Team:BIT-China/Human Practices

Finding solutions to problems through the background

Background overview

        The 2021 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to two scientists, David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian, who discovered temperature and tactile receptors. This shows that the current research on receptors is a hot spot in physiology. Among all the senses, taste is a kind of feeling that can give people a strong sense of happiness and satisfaction. Therefore, food industry which is closely connected to taste is very important to us.

        The food industry is closely related to our diet life, and new products play a vial role in the development of food companies and the enjoyment of consumers. However, in the current product development, how to detect the taste has become more of a problem. At present, the most important detection method for food companies is manual tasting, of which the advantages are fully reflecting human feelings and quickly giving taste feedback. However, the cost of training a food sensory researcher is quite expensive. The average training period is more than half a year and each food sensory researcher can only test one or a small type of food. Otherwise, they needs to be trained again. Moreover, manual tasting also has problems such as strong subjectivity and food safety risks.

        As an auxiliary tool, the electronic tongue is currently widely used in food inspection. However, it can only detect a specific substance and its result is based on the results of artificial tasting, using algorithms to simulate taste data, so its stability is very low, and the current electronic tongue detection rate is slow and inefficient. All in all, food companies lack a detection method with lower cost, higher accuracy and higher throughput.

        Actually, people who enjoy the products of food companies have taste problems more or less. Due to the serious homogeneity of products on the market, it is difficult for people to find their favorite taste in it. Even because of long-term adaptation to existing condiments, people seldom find out what flavor they like best. In addition, it is difficult to accumulate data due to the lack of detection methods in the market, and there are no products customized for individual condiments, and it is difficult to personalize people's tastes.

        And people's tastes will change as time goes by. If we just spread the recipes and do not save current people's tastes and food-related data through testing, it will be difficult for people in the future to feel the taste experience of our times. This is undoubtedly Great loss in humanity.

Our initial goal

1. Construction of Biological Detection System
   
   

           We plan to design and complete a biological system that can detect the five flavors of sweet, sour, bitter, and salty based on this system.

2. Private Custom Condiment Production
   
   

           We hope to collect the tastes of common dishes and ingredients in the region. Then we will convert them into visual data to serve as the basis for providing users with personal customization. Subsequently, the protein is hydrolyzed by different ratios of enzymes to obtain raw materials with different umami, sweet, and bitter tastes, and customized condiments are configured according to the user's taste.

3. Investigation of Taste and Protection of Food Culture
   
   

           We wanted to develop a 'Flavor Card' app to investigate what users wanted. We hope to use this detection system to more accurately detect data to more accurately record the food preferences and taste feelings of contemporary people, so as to help future people understand our food culture and promote the protection and inheritance of food culture.

        In the follow-up HP activities, we adjusted and improved the preliminary goals in the three directions.

Exploring the method to accomplish the goal

        In order to find biological means for taste detection, we first searched for relevant research foundations in schools. We were pleasantly surprised to find that our BIT-China team conducted sweetness related tests in 2017.

        We searched for relevant personnel from our team at that time, and Shichao Ren, a phD in the School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, BIT, accepted our consultation.

        Shichao Ren explained the reason why he thought of the project at the time, and explained that sensing should have the will to feedback and also have a certain self-regulation ability, so he chose the human-sourced pathway to simulate the way human taste bud cells feel the sense of taste. The direct transplantation of human-derived pathways into Saccharomyces cerevisiae will inevitably lead to a series of problems in the expression and growth of Saccharomyces cerevisiae, so they modified the pathways. Later, he pointed out that the biggest difficulty encountered at that time was the positioning of the receptor protein, so they finally adopted the method of adding fluorescent tags to the protein to solve it.

        We think that if the sweet taste receptor can be replaced with other taste receptors, it may be able to solve the problem of other taste detection.

Public contacts related to the project

Investigate the public's taste problems and their views on fresh condiments

        We plan to investigate whether the public has the problem of unpalatable food in their lives and what the public's acceptance of fresh condiments is to see if the market for customized condiments we plan to produce is broad. We received a total of 166 answers.The results of the questionnaire are as follows.

        First of all, about 80% of the respondents can cook, which means that the condiment issue will involve a wide range of people, and the number of potential beneficiaries of our project is huge. Although 70% of the interviewees feel that the current seasoning varieties are rich and the taste is good, but this is probably due to the habit of using only specific seasonings for a long time. If customized products can break the current inherent perception, perhaps people's views will change. In fact, close to 20% of people are not completely satisfied with the taste of condiments, so if our project can help these 20% people, it would be of great social significance.

        Secondly, more than half of the people are worried about the unhealthy nutritional content of the current products, the high degree of repeatability, and the difficulty in determining the amount. Customized products solve the first two problems by controlling the nutritional content of raw materials and personal taste investigation. After using customized seasonings, fewer seasonings are needed for cooking, so the amount is easier to control. And only less than 7% of people have not encountered a situation where condiments are different from their imagined tastes, while close to 14% of people often have this situation. It is difficult for consumers to choose, so taste testing is very meaningful.

        In addition, more than 70% of people experience the problem of unpalatable food in their lives. This reflects that the current seasoning is more difficult to season, and it is difficult to make the taste you expected without a lot of cooking experience. Only about 20% of people can make a satisfying taste by themselves, which means that our customized seasoning can help them achieve this goal, and it can also help those who are busy with seasoning save time.

        Finally, for new types of condiments, people will care about their prices and ingredient lists. Of course, we can make them particularly healthy. Further completed flavors will satisfy their most concern and form a benign buyback cycle. And only less than 5% of people are unwilling to try new condiments. We have many opportunities and the market is huge.

        We also got two important pieces of information from the questionnaire. First of all, more than 60% of people will have a conservative attitude towards new condiments, and 20% of those who follow the crowd will take the initiative to buy new condiments. It is very difficult to solve people's stereotyped habits. Therefore, publicity is very important, and it is also very important to cooperate with major manufacturers and use existing resources.Secondly, umami and saltiness are the first choice flavors of condiments, so it is very important to grasp the umami taste.

Investigate the taste problems of vegetarians

        After investigating the tastes of the general public, we learned through some online information that vegetarians are more likely to have taste problems than others. Therefore, we have conducted a survey on the taste problems of vegetarians, hoping to develop a vegetarian seasoning market. We collect There were 105 questionnaires. The results show that nearly 60% of vegetarians find it difficult to eat dishes that meet their tastes outside, and they also pay attention to umami. This not only reminds us of the significance of condiments for vegetarians, but also strengthens our determination to focus on the development of umami taste testing. And we found that the number of vegetarians is actually huge, and our products must also be acceptable to vegetarians. Therefore, we plan to use plant-derived soy protein as the raw material for our condiments.

Views of the surveyed population

        Our biological testing is also expected to have a certain social significance, in which the protection of traditional food culture is what we are pursuing. We hope to get the public's willingness to protect traditional culture and suggestions on protection methods. We received 77 questionnaires.

        First, we conducted a survey on regional tastes in different regions. Among them, about 65% of the respondents believed that salty and umami were the most characteristic flavors in their hometown, while only one interviewee believed that their hometown taste included bitterness. This shows that umami is the most important taste, and it is also the focus of our testing.

        Secondly, more than 80% people believe that their hometown has a unique food culture, and almost everyone believes that the Chinese food culture needs to be protected. However, about half of the regional food culture has not developed and even regressed. This shows that we need to adopt some innovative methods to cater to the trend of the times and protect the food culture.

        Finally, all the interviewees affirmed that the differences between ingredients have great influence on the taste of the dishes, and almost all the interviewees think that it is necessary to detect specific values to save various data of the ingredients to protect the food culture, which shows our taste detection It does have the value of cultural protection.

Consult with professionals to optimize solutions

        Through our communication with the public, we have seen the possibility of customized flavors and cultural protection that can be derived from the development of biological detection systems. And we already have a preliminary solution -- by modifying the human receptor pathway in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. And we will focus on the detection of umami flavor, and then build the detection pathway of other flavors. Is the project economically viable? Can these systems be built and put into production? Can the collected data help us create customized flavors? We should first look for answers from actual enterprises and relevant experts.

Enterprise Consultation

COFCO Nutrition and Health Research Institute visit consultation

        COFCO is China’s largest grain, oil and food import and export company and a strong food manufacturer. The Nutrition and Health Research Institute under COFCO is the first domestic enterprise to conduct systematic research on the nutritional needs and metabolic mechanisms of Chinese people. A R&D center that fulfills the health demands of the Chinese people. In September 2021, members of the BIT-China team visited the Institute and met with Qi Bian, assistant to the director of the Institute’s Consumer Center, Xiaoxia Su, head of the Consumer Center’s Sensory Evaluation Platform, Lichuan Deng, head of the New Product Development Platform of the Wine Industry Center, and Xiaoyan Wang, assistant to the director of the Biotechnological Center, exchanged ideas.

        We visited the COFCO Nutrition and Health Research Institute, and briefly learned about the Research Institute’s Sensory Evaluation Platform, the Wine Industry Center, New Product Development Platform and the Biotechnological Center.

Visit the Consumer Center Sensory Evaluation Platform

        Based on the needs of the project, we first visited the Consumer Center Sensory Evaluation Platform of the COFCO Nutrition and Health Research Institute and learned about the sensory evaluation system established by the research institute. This system is mainly composed of food sensory researchers who have undergone rigorous training and selection, with rich experience, and electronic detection equipment such as electronic tongues and electronic noses used as auxiliary quantification.

        COFCO has established a set of professional skills training, selection, assessment and management mechanisms for their food sensory researchers, and promoted them in the industry; at the same time, these food sensory researchers have a special tasting room with internal The environment has been carefully designed, with independent evaluation compartments, and equipped with a lighting evaluation system to prevent external factors from interfering with the evaluators. Evaluators have a clear and precise evaluation mechanism for food taste. They only need to score the various tastes of the food, not the emotional evaluation of "good" or "bad". Finally, researchers will analyze the results of these evaluations to seek to determine how people really feel about the taste of these foods.

        Through a visit to the Sensory and Flavor Research Laboratory, we discovered the application value of our project for food evaluation-using human receptors to detect the value of specific flavors, rather than the content of simple substances.

New Product Development Platform of the Wine Industry Center

        Next, we came to the New Product Development Platform of COFCO's Wine Industry Center, visited and learned about COFCO's technology used in wine product research and development and many novel products. Under the leadership of Lichuan Deng, the person in charge of the new product development platform of the Wine Industry Center, we visited the research room of the COFCO Group and learned that the COFCO Group's laboratory has a series of professional functions, including the screening of microorganisms in wine products and breeding, improving the wine brewing process, conducting flavor testing on the wine, conducting product evaluations and market research, to determine the needs of consumers. The visit to the Wine Industry Research and Development Platform has enabled us to better understand the wine industry research and development process, and let us have a deeper understanding of new flavor customization, which is of great help to our research and development of new private customized umami seasonings.

        The visit to the Research and Development Platform of the Wine Industry made us know more about the research and development process of the wine industry, let us have a deeper understanding of the new flavor customization, which is of great help to our research and development of new private customized umami seasonings.

Biotechnology Center

        Finally, we came to the Biotechnology center at the Nutrition and Health Research Institute. The lab has a comprehensive research platform ranging from synthetic biology principles, engineered bacteria research, biological separation process development and final production process research, as well as a digital platform for modeling problems encountered and analyzing existing processes. We saw some novel devices and learned from researchers what they could do, and we learned a lot in the process.

        The teacher in charge of the laboratory told us that if we needed laboratory equipment, we could apply for it. The teacher in charge of the instrument would lead us to use the instrument and complete the experiment we needed. Since the Biotechnology Center is also carrying out the research of engineered yeast and has achieved a lot of success, I believe that the cooperation with the Biological Technology Center will provide great help for our subsequent experiments.

        We then spent nearly two hours talking with COFCO experts about this year's project and its related technologies. We first introduced our project to researchers and market researchers, including iGEM competition, team members and history, project background, project principles and design, and the significance of the project.

        In terms of project background and significance, researchers also provided us with many new ideas and suggestions. Through communication with them, we realized the gap between laboratory achievements and industrial products, as well as market-related issues that laboratory products should pay attention to if they want to achieve revenue in the industry. We also realized that our products were too idealized in terms of market orientation and lacked a solid foothold. In addition, in the process of communication with researchers, we also learned about COFCO's products on consumer demand and market research mechanism before products are launched, and realized that our products should be faced with certain changes.

        During the communication process, Miss. Su, the person in charge of the Sensory Evaluation Platform of the Consumer Center, gave us very detailed answers to some questions related to taste detection.

        After understanding the current taste detection technology, we believe that there is still a lack of investigation on user tastes in custom flavoring. In order to understand the current taste survey methods, Miss. Su recommended us to consult Researcher Qi Bian of the Consumer Center.

        Mr. Bian of the Consumer Center was very interested in our Mini Program and answered our doubts.

        In addition to the many valuable suggestions obtained through communication, we also successfully invited Xiaoxia Su, the person in charge of the Consumer-centered Sensory Evaluation Platform, to serve as the Industrial Instructor of our team. We introduced the relationship between electronic tongue and manual evaluation, and pointed out that various food companies in the world are looking for different methods to replace manual evaluation to quantify the taste of food in order to save costs. At the same time, she proposed that if our Saccharomyces cerevisiae is successfully constructed, the samples can be taken to the Nutrition and Health Research Institute of COFCO after the Saccharomyces cerevisiae test, and the values can be obtained through manual evaluation and comparisons to find the relationship between the quantification of Saccharomyces cerevisiae and manual quantification, or check whether the two are related and improve our project.

        The COFCO trip allowed us to see the hope of privately tailored condiments, and it also gave us questions about the current condiment production model and production focus. In order to solve these problems in our production of custom-made seasonings, we went to Beijing Liu Bi Ju Food Co., Ltd. to seek answers.

Beijing Liu Bi Ju Food Co., Ltd. traditional pickles production and research base exchange

        Beijing Liu Bi Ju Food Co., Ltd. is a time-honored enterprise with nearly 600 years of heritage in China, and it is a leader in the industry in the production of traditional food such as pickles. So instructors and representatives of BIT-China team visited there.

        Under the leadership of Wentao Li, the chief engineer of the enterprise, the instructor and the team entered the the factory. Mr. Li led us to visit the pickles production and processing site, and carefully explained the basic process of pickles production and the use of all kinds of machines.

        In this process, the team learned the basic knowledge of pickle production, and also came into contact with many novel machines and production technology. Finally, BIT-China team members introduced our project, and then the relevant personnel of the company also gave us suggestions.

        Wentao Li, the chief engineer of the enterprise, solved our doubts about taste testing and food safety standards.

        After answering our questions, Mr. Li also asked us about the detection of salty taste, questioning whether the cells can survive and work importantly in samples with higher salinity. This question makes us think deeply.

        Regarding the inheritance of traditional pickles, the director Yi You solved our confusion.

        Party Branch Secretary Liyou He mainly answered our questions about the process of bringing products to market.

        After listening to the suggestions of relevant people in charge, we understood more the importance of umami detection, so our future customized seasonings will focus on umami. And we understood that preserving traditional food culture can't just mechanically record past dishes, but helps improve and innovate traditional dishes so that they can be accepted by young people. In addition, we also found some difficulties in the detection of saltiness by biological means, so we decided to use salinometer to detect saltiness and give up biological methods for the time being. In addition, we also found that the intensity of a single sour taste is mainly related to the pH of the sample, so we can use a quick and convenient pH meter to detect sour taste, and there is no need to design biological means.

        The trip to Beijing Liu Bi Ju Food Co., Ltd. allowed us to understand the production mode of condiments and the significance of umami to food, so we decided to design a "Flavor Card" application to investigate user tastes. However, custom-made seasoning and traditional seasoning are still different in specific taste testing. In order to further improve our testing system and increase the feasibility of the project, we also consulted with experts in economics, management and biology.

Expert Consultation

Expert in economics and management

        Wanrong Yang is an associate professor in the School of Economics and Management at BIT. In a project management class, we introduced our projects and their applications. He pointed out that SMEs are facing the problems of low loan efficiency and high financing costs. However, our main project testing and follow-up development require a lot of early investment, and the scope of application is relatively small, and it is difficult to obtain large financing. Therefore, we can sell the technology to large companies to avoid the impact of early costs and let this result play a role in the future.

Biological experts

        Professor Yuan Lu is a doctoral tutor in the Department of Chemical Engineering of Tsinghua University.

        On the question whether human proteins affect the growth of Saccharomyces cerevisiae, he pointed out that the expression of receptor proteins does affect cell growth to a certain extent. It is inevitable that the expression of membrane proteins can be somewhat cytotoxic. For strategies, on the one hand, we can control the transcription or translation elements to reduce the expression of this protein; Or on the other hand, if cells can grow, albeit slowly or with fewer cells, as long as it does not interfere with our ability to function, he did not think that is a problem.

        Regarding the signal transduction pathway of Saccharomyces cerevisiae, he recommends that we try to find a signal transduction pathway that has been successful many times in the literature. He did not recommend trying other pathways that are currently in basic research because of the low success rates.

        Mr. Lu's answers made us understand that modification of human pathway is necessary, otherwise it will affect the growth of Saccharomyces cerevisiae, and the design of pathway must be very careful.

        After understanding that the human source pathway should be modified, we further modified the human source pathway, but in the process we had questions about how to accurately perform fluorescence detection, so we found Professor Tiangang Liu.

        Tiangang Liu, a professor at the School of Pharmacy, Wuhan University, told us how to improve the accuracy of fluorescence intensity detection. He told us to find a reasonable concentration and linear range, so that the results of the system would fall within the linear range. In order to improve the robustness of biosensors, he reminded us to pay attention to the expression and screening of sensors so that the receptor structures can be easily constructed successfully. Mr. Liu's advice helped us a lot and brought us a new focus on both modeling and gene construction.

        After solving the problems related to fluorescent protein, we replaced the original red fluorescent protein with green fluorescent protein with a better linear range. However, when the cell pathways were finally integrated, we had questions about the G proteins related issues in the reaction. So we found Professor Chun Li.

        Mr. Li's answers helped us solve the puzzle of how to detect G proteins connection, and reminded us that we must consider the composition of intermediate signal transducers when designing gene circuits, providing important guidance for us to optimize gene circuits.

        The suggestions of Miss. Huang gave us a new understanding of the analog junction protein domain, and at the same time made new gains for the modeling of biological systems, which are of great significance to further improve the project in the future.

        Mr. Yu's answers gave us a preliminary understanding of the cross research between machine learning and biology, which opened a new idea for us to analyze the characteristics of proteins, which made us full of confidence to continue to develop this project in the future.

CCiC Team Communication

        CCiC (the Conference of China iGEMer Community) is a national summit initiated by iGEM teams in China. It was originally independently initiated by iGEM teams in mainland China, and aims to provide a platform for participating iGEM teams to share resources. It has promoted mutual learning, communication and collision of ideas, and witnessed the growth and progress of Chinese youth in the field of synthetic biology. Thanks to various efforts, CCiC has become one of the largest academic conferences for college students in China.

        The 2021 CCiC8 was also held as scheduled under the auspices of Fudan University. BIT-China team also made a good understanding in advance and actively registered to participate. Although we were not able to participate in the meeting due to the epidemic, the members of BIT-China team did not relax and actively participated in the whole process of the meeting and won the Active Participation Award.

        Listening to the lectures of various experts, we learned a lot of new ways to study problems and ways to look at things from a new perspective. Watching the projects of each team, we found our own shortcomings, and we learned from each other to improve ourselves in the process of the project.

        At the same time, during the team presentation, the online team showed great interest in our project, which also made us very happy. The team asked us questions about the origin of the project, the principle of the project, the significance of the project and so on. We gave an answer after reflection.

        Questions from other teams have been very helpful to our project, and their suggestions are greatly appreciated.

        In addition to the team, Dr. Jun Chen, the judge of CCiC, affirmed the innovation of our project, but at the same time, she raised a question. She wanted to know whether our Saccharomyces cerevisiae could taste the same as human taste, and whether it could serve as human taste inspector.

        This question triggered our profound thinking. At first, we thought that we only used Saccharomyces cerevisiae to complete the taste detection, and never thought whether it matched with human taste, and whether the detection result of Saccharomyces cerevisiae, a simple eukaryotic organism, could reflect human taste. Therefore, we also consulted them in our communication with COFCO Nutrition and Health Research Institute.

        They pointed to the use of the electronic tongue, one of the most widely used devices for evaluating human tastes. They noted that the electronic tongue was also intended to assist food sensory researchers, and that data from the electronic tongue was originally derived from human evaluation. If our cells could act as an electronic tongue, a much more cost-effective way to do this, with high throughput, without the limitations of an electronic tongue, for example, the detection time is long and the number of samples is limited, the detection instrument is expensive, and an electronic tongue can not detect the taste of a variety of food, electronic tongue can only reflect the amount of substance content but can not detect the actual taste degree.

        Because of Dr Jun Chen's problem, we also contacted the Nutrition and Health Research Institute, for when our cells are successfully built, the use of Saccharomyces cerevisiae and sensory researcher test multiple sets of samples at the same time, compared to two sets of data, through the modeling for the relationship, make the detection result of Saccharomyces cerevisiae, calculation after analogy that sensory evaluation test. Food companies can save a lot of money, and we can market our taste testers to a larger market.

Summary

        After consulting with enterprises and experts, we understood that our project is of great significance to enterprises. This phase also allowed us to make some adjustments to the three goals of the project.

1. Construction of biological detection system.
   We adjusted and improved some ideas of the project according to the suggestions of the teachers, and added the transformation of human pathway in the experiment to ensure the normal growth of Saccharomyces cerevisiae. And we have carried out more in-depth research on G proteins, which gives us more basis to design the circuit.
2. Private custom seasoning production.
   Our customized seasonings have changed from full-flavor customization to umami customization. The main reason is that the superposition of flavors makes it difficult to accurately express different flavors with numerical values. Besides, umami seasoning is the most needed product by enterprises and consumers at present.
3. The investigation of taste and the preservation of food culture.
   Preserving traditional culture is not merely a record of the past, but a constant innovation. Therefore, we dilute the goal of traditional food culture, and instead help enterprises to innovate traditional food and create unique flavor of enterprises to protect food culture.

Improvement

Optimization of experimental principles

        The Fermentation Engineering Laboratory of BTBU is an excellent food laboratory in China. In order to better improve our experiments, the BIT-China team went to this laboratory for communication and cooperation. The Fermentation Engineering Laboratory of BTBU has a complete set of electronic tongue equipment. We first tested the taste of our proteolytic samples with different proportions, and then modeled and analyzed them.

        Huimin Guo, a master student at the Fermentation Engineering Laboratory of BTBU, gave us some suggestions after looking at our project and testing experiments. First, taste components are complex and have many receptors. To accurately detect a taste, we have to take into account multiple receptors. Especially, there are many kinds of bitter receptors, which correspond to different substances. In order to accurately detect bitter taste, multiple receptor binding detection must be used. Her suggestion provided us with important ideas for constructing bitter taste detection pathway, and we later selected three bitter taste receptors to solve this problem.

        Zhaosheng Han, a master student at the School of Food Science and Technology at BTBU, is in charge of the electronic tongue test. As for the shortcomings of the tongue, she pointed out that it can only detect certain substances and give a rough taste value based on statistical laws. Second, the electronic tongue can only test one or a small class of food samples at a time, and needs to be configured with specific reference substances and provide a large amount of manual taste data for machine learning. Finally, the electronic tongue takes about 1-2 hours to detect a sample, which is very inefficient. Her advice made us more determined to conduct cell tests.

Optimization modeling

        Tim Qiu, a PhD student in the Department of Chemistry at Yale University, answered our modeling questions.

        Through Tim Qiu's patient answers, we have a deeper understanding of modeling, which provides great help for the inheritance of our modeling knowledge.

        Her opinions helped students in the modeling group have a deeper understanding of the processing and utilization of experimental data and learn more data processing methods.

Optimize the flavor investigation process

        In terms of web pages and small programs, we consulted Jianhua Ma, an undergraduate student at the School of Computer Science and Technology, BIT.

        After exchanges and discussions, we believe that compared to developing an application, building a website can effectively reduce costs and facilitate us to collect data efficiently and quickly, so we abandoned the application plan and built a website instead.

Explore academic issues

Integration of production, education and research

        The tutor in charge of our team, Xiaohong Zhou, is quite accomplished in proteolysis and has already cooperated with Beijing Liu Bi Ju Food Co., Ltd. to develop products. Our Creative Food Seasonings is also closely related to protein enzymatic digestion, but the road from the laboratory to the actual production is very long, so we consulted Yi You, the director of Beijing Liu Bi Ju Food Co., Ltd. about the integration of production, education and research.

        Mr. You said that the cycle from R&D to actual production to market sales is extremely long. Regardless of the research and development process, but for the product from factory experiment to actual sales, it is first necessary to determine the product's taste positioning and conduct production experiments. Among them, the physical and chemical indicators of the product need to be continuously tested, and destructive experiments are also needed to study the shelf life of the product. Next, long-term market research and packaging promotion products are needed to go on the market. Therefore, only the production and sales link will take several years.

        In addition, Mr. You also showed the production situation of Mr. Zhou's products. One of Mr. Zhou’s current products has been successfully applied to Beijing Liu Bi Ju Food Co., Ltd.’s products "Mushroom Beef Sauce" and "Old Beijing Fried Sauce". The product adopts 1.5 tons of enzyme hydrolysis tank, colloid mill, homogenizer, and filling machine for production. The plant area is 500 square meters and the annual output can reach 1,000 tons/year. We are working hard to create the "exclusive corporate taste" of Beijing Liu Bi Ju Food Co., Ltd., and at the same time we can try to add to the existing products of other companies to make the company more competitive and meet the needs of customers at the same time.

        In the future, the combination of experimental results and actual industries will become closer and closer. Our BIT-China team will also cooperate with enterprises for a long time to achieve the integration of production, education and research.

Academic research questions

        BIT-China team had an online conversation with Hongxiang Zhang, Executive Deputy Secretary-General of the Chinese Society of Bioengineering.

        After listening to the project report, Deputy Secretary-General Zhang pointed out that a scientific research project must be clear about the problems to be solved, because clear problems are the basis of experimental design, which helps to grasp the experimental design and expected results.

        The meeting stressed that cross science is a natural science, social science, humanities, mathematics science and philosophy etc. Large external crossover between science and the science happened between the academic disciplines within the internal cross formed by comprehensive and systematic knowledge system, which is conducive to effectively solve the important scientific problems and social problems facing the human society, especially complex problems of a global nature.

        The conference pointed out that scientific problems are the logical starting point of scientific discovery, and all scientific research and the growth of scientific knowledge is a process that begins with problems and ends with problems. Old problems solved, new and deeper problems introduced... Therefore, it is more meaningful to be good at and brave in putting forward scientific problems, to examine old scientific problems with the scientific spirit of scientific criticism and rational questioning, and to give full play to innovative imagination to put forward new scientific problems, especially to put forward major cross-scientific problems of large span, comprehensive and complex.

        Finally, Deputy Secretary-General Zhang stressed that we should pay attention to the growth of young scholars and build a stage for our growth. The young scientific research team is the main part of the national scientific and technological human resources, is the talent foundation of scientific and technological self-reliance, playing an increasingly important role in the stage of scientific and technological innovation. He hoped that our generation of young students could break the shackles, shoulder the burdens, and release their imagination and creativity. His instructions inspire us, and we will remain true to our original purpose.

Project Summary

Close the Loop

Current target completion status

Construction of biological detection system

        Through the unremitting efforts of all our team members, we completed the design of sweet, umami and bitter detection cells, and planned to detect different tastes through the addition of different inducers. At the same time, we tested the promoter strength to ensure that our receptor could be expressed at a high level by the promoter.

Creative Food Seasonings production

        Beijing Liu Bi Ju Food Co., Ltd.: Umami customization is most needed. Companies also need to customize their own unique flavor.

        We designed and tried a variety of enzymolysis formulas. Due to the time limit of the project, we failed to build a taste inspector. We tested their taste with electronic tongue and grasped the relationship between taste and our seasoning through modeling, making preparations for the customization of umami seasoning.

The investigation of taste and the preservation of food culture

        COFCO: It is better to study consumers' tastes by using a combination of dishes and tastes than by studying a single taste.

        Beijing Liu Bi Ju Food Co., Ltd.: Protecting food culture requires constant innovation and keeping up with The Times.

        We completed the construction of "Flavor Card" web page and attracted many people to fill it in, helping people discover their unique self and at the same time, enabling us to better understand the tastes of the public and collect the data of tastes around the world, laying a solid foundation for the establishment of "global taste database".

Future Prospects

Construction of biological detection system

        In the future, we will continue to complete the construction of umami detection cells, and use the detection cells to start testing samples. After determining the relationship between its performance and artificial evaluation values, we will use these detection cells to test the values of some food and standard substances, paving the way for our subsequent products.

Creative Food Seasonings production

        We combine the test values with our enzymolysis products to produce umami flavorings that are tailored to regional and individual tastes.

The investigation of taste and the preservation of food culture

        We will use our cheaper and more efficient testing system to provide food companies, while adding seasonings to existing products to enrich the taste of products. Working with food companies so they can create their own unique flavor and help us preserve and promote our food culture.

References

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