In the post-pandemic era, the frequency of people wearing masks has increased, reducing the airborne transmission rate of pathogenic bacteria. However, pathogenic bacteria are still distributed on the surface of some objects and in human excretory feces, and are transmitted to the human body through fecal orifices, and this problem has become a blind spot of concern, so the distribution of pathogenic bacteria in the environment cannot be ignored. We hope to use synthetic biology to prevent and control pathogenic bacteria from fecal transmission sources. We visited doctors, academics, researchers, cleaners, the public and other stakeholders to collect their ideas and suggestions for our project, and completed our project through the "Identify-Do-Examine-Act" mindset.
We needed a mindset that would allow Integrated Human Practice to be organized and could give effective and reasonable feedback to the project to ensure that it was not a one-way street. Therefore, we designed a set of Integrated Human Practice execution logic based on the experience of iGEM teams in previous years.
Our project will proceed through this set of execution logics:
Informed consent and privacy protection In terms of informed consent, we have established an informed consent pledge prior to the collection of all interviews and questionnaires; all interviews will be released after consent has been obtained. We will do our best to ensure that interviewees protect their right to privacy
In the beginning, we faced the problem of identifying a theme. We held weekly brainstorming sessions to share our ideas and concepts. But this led to the problem that many assumptions and designs require context, and you can't go further with a design if you can't determine if the problem is really necessary. We need to look for the problem and look for the pain points of the problem and, at the same time, identify the problem we want to solve? Is the problem really necessary to exist?
We learned from books about the threat of pathogenic bacteria to the human body, especially to susceptible people such as the elderly, pregnant women, and immunocompromised people, which led our team to propose a general direction: prevention of pathogenic bacteria. We plan to solve the problem in two ways: 1. We have learned that the main routes of infection for pathogens are airborne and fecal-oral, and we will find out about these two routes of infection by looking for respiratory and critical care physicians and gastroenterologists. 2. We will release a questionnaire to the public to find out what they know about pathogens. 3. What are the measures that are currently being taken by people to prevent pathogens.
Although we have learned from books about the threat of pathogenic bacteria to human beings, especially the threat of pathogenic bacteria to the elderly, pregnant women, immunocompromised and other susceptible groups, we are not sure about the public's understanding of pathogenic bacteria and the degree of awareness of prevention, therefore, we first through the Internet research to understand the public's understanding of pathogenic bacteria.
We set up several questions so that we could find out the level of public awareness of pathogenic bacteria.
Through online research, we learned that the public believed that the most likely channel of infection with pathogenic bacteria was airborne droplet transmission, and they were less familiar with other transmission routes, such as fecal-oral transmission, as a means of transmission. Meanwhile, as to how to prevent pathogenic bacteria, they indicated that the probability of contracting pathogenic bacteria could be reduced by strengthening immunity, using disinfectants and germicidal products, and wearing face masks.
Knowing the public's awareness of pathogenic bacteria, we will visit community health centers to continue to understand the situation of pathogenic bacteria in the community and work towards further development of the project.
We visited two doctors from Shenzhen Xinwei Social Health and Jian'an Hospital of Shenzhen Bao'an People's Hospital Group, and from our exchanges with them, we learned that at present, the main measures for preventing pathogenic bacteria are through the use of disinfectants, ultraviolet sterilization, etc. We also learned that the use of chemical and physical methods to inhibit pathogenic bacteria is more effective than chemical and physical methods. In response to the inhibition of pathogenic bacteria by chemical and physical methods, we thought that in the process of elimination, the pathogenic bacteria gradually develop drug resistance, and the original means of elimination is not effective against them, so we thought whether biological control is better than chemical and physical methods.
Combined with the information we found on the internet, we realized that one of the treatment directions of respiratory medicine is to treat respiratory diseases caused by pathogenic bacterial and viral infections. We wanted to understand the impact of airborne transmission on respiratory diseases, so we went to the Southern University of Science and Technology Hospital to talk with Dr. Guo, hoping to learn about the current situation of respiratory pathogenic bacterial infections, the treatment of pathogenic bacterial infections and the main ways of prevention, and to learn how to prevent pathogenic bacterial infections. We discussed the current situation of airborne droplet transmission of pathogenic bacteria to infect populations and learned about the threat of pathogenic bacteria to potentially high- risk susceptible populations such as pregnant women, the elderly, and immunocompromised people. We learned about how to prevent pathogenic bacterial infections, and that special attention needs to be paid to infection control measures in hospitals in terms of prevention and control measures, such as cleaning and disinfecting the environment, as well as paying attention to hand hygiene and not spitting.
We know that respiratory infections are spread by airborne droplets, but we still don't know about fecal-oral transmission, another mode of transmission of pathogens, so we will go to the Gastroenterology Department to find a Gastroenterologist to learn more about fecal-oral transmission so that we can determine the direction of our project.
The Department of Gastroenterology mainly treats digestive diseases, and one of the directions of treatment is about treating infectious diarrhea, which is mainly caused by pathogens infecting other people through fecal-oral transmission, and we would like to know about the effects of fecal-oral transmission on human body, so we found Dr. Sun Yu of the Southern University of Science and Technology Hospital to communicate with us in the hope of understanding about the effects of pathogens through fecal-oral transmission and how to prevent them from infecting the population through fecal-oral transmission. Fecal-oral transmission infects people.
A: For fecal-oral transmission, what should we do to prevent pathogenic infections? Q: Preventing infectious diseases involves controlling the source of infection, cutting off the means of transmission, and protecting susceptible people.Through public questionnaires and interviews with stakeholders such as community health, respiratory physicians, gastroenterologists, etc., we learned that the public's understanding of pathogenic bacteria is that for pathogenic infections caused by airborne droplet transmission, masks can be worn to reduce the risk of pathogenic infections, while for pathogenic infections caused by fecal-oral transmission, it is necessary to control the source of infection, cut off the transmission pathway, and protect susceptible populations. Our team understands the impact of airborne and fecal-oral transmission of pathogens on susceptible populations, and through our team's discussions, we have determined that our project will target the fecal-oral route of transmission by modifying the probiotic bacteria, so that they can occupy the biospace in the environment, and can stabilize their existence in a specific place, preventing pathogenic bacteria from invading and surviving, and maintaining the safety of the environment, so as to achieve the effect of preventive biocontrol.
A: Planning what to do next Eventually, we decided to focus on the prevention of environmental pathogens as the theme of our project, which we defined as the "Protector Program". In the next phase, our main task was to design a feasible solution.
I: How should we design our experiment?
After we decided to prevent pathogenic bacteria in the environment, we started to think about how to prevent pathogenic bacteria in the environment and finally we planned to inhibit pathogenic bacteria in the environment by modifying beneficial bacteria. We used E. coli Nissle 1917. D: Interviews and recommendations
In order to find out what other shortcomings there were in the experiment, we met with Zhou Kai, the head of the Bacterial Drug Resistance Monitoring and Quality Control Center of Shenzhen People's Hospital, and exchanged ideas about the design of the project, and he gave us a few suggestions:
Based on our interaction with Director Kai Zhou, we have new ideas on how to reduce the risk of horizontal transfer of genes in the environment, and. We will focus on the temporal nature of EcN's role, and we focus on utilizing the antimicrobial substances secreted by EcN itself against bacterial pathogens in the context of verifying that the T6SS, CDI system can function.
Learn more on our Experiments page! mindset.
Considering the application of the project in practical scenarios, we first need to consider the form of the product, our initial idea is to make it into the form of disinfection products, in order to make clear whether this goal is in line with the current development situation, we will be through the ICU Director Liu, the Chief Scientist of Shenzhen Andover Disinfection Hi-Tech Company Limited, the Shenzhen People's Hospital Disinfection Center Apparatus Disinfection Doctor, hope that from their professional perspective, what else do we need to pay attention to?
We exchanged project content, she suggested that we should pay attention to whether our products would damage the ecological balance after use, at the same time, she shared with us that the current chemical and physical methods used in hospitals are very effective in disinfection, and robotic disinfection has also appeared, and told us about the advantages and disadvantages that may arise from biological control, for the future validation of the product, she said that she could cooperate with us in the future to validate the modified probiotics For future product validation, she said that she could work with us in the future to verify the inhibitory effect of modified probiotics on carbapenem-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii, which is a kind of superbug.
Since Dr. Cai is an expert in the field of sterilization, we were happy to talk to her and hopefully gain her valuable insights and opinions from her professional perspective. She appreciated the project and our idea. We discussed the application of killing pathogenic bacteria through chemical disinfection method or physical disinfection method to public health places and the shortcomings of each of the two methods. During the exchange, she suggested that we could put petri dishes in the bathroom during the product validation stage to monitor the number of pathogenic bacteria in the bathroom before use and the number of pathogenic bacteria in the bathroom after use. We were encouraged to learn that our current research direction has great potential for the future of the field of biocontrol products, and we are further researching how to meet the national standards for biocontrol products. So we went to Shenzhen Andover Disinfection Hi-Tech Co., Ltd. to learn more.
In order to learn more about the development status of the disinfectant industry and the national standards
of disinfectants, to learn how to better produce disinfectants close to the standards, and to discuss the
prospects of the disinfectant industry from the point of view of biologics, we had an offline exchange with
Mr. Zhou Hailin, Chief Scientist of Shenzhen Andover Disinfecting Hi-Tech Co. We discussed different national
standards for disinfectant products and learned that biological disinfectants belong to the "three new"
products. He emphasized that disinfectant products need to be in line with national and international
regulations, but unfortunately, no products have been made in this category yet.
He told us not to expand the project problem too much and to stand on our own feet, and he expressed his
willingness to carry out comparative analysis experiments on disinfection products with us. We realized that
there are still many problems to be solved in producing disinfection products biologically. There is a need to
consider safety issues and environmental issues that do not affect the environment.
Through communication with experts, we understand that there are many issues to consider if we want to apply the project to reality, and in response to the advice given by experts, we have designed suicide switches to reduce the risk of the release of engineered bacteria in the environment and to safeguard human safety, in response to the safety issues mentioned by experts, and in response to the risk of the release of engineered bacteria in the environment and to safeguard human safety. To learn more click on Design. If there is an opportunity to work with us in the future to validate the inhibitory effect of the modified probiotic on the carbapenem-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii, a class of superbugs, as well as to do the validation of the final product, but due to the deadline of the competition, we are not able to do this at this point in time, and we will continue to work on it in the future.
In order to better communicate with the community, we not only communicated with experts, but also hoped to draw suggestions from the public and users to better improve our program. We identified that hospital public bathroom cleaners are the direct users of disinfection products, so we went to different hospitals in Shenzhen to communicate with the cleaners to understand the use of disinfection products and how they feel about using them.
Through talking to the cleaning staff of different hospitals, we understand the disinfectants they use and the way of disinfection, for the cleaning of different areas, will take different ways of disinfectants for disinfection, disinfection is the use of spraying and mopping a combination of both ways of disinfection. We also learned that different hospitals set the daily cleaning frequency, and most of them clean twice a day. When it comes to the question of whether long-term use of disinfectants will have an impact on health, the cleaning staff expressed some concern and hoped that there would be more environmentally friendly and safer disinfectants for them to use.
Recognizing that the potential customers of the final product are the public, we released a questionnaire on the public's perception of the use of disinfectant gels and sanitizers in hopes of understanding the current public's perception of the use of disinfectant gels and sanitizers in order to better improve our program.
We know from the questionnaire that the public's concern about disinfectant products is mainly on sterilization effect and safety of ingredients. In the answer to the question asking whether to consider using biological disinfectants, 13.6% would refuse to use biological disinfectants for fear of their safety, price and sterilization effect. For the future development of disinfectant gels, 80% of the public expressed their willingness to try this type of products, and the disinfectant products they expect are easy to use, without irritating odor, safe in ingredients and cheap.
We understood the needs of the public, and we further researched how to ensure safety and environmental friendliness if the product is applied to real life.
According to the World Health Organization's updated 2024 Catalogue of Priority Pathogens in the Bacterial Group, we can be aware of the challenge of pathogenic bacteria to human health, which is relevant to human health.
As we develop our human practices, we are always thinking, "How can our programs contribute to the world? How can we be responsible to the world and to ourselves?" Therefore, we identify stakeholders and hope to improve our program from their point of view, and our program insists on responsibility, ethics and safety. Many thanks to the stakeholders who helped and supported us during our project.
In ancient Chinese agricultural society, squatting toilets were widely used because they could meet the physiological needs of a large number of people at low cost. Until now, many people are still accustomed to using squatting toilets, due to the design of squatting toilets will make the pathogenic bacteria can not be cleaned well, considering the safety of the user, for squatting toilets designed for the cleaning products are effective in reducing the impact of infection of pathogenic bacteria.
If a product can be made and applied to real life in the future, the engineered bacteria we designed will automatically die after a certain period of time to minimize the possible harm to the environment and the human body.
