Human Practices
We really harvested a lot by following the guidance of human practice from iGEM. It not only polished our project, but gave us a deeper understanding of the distance between problems and reality, and the connection between individuals and communities.
After conducting street interviews and questionnaires, we decided that it was necessary to stimulate youth's curiosity about the universe, so we designed an activity to make planets out of sodium alginate hydrogel, which is an edible food material, and we used edible grade coloring, and handed out gloves to the children safety is taken into account here.
In order to enhance the understanding of Martian immigrants and the outer space environment, some members of SZ-SHD went to Shanghai to visit the Space Museum. Through this visit, we have a deeper understanding of various types of aviation rockets and probes in different periods. At the same time, everyone also visited the interior of the simulated space capsule up close, and gained a deeper understanding of the life environment of astronauts in space. The members of SZ-SHD also focused on information about Mars in order to better conduct research on Martian migration.
For high school students, in order to further their understanding of synthetic biology and more complex experimental skills, and to promote our project more widely, we designed the activity of bacteria painting. We did this in the lab, and no bacteria was released outside.
Summary
Technical details
Interview with dietitians
In addition to food, humans need a certain amount of nutrition to survive, but we lack this knowledge, so we spoke to two nutritionists who have a wealth of knowledge and can tell us the points that need to be paid attention to in the food preparation process. We interviewed two dietitians. The first is Meng Xia, the deputy director of the Department of Clinical Nutrition at Beijing Anzhen Hospital. The second is Renjia Zhang, a registered dietitian certified by the Chinese Nutrition Association.
After we introduced the background of the project, the first information we got was that we needed to consider the issue of cosmic radiation, which can be considered to add anti-radiation ingredients to food. After learning that we use microorganisms to produce food, the nutritionist emphasized that we need to pay attention to safety issues.
From this interview, we know that there are two problems that need to be solved. The first is how to add radiation-proof ingredients to the food, and the second is to check the composition of the medium and pay attention to whether other additives may be involved in the project are harmful.
We selected lycopene as a nutrient, which can be synthesized by yeast and has antioxidant function. We checked the composition of the medium and found that it was safe. We also took this into consideration when designing the suicide switch, so we used FDA approval-chemical as the key to the suicide switch.
Interview with psychologists
The environment on Mars is vastly different from that on Earth, and we were concerned that people might have different psychological problems after migration, so we interviewed psychological counselor Qi Wu. She is good at dealing with interpersonal relationships and emotion management. We also interviewed Ka Weng Chan, a Cambridge Psychological Assessment Expert.
After introducing the subject content, it was mainly suggested that anxiety is the main emotion and we need to find ways to stabilize everyone's emotion. For example, some of the perfumes we use daily have this function. At the same time, they also suggested that material conditions have a greater impact on our psychology than we think, and we need to consider how to transform a barren environment into a habitable one.
We first thought about how to calm everyone down, and the perfume she mentioned caught our attention and we looked it up, and we found that nerolol and limonene can help calm everyone down and at the same time, if we want to beautifize the environment, we inevitably need to grow plants on Mars.
Both nerolenol and limonene can be synthesized by yeast and to our surprise, they also have antioxidant properties, so we designed a process for the synthesis of limonene and nerolenol by yeast and we became more convinced that plant synthetic biology would be an important topic for Martian settlers.
Interview with Dr. Huang
Jian Huang is a professor at Soochow University, and he has extensive experience in plant modification and plant-related microbial research. Part of our project is to increase the fertility of Martian soil by toxin-fixing bacteria in Martian soil to aid plant planting.
We introduced our project to Jian Huang, and we also mentioned that we tried to buy azotobacter from commercial institutions, but failed, so we hope to isolate azotobacter from soil, and introduced our experimental method. Jian Huang specifically emphasized two points to us. First, bacteria that can grow in the nitrogen-fixing bacteria culture medium may not necessarily convert nitrogen into ammonium ions, that is, may not be able to improve soil fertility. In addition, pathogenic microorganisms may be present in the soil, requiring additional attention to biosecurity.
In addition, he mentioned that he has nitragin in his lab and can be provided to us to isolate nitrogen-fixing bacteria. Nitragin is a commercial fertilizer composed with azotobacteria, it's safety is promising.
We very much agree with the points mentioned by Jian Huang. We are very grateful to him for mentioning safety issues to us, and we hope to use the nitragin provided by him for nitrogen-fixing bacteria separation.
We asked Jian Huang for nitragin and conducted an experiment to isolate nitrogen-fixing bacteria.
Visit Bluepha
During the tour, the staff introduced us to the necessity of automated operation and showed us their instruments.
This reminds us of a part of directed evolution in our project. We found that it seems that we can also build a hardware system of continuous cultivation to achieve continuous coercive evolution, which may be faster and more labor-saving.
Overall arrangement
Attend CCiC
We attended CCiC as audience and listened to presentations from other teams. We noticed that there are some teams that aim to solve problems with water and soil. Most of them chose bacteria such as E. Coli as chassis.
We thought cyanobacteria and plant will be better chassis, so we discussed this with them. They mentioned that time for iGEM is too short to engineer cyanobacteria or plant, and some of them do not has specilized tools such as illumination incubator for cyanobacteria.
Plant synthetic biology is an important topic, and iGEM is the heart of synthetic biology. So we thought a work to make the DBTL cycle of plant synbio easier and faster is important.
This prompted us to refine some of the experiments in plant synbio and introduce new chassis organisms. 
Interview with Dorothy Zhang
Dorothy Zhang is the Vice President of Global Development of iGEM. She is also our school fellow.
We introduced our design to and early questionnair to her. She encouraged us to communicate more, such as the expert team of iGEM and other related teams. She kindly noted that interstellar migration is a huge problem that may not be solved by ourselves, may need more help from the igem community, and if our work can inspire other iGEMer to get involved, it will be great.
She inspired us. So when we got the invitation to the iGEM space meeting, we were excited. And thanks to her suggestion, we began to think about how to encourage more iGEMers into related topics.
Talk in iGEM space meeting
We are honored to receive the official invitation of iGEM to present the project at the space workshop. We regard this participation as a valuable experience, which can make us fully understand how iGEMer views the issue of space and their breakthrough.
At the meeting, we presented our own projects, and listened to the presentations of other teams. We found that they were concerned with problems that we had not considered, and they also presented their own designs
This project has made us feel that space and Mars colonization is a long-term idea that requires a collective effort and that what we do is not really the solution
Recognizing our own shortcomings, we were even more determined to pursue topics that would inspire other iGEMer to engage on topics of value to the Martian diaspora, such as plant synthetic biology.
Hold model united nations
Considering that interstellar migration is an international topic, and different countries hold different opinions on the acquisition of interstellar resources, we held a Model United Nations in early September and discussed how to divide benefits and responsibilities after migration to Mars We hope that through this event, we can analyze the issue of Mars migration from different national perspectives and see if there are any problems that we have overlooked.
We found two problems. First of all, resources, especially food resources, are not as we thought. They cannot be produced and distributed to everyone only through co-cultivation, otherwise conflicts may arise due to resource shortage. In addition, there is a great deal of enthusiasm for the preservation of civilizations on Earth, and there is even a consensus that we recognize the need to preserve civilizations, and which civilizations should be preserved.
We realized that we can't just produce food by co-cultivating and simply sharing it, but we should produce it in a way that everyone can easily get enough food. We thought that maybe we could design a portable food production device to accomplish this purpose. And we finally selected representative cultural relics and technologies for information storage.
Public attitude
Questionnaire
We believe that public perception is also a factor to be considered when studying interstellar migration. Our project design needs to conform to public perception, otherwise even if it is completed, it will be difficult to implement it in the real world, so we conducted a questionnaire survey in the early stage.
The purpose of this survey is to understand the public's attitudes and opinions on the concept of exploring the settlement of other planets (Mars) and the co-cultivation of food by cyanobacteria and yeast. Through questionnaires, we collected the interest levels of people of different age groups on the subject, the support level, the concern factors, and the views on the sustainability and nutritional value of food The results of the survey will help to deeply understand the public's attitude towards the possible lifestyle and food sources in the future, and provide references and references for research and exploration in related fields.
Most respondents hold a positive attitude towards the settlement of other planets, but there are still some concerns about the food co-cultured by cyanobacteria and yeast. In the future settlement plan, it is necessary to focus on the nutritional value of food supply, appearance and taste, and at the same time solve moral and ethical issues and psychological barriers to ensure the smooth implementation of the settlement plan and the sustainable development of human society.
Go to a dietitian or a psychologist and see if they have any suggestions.
Street interview
In the questionnaire, we mainly published on social media, which also led to the interviewee audience focusing on our peers (14-18 years old). In order to know more about the age group's views on interplanetary migration, we decided to conduct street interviews.
We collected 30 responses from different age groups to some questions related to our project. It can be seen from the results that most people of all ages have a high enthusiasm for Mars immigration and food production on Mars by means of synthetic biology in the future, which proves that the topic selected by our team is in line with social concerns and worthy of in-depth exploration At the same time, the public believes that there will be certain problems in the psychological and physical aspects of human beings after immigration to Mars, which also provides some ideas for further improvement and expansion of our project, such as how to use synthetic biology to make drugs and so on.
We were also aware of some problems that needed to be addressed in order for the project to run smoothly. First, most people of all ages had a poor understanding of synthetic biology and the two major microorganisms (cyanobacteria, yeast) that our project was studying. The solution was to include a basic introduction to them in the later HP project Second, most people believe that foods produced by microbial synthesis cannot completely replace traditional foods, and there are certain concerns and concerns about eating foods produced by microbial synthesis. This may require us to prove the safety of these foods and enrich their taste, appearance, etc., and even make them more similar to traditional foods on Earth in various aspects.
To further confirm the safety of our program, considering the introduction of a kill switch into our program, it is even more determined that we need to introduce nutrients, such as lycopene.Make planets by hydrogel
We first introduced elementary school students to the solar system and the experimental materials used in today's event, and emphasized the safety of the experiment.Then, with our help, the elementary school students began to try it out on their own. Following the process, they first drew the rings of the solar system on paper. Next, we helped them make a lot of sodium alginate balls in various colors, and asked them to put sodium alginate balls on paper to form the solar system based on their knowledge of the solar system.
This research has greatly stimulated children's interest in space exploration.
Visiting museums and exhibitions about space and Mars
Interestingly, as we were leaving, we discovered that the museum also sells "space food" that astronauts eat in space, including staple foods, dairy and meat products, and more. So, we bought back a few varieties and planned to go back and taste them and get some advice on how we could produce food in space in the future.
Painting with bacteria