Team:KEYSTONE/Attributions
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WHO WE ARE
Overview
This year, Team Keystone focuses on solving the severe environmental issue caused by the current handling methods of rubber waste. The current rubber waste products are landfilling, and incineration（burning the rubber）, which are not sustainable solutions to get rid of the wasted rubber. Each of these two methods generate massive amounts of pollution to the environment, and harms to human body. Therefore, Team Keystone urges to find a solution.
Us, as a synthetic biology team, endeavors to find a new way of not just getting “rid” of rubber but degrading the actual matter to solve this problem from the root. Hence, we came up with the solution of the biodegradation of rubber, which we later named “The Rubber Eater”.
In our project, we have successfully proven to use protein Lcp and Laccase, signal peptide HlyA, fusion protein NusA, and the most commonly seen bacteria E. Coli to achieve the biodegradation of rubber. Turns out, that our team have also successfully managed to find the optimized combination of the elements listed above, and achieve the secretion and enzyme activity of our target protein.
Our product can be applied in factories, and small businesses to reach the universalization of such environmental issue and this new type of biodegrading method. This could largely solve the issue of current environmental pollutions created by the methods utilized right now on the market, and thus benefiting the environment in general.
Hereon, we sincerely thank everyone who has contributed to the project and has helped us in the process of creating and implementing “The Rubber Eater.”
Team Keystone
Team Keystone is composed by 13 team members, three coaches, and three advisors. All of the team members and advisors are from Keystone Academy, and our coaches from the Link Spider laboratory. We gathered up as a team to represent our school, and we are accepting any possible results as a team too.
We are grateful to Mr. Wang, Ms. Yu, and Ms. Liang who coached us from Shenzhen’s laboratory even under the constraints of COVID-19. Their dedication and sacrifices are what truly made this project as great as it is.
Our team members, Thomas, Kevin, Ben, Andrew, Jerry, Yolanda, Ailing, Suri, Charlotte, Peter, Nicole, Harry, and Lisa have all worked extremely hard to complete and perfect this project.
Team Members’ Wiki Attribution
Team Members’ General Attribution
Our Coaches
we are extremely thankful to our coaches, who, helped us to the maximum extent even under the constraints of COVID-19, and assisted us on the project design, experimental implementation, and finalization.
Boxiang Wang
Professor Wang, as our team’s coach, has gave us massive help for the theoretical development of the project. He supported us on our research and the design of the experiments. Furthermore, Mr. Wang provided insights for us on how these wet lab implementations could be further improved, thus forming our current project.
Yu Jun
Ms. Yu, as our advisor and coach, has provided us enormous support. She supported us under every situation and helped us a lot when we encountered difficulties in the process. She has sacrificed a lot for our team, and we really appreciate her for her supports. Due to COVID-19, our experiments’ progress was severely delayed. Fortunately, Ms. Yu gave out a large amount of time, energy, and efforts to assist us in the process of research, investigation, and the designs of the experiments. She also provided us essential suggestions on our wiki design and gave us advice on the writing as well.
Sindhura Mehandran
Ms. Mehandran is a teacher in Keystone’s science department. As a biology teacher, she has dedicated her efforts and time to assist us on getting a large variety of resources, e.g., the organization of the Syn Bio Fair, the access for Keystone’s laboratory, the organization of the environmentalism fair, etc. We are very grateful on the support she has provided us throughout the entire project.
Qing Liang
Ms. Liang, as the head of the Link Spider laboratory, has gave us useful advice on the general management our team, and provided us previous experiences to assist us to manage our progress better.
Xuezhi Qi
Mr. Qi, as the secretary general of the China Rubber Industry Association’s Comprehensive Utilization Branch, have provided us enormous assistance in our Human Practice, giving us information on the demand of the industry and the background information about the rubber degradation industry.
Houbao Hu
Mr. Hu, as the Member of expert group of China Rubber Industry Association Waste Rubber Comprehensive Utilization Branch and a doctor of Tongji University, have given crucial help to our human practices. He introduced us to the market and the industry and gave detailed feedbacks on the acceptance of our project for further improvements.
Luo Liu
Professor Luo Liu, the associate professor at the College of Life Science and Technology, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, has given us multiple constructive advice for our project. His suggestions helped us to further develop and adjust our project.
Melissa Gao
Melissa Gao, who is also a Keystone student, used her amazing art skills and creativity to draw the merchandises for our team. Melissa drew extremely interesting and creative mascots for our team, which allows us to transform them into merchandises for sale. Her dedication to help team Keystone with her spare time has assisted us a lot on our public education.
Team Whittle
Team whittle, who formed a collaboration with us, have allowed us to do deeper research about the differences between LcpK30 and Lcp1VH2. Their protein has helped us to determine our choice when selecting the Lcp protein, and thus assisted our project.
Difficulties and Solutions
Even though we have encountered various difficulties throughout our project, we still managed to produce the final product with quality. Due to COVID-19 restrictions, a large proportion of our initial ideas were forced to be cancelled or eliminated. Many of the Human Practices and Public Education were converted into online forms and were eliminated on magnitude.
However, after adjusting our general goal from quantitative based to qualitative based, we have managed to achieve the goal with the same importance and influences. We focused on the overall quality of the programs rather than the number of the audiences. By making this adjustment, we have successfully made the project both influential and beneficial.
We have also encountered theoretical and experimental difficulties. Even though we have done research on the proteins, peptides, and bacteria that will be utilized in our project, we still met several difficulties to overcome. To begin with, we found Lcp to be extremely difficult to express (details seen on “Results Optimization”), which was overcame later by the method of exhaustion. Furthermore, we have also found it difficult to verify the secretion of our target protein solidly, which was later solved by utilizing Laccase in our project. (Details seen on “Results” and “description”). Even though we have met such difficulties and challenges on our way of creating a real biodegrading method, we still managed to find the best solution, and found out the optimized combination of these components.
Conclusion
After all the experiences we’ve been through together through this year, we are proud to announce that we have successfully synthesized the auto-secretly protein to be used for the biodegradation of polyisoprene(rubber), Overall, it was a precious and significant experience on both knowledge, and morals for all of the participants. Without the supports from the people mentioned above, we would never be able to complete this project with success. Therefore, we hold enormous gratitude to every participant, professors, collaborating partners, and classmate in our project.