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Integrated Human Practices

As an iGEM team, we attach much importance to integrated human practices, which always give us inspiration for our project and enable us to improve consistently.

We emphasized how experts' advice helps us to solve problems of our projects, and finally reflected on how we improve ourselves in further research.

In addition, considering the wide range of application scenarios of our projects, we pay more attention to the diversity of applications. We divided people who can help us into three groups:

  • Up-stream: Researchers - conceptual plausibility
  • Middle-stream: Enterprises - Application and transformation of product
  • Down-stream: Laboratory users - using feeling about LANTERN

Let's see how we apply our HP criteria to practical research.

For background and marketing considerations, please click "implementation" page to check how our project connects with society.

Concept of Recombinases using: with Professor Chun Li

Director, Institute of Biochemistry, Department of Chemical Engineering, Tsinghua University

Problem:

  • In the pathway design of our project, how efficient is the recombinant enzyme as a pre-programmed pathway switch?
  • We hope to control the formation of different pathways by adding different recombinases in chronological order, to achieve the programmability of components. Could it theoretically be possible to "add two recombinases in chronological order" to make it succeed in the pathway we want?

Conversation with Prof. Li

By searching for relevant articles, we got in touch with Professor Li. Considering his busy schedule, we chose to communicate with him by email.

Solution:

  • Recombinases based on CRISPRi regulation can complete the opening and closing of programmable pathways, with a high probability, which can be reflected in the gene code lock developed by Professor Li.
  • Time smoothly can only be controlled by the input time of different signals, and can also be achieved.
  • Application scenarios can be many, in addition to the drug delivery we think of, we can also consider the enzyme catalytic sequence of the cell factory.

Reflection:

Professor Li's response confirms what we envisioned in the pathway design and emphasizes that the addition of integrases in chronological order is necessary to achieve the temporal effect. At the same time, the application scenarios he proposed broadened the feasibility of our products in the field of the chemical industry.

Concept of CRISPRi using: with Professor Chenli Liu

Vice President, Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology (SIAT), Chinese Academy of Sciences

Problem:

  • In our project, recombinase enables the genome to transcribe different sgRNAs, and then achieve different downstream effects through CRISPRi. Is the idea of such a "programmable" path feasible and practical?

Conversation with Prof. Liu:

Also by searching for relevant articles, we got in touch with Professor Liu. However, because Professor Liu often stays in Shenzhen, which is far away from Beijing, we continue to use email for communication.

Solution:

  • Professor Liu affirmed our project design and believed that its feasibility was relatively high. Because only one system of recombinase or CRISPRi can achieve logical operations, there are many related articles, so theoretically the superposition of the two systems will have more diverse circuit design methods.
  • The efficiency of different recombinases and CRISPRi systems varies greatly, so appropriate screening strategies are necessary.
  • The current logic circuit research stays in the laboratory-level application verification stage, different logic systems also have different principles and advantages, so the development and application potential of this kind of research is still great.
  • Suggests that when we consider the application of life scenarios, we can consider more applications in relatively closed systems, such as bacterial fermentation, which is carried out in fermenters; The administration of drugs is carried out in the relatively closed system of the human body, or the detection and treatment of pollutants is carried out in the reaction tank of the sewage treatment plant.

Reflection:

Professor Liu's proposal is comprehensive and includes many factors to consider, from theoretical feasibility to practical application. Under his advice, we focused on screening suitable recombinant enzymes and CRISPER systems, and we also began to consider project applications in closed systems, with satisfactory results. At the same time, he gave our members a lot of encouragement and enhanced our confidence in completing the project.

Professor Jiangyun Wang

Researcher, Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences

Problem: When the project is conceived, we will ask Professor Wang's opinion. When we first got the idea for this project, we went to report to teacher Wang Jiangyun and asked him about the rationality of our project.

Conversation with Wang:

Since Professor Wang was very helpful and patient to answer our questions, we communicated with him both online and offline.

Solution: Professor Wang affirmed the rationality of our idea and suggested that we should focus on the application scenarios of our project, such as disease treatment. It's also important to think boldly about how assuming the project is complete, we can use it to improve the world around us. This has led to a strong focus on project application in our HP work this year.

Reflection: Our interaction with Professor Wang taught us that when determining a project, we should not only focus on the feasibility of the project, but also take a long-term view to see what positive impact the project may bring.

BGI Genomics Co., Ltd.

Problem:

Once our project had taken shape, we started thinking about productization. Our idea is to use our technology to develop a kit for programmable components, so we contacted teachers Liu Ping and Song Yanyan of BGI, hoping to get their advice.

  • What is the general process of developing the kit?
  • To develop a kit, what aspects do we need to pay attention to and what factors do we consider?
  • What problems do we still have if we want to make our project industrialized? How can we improve?

Conversation with BGI:

To improve communication efficiency, we took the form of online meetings with BGI teachers to communicate.

Solution:

The teachers affirmed our ideas and designs and thought our ideas were novel, but they also raised some problems we had:

  • In the first step of product development, we need to ask three questions: Who is the target customer for our product? What problems can our products solve for them? How big is the market for our products? This is something we need to think about clearly.
  • We need to investigate how other people solve problems without our project and identify the advantages and irreplaceable value of using our kit to solve problems over previous methods of solving these problems so that we can replace them.
  • After evaluating the value and feasibility of the project, we need to submit a document describing our project, including market demand, project content, and project planning, to initiate the project and obtain research funding. Before the project matures. We also need to do a lot of repeated experiments on stability, safety, etc.
  • At the same time, we also need to consider the input and output of our project productization to ensure reasonable profits.
  • For the introduction of the product to the user, we need not only the manual inside the kit but also some suggested operating instructions, as well as trial cases for promotion.

Reflection:

  • We completed the envisioned kit's manual and other instructions for use to complete our kit.
  • We both think about how to solve specific problems in life but also try to start with the basics and promote our products to the laboratory for basic research use.
  • We tried to evaluate the cost and application benefits of the kit.
  • According to the materials provided by the teacher, we learned the specific process of transforming scientific research results into kits for promotion and application to make our kits available one day.
  • We have to clarify our target of LANTERN.

Kaming Li

Senior undergraduate student, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences

Problem: In thinking downstream, can our project be applied to the aspects we envision? In other words, are there any factors we haven't considered before applying? This is an issue that we take very seriously.

Conversation with Kaming Li: Considering Li's busy academic work, we communicated with him by E-mail.

Solution: Li told us, this project has provided perfect ideas and thoughts. The programmable logic devices offer new ideas and references for designing synthetic biology pathways. However, the two-input pathway is a little easy in synthetic biology. Suppose programmable logic gates with multiple inputs corresponding to one input and multiple inputs corresponding to various inputs can be added. In that case, the ideas and applications of this project can be further broadened.

Reflection: When considering the application of products, we should take the initiative to adapt our products to different application scenarios and provide more choices, which will have more application prospects.