Team:BUCT-China/Human Practices
Human Practices
I. Human Practice Logic Thinking
At the same time, out of concern for environmental problems as always, we find that the emergence and popularization of cultured meat may alleviate or solve some environmental problems. The "future" of cultured meat is not only reflected in the help of aerospace, but also helps to solve the current environmental problems, so we also bring the public understanding of cultured meat into social practice.
Through social investigation, we initially determine the research direction to design the experiment, and constantly improve our own experiment in the process of external communication and carrying out the experiment. For some thoughts inspired by the experiment and social survey, we also actively interviewed experts in relevant fields in order to better understand our project, better improve the experimental design and carry out the experiment. Moreover, we also share our gains along the way with more people in the form of scientific education, so as to increase public awareness of synthetic biology and cultured meat. In short, we continue to make new inspirations and insights in social surveys, science popularization and interviews, and constantly share and internalize them into the perfection of experiments.
II. Social survey
We have mainly carried out three social surveys.
The first social survey is before the beginning of the design experiment, with a questionnaire as the main form, we carried out a more extensive survey to understand the public awareness of cultured meat and the main direction of concern for cultured meat.
Through the investigation, we found that except that the public do not know much about cultured meat, the understanding of cultured meat mostly stays in the literal meaning and their own understanding, there is no more scientific understanding, and many concepts are relatively vague. there are also doubts about the significance of the existence of cultured meat. 28% of the public think that the development of cultured meat is not necessary. As shown in the following survey, only 18.9% of people are positive about cultured meat, the vast majority are neutral, and 19.51% are negative. People are also worried about the safety, price and health of cultured meat, especially the safety. It can be seen from the questionnaire that 68.22% of the people do not want to grow meat because of safety considerations. All these have become the focus of our popular science, that is, to make a scientific comb of the cultured meat production process to the public and discuss the significance of its existence.
Through the communication with some biology students, we find that students with biological background will pay more attention to the issue of bioethics for cultured meat (cell-culture meat). It has also become one of the key points of our science popularization. At the same time, we also found that the public's thinking and concern about cultured meat is mainly focused on food safety, taste, nutrition and so on. Safety considerations accounted for 68%, taste and other food experiences accounted for 50%, price considerations accounted for 30%, and nutritional value accounted for 36%. Therefore, we designed the experiment to focus on these aspects: for the sake of thinking about the taste, we used polyhydroxyl fatty acids and collagen as scaffolds to improve the taste; for the sake of nutrition, we did not involve the culture of adipocytes in the process of cell inoculation, and polyhydroxyl fatty acids as unsaturated fatty acids also have certain health functions. For security thinking, more ethical issues, we take it as one of the topics of our follow-up interviews with experts in related fields.
When the third social survey was nearing the end of the experiment, we asked the public in the form of a questionnaire about their expectations for cultured meat in the future. we found that the public paid more attention to the nutrition and taste of cultured meat, as well as its price. at the same time, there is also a demand for diversification of cultured meat. From the figure below the questionnaire, we can see that 78.05% of the people chose a more nutritious option, 63.41% chose a taste option closer to traditional meat, and 60.98% chose the price reduction option. This is also the direction of our team's improvement, and will be the direction of our future improvement projects. Some of the data are as follows:
III. Communication
We had a total of four communication between teams to communicate with each other and listen to different opinions.
For the first time, during the brain storm period, our team participated in the Beijing District meetup and learned that our cultured meat also played a role in environmental issues, as well as inspired by social research work for the public. After communicating with iBowu-China, we began to think about our children's understanding of synthetic biology, and we finally decided to participate in iBowu-China 's “Biodoodle” coloring book project to showcase our project in a more colorful and interesting way and spread our experience.
The second time was after we completed the experimental design and participated in the meetup in North China, we communicated offline with many excellent teams, introduced our respective projects in the form of posters and slides, and discussed with other 8 teams and invited guests to improve the project plan. In the course of discussion, Professor Luo Liu proposed that the whole experimental scheme should be designed more smoothly and each experimental part should be connected perfectly, while Dr. Cheng Li , referee of the 2020iGEM contest, suggested that we enter the experimental part as soon as possible, because the cell cycle in the whole cultured meat cell culture will be longer, we need to ensure that our cells can be cultured successfully and achieve results within a specified period of time. We adopt these two suggestions to modify the experimental scheme and improve the connection of each part. At the same time, after perfecting the experiment, the experimental scheme was put into the laboratory to carry out the experiment, and in order to complete the experiment within time, we adopted the mode that all experimental parts carried out together, which will make up for the problem of long cell cycle in cultured meat cells. At the same time, we actively contacted Professor Jingyu Chen of the School of Food Science and Nutrition Engineering of China Agricultural University. as a professor of the School of Food Science and Nutrition Engineering, Professor Jingyu Chen is very interested in our meat cultivation program and hopes to cooperate with us to link the meat cultivation project with food technology, which will greatly promote the realization of our project. While communicating with the project, we also actively contact the modeling team, such as igemer-Zeyu Tang, who is a student at Imperial Institute of Technology and is very good at modeling. In the communication with him, we are also further improving our modeling part of the plan. At the same time, we are also aware of the great achievements of 3D printing in the field of biomaterials, and the 3D printing technology in our project will be related to modeling, and we are also faced with the problems of modeling and material printing. for example: how to determine the material data during modeling, such as pores, etc. How to solve the problems such as multi-layer material printing, we discussed these problems in this exchange meeting, trying to find more solutions and solutions. At the same time, we have also strengthened one of our partner: BIT-China in the meetup in North China.
When constructing bitter plasmids, a new problem appeared. BIT-China constructed bitter plasmids in the same way as above, but OE always failed to get the correct product. Even if the fragment length is correct after OE runs, there is no way to get the target plasmid by Gibson. Using Oligo to design primers or changing the PCR temperature did not solve this problem. BIT-China also communicated with our experimental group members and raised the confusion of BIT-China. Our team members checked the plasmid map of BIT-China and found that there are restriction sites on both sides of the receptor. This is because BIT-China needs to replace the restriction site designed by the receptor. We told BIT-China that they can try to construct the plasmid by enzyme digestion. First construct the plasmid linking the promoter and the fluorescent protein, and then insert the receptor. BIT-China listened to our suggestions and learned from the seniors to use the enzyme digestion method to conduct experiments. It was the first time to use this method to construct plasmids. The result was unexpected by BIT-China. After the failure of the second experiment, BIT-China successfully constructed the bitter plasmid in the third enzyme digestion experiment.
The third time was that we attended the CCiC (Conference of China iGEMer Community) after a certain degree of experiment, we introduced the various parts of our project in the form of slides. The judges gave us a positive evaluation and looked forward to our future results. at the same time, we also pointed out that our project is a very complex process, which can be compared with our own methods from the existing production methods that have been produced, so as to continuously improve. This will also become one of the ideas for us to optimize the experiment and reduce the cost in the future.
From May 29th to May 30th, 2021, our team participated in the 2021 China iGEM Online Meetup co-hosted by Jiangnan University Jiangnan_China, Shenzhen University SZU-China, we learned a lot of ideas of team projects and thought and exchanged from various aspects. At the same time, we actively discussed and reflected after the project sharing in this online meeting, hoping to apply the strengths of the project to our own projects.
For instance，ShanghaiTech's project stress-sensitive cell-based skeleton biodegradable releasable adhesive hydrogel for fracture repair, which is an excellent material for biomedical applications because of its good biocompatibility, predictable degradation rate, adjustable mechanical properties and good elasticity, and our project also designs cell growth scaffold materials, and exchanged ideas with ShanghaiTech_ China project.They Inspired us to think about the question of material compatibility with muscle stem cells.At the same time, we also began to think about whether the synthetic PHFA and the based synthetic cultivated meat are of diverse application value, which is one of the reasons that inspired us to conduct the last questionnaire on the future application of cultivated meat later in the project.
IV. Interview
We interviewed two teachers separately, gained different ideas and inspired us.
The first time was after conducting part of experiments, we interviewed Associate Professor Shijie Ding of Nanjing Agricultural University (Professor Guanghong Zhou's team was the first team in China to synthesize cell-cultured meat). We asked the teacher some of our thoughts about the future development of cultured meat, and discussed with the teacher the problems and thoughts found in the experiment and the first social practice.
In this interview, Professor Ding, based on his many years of research experience, from the acceptance of cultured meat to the answer to technical difficulties, has provided a lot of constructive suggestions and prospects for our team's cell-cultured meat. Many of the clips are enlightening. Here are the most unforgettable conversations and corresponding inspirations for us:
Ting Wang:at present, a survey has found that people's acceptance of cultured meat is still not very high at this stage. What do you think of this, Mr. Ding?
Professor Ding:in my personal opinion, with the development and progress of our technology and the improvement of our public awareness of the overall technology of cell culture, more and more people will hold a positive attitude. This is already being discovered. Because compared with recent surveys conducted in Europe and the United States three or five years ago, their data show that the proportion of people who are willing to try is further increasing.
Professor Ding's answer to this question not only gives us confidence in the future development of cultured meat, but also answers our long-standing concern about the public's low acceptance of cultured meat. It also makes us understand that to enhance public awareness and acceptance of cultured meat is not only the popularization of science, but also the improvement and development of technology.
Ting Wang:at present, although some cell culture meat has gradually begun to appear in chain restaurants such as KFC and Burger King. But it is actually made from plant protein, so we are also studying the use of cells to grow meat. But its cost is relatively high, so what are the market advantages of cell-cultured meat over plant protein and cell-based meat?
Professor Ding:first of all, there is a kind of global cell culture meat that has been listed on the market, which is a Singapore company called Eatjust. None of the rest of the companies made from plant proteins are listed. It can be seen that it has a great advantage in the economic market. In our animal protein, muscle tissue is formed by ingesting amino acids and so on. On the one hand, this muscle tissue is more nutritionally matched, because its composition is also an animal like human beings. On the other hand, the taste of natural meat, including some key nutrients, is difficult to match with plant proteins. So, cell-cultured meat goes from our traditional animal husbandry to cell production, but their end points are all the same. If you want to generate muscle tissue, it doesn't change the demand for meat, so it's hard for other technologies to replace. But its disadvantage is that it is expensive and difficult to produce. But in our overall cell biology, tissue engineering, including synthetic biology, fermentation engineering, that is, each discipline has made a great progress in its related disciplines. Now that we have made such progress, we will certainly be able to overcome this process in the future through our research and technical means, and we are all full of confidence.
Professor Ding's answer to this question answers some of our team's previous concerns and feedback from our classmates in popular science. At the same time, it also gives us better inspiration and thinking about how to show the public that cell-cultured meat is more suited to the advantages of human use in terms of nutrition and taste than plant meat.
Ting Wang:Professor Ding, our team has been thinking about how to promote public acceptance of laboratory-made cultured meat. On the one hand, we consider popularizing relevant knowledge to the public, on the other hand, how to improve the taste of cell-cultured meat to make it easier for the public to accept. In this regard, we want to choose a better scaffold to make the meat have a certain thickness and provide a certain mechanical strength to simulate the taste of traditional meat. Secondly, we also want to make some breakthroughs in the culture medium to simulate the muscle cell humoral environment to increase the similarity between cell-cultured meat and traditional meat. We know that Professor Ding has made great achievements in this area, so we hope the teacher can give us some suggestions.
Professor Ding:Professor Ding: first of all, you need to know what you are doing, which is meat, so what is the composition of meat? You have to investigate this question first. Very simply, our whole muscle tissue, and then the most important unit in the muscle tissue is multinucleated muscle cells. Multinucleated muscle cells may account for 80% of the total muscle tissue in volume. The proteins it provides are mainly myosin and actin, of which myosin and actin may account for 30%, 50%, and some other sarcoplasmic proteins. At the same time, in the muscle tissue, there is connective tissue outside the muscle fiber, and collagen is the main protein outside the connective tissue. When we know a lot about the quality of this meat, you need to do two things: first, how to develop, that is, how to make it have a similar or the same growth pathway as the body, and finally grow into a large piece of muscle tissue. Of course, at present, this is more difficult all over the world, because after in-depth understanding, it is relatively difficult to overcome vascularization. So considering the several things that can be done, first, in a large scaffold, we add muscle cells and then let them differentiate inside, which means that its scaffold is porous, and it is the same as the dense muscle tissue in the body, but it is very difficult to form. Another way of thinking is to make a relatively small one, which may be only one or two hundred microns thick, or a little larger, to facilitate material exchange. And then you can arrange more muscle fibers, of course, this drawback is that you can't form a relatively large tissue, and then you need to use a lot of such relatively small, fine tissue to be processed and reorganized into the meat products you need.
Professor Ding's this has a certain inspiration for our stent design ideas, how to weigh the pros and cons and choose a more appropriate scaffold model. This also inspires us to explore the scaffold parameters that are most suitable to be a piece of meat from the point of view of modeling.
At present, although there are many problems to overcome, we are still full of confidence and expectation for the breakthrough of cell culture meat. Teacher Shijie Ding 's answer to our questions has greatly inspired us from the perspective of science popularization, the development prospect of cell culture meat and the improvement of the experiment, which makes us more smoothly in the future science popularization activities and experimental operation, and we also believe that one day in the future, we can overcome all these difficulties. Make cell culture meat more popular. The interview is conducted online with the Tencent conference as a platform, and the pictures of the interview activities are as follows:
The second time, after a period of experiment, we interviewed Professor Guan Xin of Jiangnan University and asked her for some inspiration and thinking we got from the experiment in the process of cell culture. Professor Guan Xin put forward some valuable suggestions for our experiment. First of all, she suggested that we should pay some attention to testing the gelling properties of scaffolds, so we added some stent verification criteria, that is, stents were placed in the cell culture medium for 3-5 days to find scaffolds with better gelling properties. Secondly, Professor Guan suggested that we should pay attention to the problem of bacterial infection in the process of cell culture, which also helps to solve the safety problem. Professor Guan's two suggestions are of great help to our experiment.
V. Scientific education
We mainly use two forms of science popularization, one is the official account tweet, the other is the form of propaganda. It is mainly aimed at college students, and the reason is that we think that college students have a certain knowledge base and are more likely to accept new ideas and new things. At the same time, through the media of college students, we can also spread the relevant cultured meat knowledge to their parents, elders and relatives to further expand the audience. At the same time, the multi-disciplinary background of college students (such as the collision of natural science and social science) can give us better feedback and inspiration.
The Public account sent a total of 10 articles, including 6 popular science tweets, 1 activity report, 1 questionnaire and promotion, 2 invitations, and the total number of views of pictures and texts reached 3474. Through the promotion of the official account, the influence of the project and the breadth of the scope of the investigation have been expanded, thus promoting the deepening of the project. In the current era, any way of network-related publicity and survey should not be underestimated. Through the analysis of push data, we can get a glimpse of everyone's interest and expectations, so as to make our project more in line with the expectations of the public. Some of the push messages are as follows:
For popular science propaganda, due to the epidemic, we have all adopted the online form, combined with bilibili live broadcast, in order to expand the audience. We have three games of popular science:
The first session discussed synthetic biology with BIT-China and spread some basic knowledge of cultured meat (cell culture meat). The main audience may be college students in northern China. For more information, please see Enducation.
The second session, together with SCAU-China and FAFU-China, conducted a joint lecture on "under the microcosm, above life". At the same time, we spread our knowledge about cultured meat (cell culture meat) to college students in southern China. For more information, please see Education.
In the third session, as we deepened our understanding of cultured meat (cell culture meat) due to the deepening of the experiment, we wanted to discuss the relevant ethical issues with you, so we held a lecture on the ethics of synthetic biology with BIT-China. For more information, please see Education.
At the same time, we also participate in iBowu-China 's “Biodoodle” coloring book project to bring synthetic biology knowledge from the lab and PPT into children's brushes.
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