project on public psychology. They believe that when consumers choose products containing flavonoid substances, they will not only consider their health benefits, but also be influenced by psychological factors such as product packaging, publicity and brand image. Therefore, they suggested focusing on user experience in product design and promotion to meet consumers' psychological needs. Members of the medical profession conducted an in-depth analysis from the perspective of health and safety, and studied the impact of the intake of flavonoid substances on human health to ensure that they play a positive role within a safe range. Everyone expressed their own views and exchanged them fully. Although disagreements sometimes arose, everyone was able to listen to each other's viewpoints with an open mind and solve problems through rational discussion and analysis.
Our CGE team works closely together, respects everyone's differences, and is committed to fostering an inclusive and fair environment. Such a team atmosphere enables us to fully utilize our individual potentials and jointly pursue our team goals, providing a strong motivation to solve various challenges. In the future, our CGE team will continue to maintain this diversity and inclusiveness to achieve new breakthroughs and accomplishments.
Our research results successfully promoted the production of flavonoids in cucumber epidermal trichome cells through the regulation of the CsTBH - CsPAL co-epitaxial module of the key gene CsTBH - CsPAL in cucumber epidermal trichome. This means that our project can increase the content of flavonoids in cucumber, provide a richer source of natural flavonoids. It also provides new possibilities for the application development of cucumber, which is expected to have a positive impact on people's health and life.
Increasing the content of flavonoids in cucumbers can enhance their nutritional value and health functions, making them more competitive in the market. Flavonoids help cucumbers resist environmental stresses and help increase their resistance to pests, diseases and environmental stresses, reducing pesticide use and promoting sustainable agriculture.
Flavonoid-rich cucumbers can be used to develop a variety of functional foods, such as beverages and nutraceuticals, to provide consumers with more healthy choices. The antioxidant effect of flavonoids can extend the shelf life of cucumber and related foods and reduce the waste of resources.
The natural flavonoids in cucumber have some potential value, and cucumber, as a common food, is safe and easy to grow and obtain. The use of flavonoids in cucumber for drug development can not only reduce the cost of drugs, but also improve the safety and acceptability of drugs.
Flavonoids are secondary metabolites of cucumber, which can help plants to resist environmental stress. Increasing the content of flavonoids in the epidermal hair cells of cucumber can enhance the resistance of cucumber itself, and to a certain extent, reduce the dependence on chemical pesticides and fertilizers, reduce pollution and protect the environment.
Our project, as a basic research, provides practical data for the study of gene expression regulation and metabolic pathways in plants, which can provide references for the research of other plants, and promote the synthetic biology technology to modify plants to produce more useful metabolites.
With the development of society, many countries are facing the challenge of an aging population. The proportion of the elderly population is increasing, and their needs and problems are becoming more and more prominent, so our team focused on the needs of the middle-aged and elderly groups during the exploration of the project.
We have found that this segment of the middle-aged and elderly population has a high level of health concerns, especially on topics related to brain health. The decline of cognitive function is an important issue for middle-aged and elderly people, and the role of flavonoids in improving cognitive function fits their needs. For example, many middle-aged and older adults are concerned about memory loss and slow thinking. Moreover, middle-aged and older adults are also at high risk for chronic diseases. The anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties of flavonoids can help prevent and assist in the treatment of inflammation-related chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes. Knowledge of how flavonoids affect neurotransmitters in the brain as well as antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects can give them new ways to keep their brains healthy.
Our program can respond to the health needs of the middle-aged and elderly population.
During the community follow-up visits, we talked to 15 middle-aged and elderly people and found a problem that deserves our attention: some middle-aged and elderly people think that only medicines and health care products can improve their health, while ignoring the nutrients in their daily diet. This phenomenon also reflects the misconceptions of the middle-aged and the elderly in terms of health awareness. Therefore, we will further help them establish a correct concept of health and emphasize the nutritional balance of their daily diet through popularization and publicity, so that more middle-aged and elderly people can be benefited.
Further we organized a sharing session on “Natural Nutrients and Health” in the community. In the sharing session, we introduced natural nutrients such as flavonoids, vitamins and dietary fibers and their effects on the human body. We also shared our research findings and advocated that we should obtain all kinds of nutrients through a balanced diet and combine a healthy lifestyle with the interaction of natural nutrients to better maintain our health.