Team:SCAU-China/Human Practices
Overview
We have completed a series of great human practices!
Human practices improve our project and extend our thinking about how to change the world. In order to make our project closer to actual needs, we interviewed stakeholders in different fields, such as the public, experts, enterprises, and government. We listened to feedback from different perspectives and adopted some reasonable suggestions. Meanwhile, we promoted the concept and knowledge of synthetic biology to the society, covering different groups such as primary school, middle school, university and social groups.
Integrated Human Practices
Expert Interview
In April 2021, we interviewed professor Fangjie Zhao from Nanjing Agricultural University, who is an authoritative expert in China in the research field of metals absorption by plants and remediation of contaminated soils. He commented that our project is very interesting and meaningful, and also he provided many useful suggestions on how to operate Chlamydomonas on the absorption of heavy metals.
The interview with Professor Zhao provided great help for us to use synthetic biological approach to solve the problem of heavy metal pollution in water. Professor Zhao think that it is innovative way to use Chlamydomonas to express the metal binding protein from Sedum plumbizincicola, which can effectively solve the long-cycle and high-cost problems in repairing Sedum plumbizincicola with mine. He hope that we can extend the method of the restoration of the water environment to the soil.
Finally, we consulted Professor Zhao about the superiority and future value of the bioremediation environment. Professor Zhao believes that bioremediation is different from physical and chemical remediation, which does not need to add other components to the soil and does not change the physical and chemical properties of the soil. Therefore, bioremediation is a mild way and easily to be accepted by public.
Figure1: Interview with Professor Fangjie Zhao
Expert Profile
Professor Fangjie Zhao
He mainly focus on the molecular mechanism of plant absorption of heavy metals and essential trace elements, biogeochemistry of contaminated elements and remediation of contaminated soil. He has been a full-time special professor of Nanjing Agricultural University since 2012. He is mainly engaged in the research of environmental biology and plant nutrition, and has made important achievements in the molecular mechanism of plant heavy metal absorption and detoxification, bioremediation of contaminated soil, crop sulfur and trace element nutrition and so on. So far, more than 300 SCI papers have been published, and more than 30, 000 citations have been made in Web of Science. He was selected as a global high cited scholar from 2017 to 2020. In 2020, he was awarded as "Outstanding Postgraduate Supervisor" of Nanjing Agricultural University.
Ecological Environmental Bureau
On August, 2021, in order to get a best design to solve local problems, we hold an online meeting with Guangzhou Ecological Environment Bureau, Guangdong, China. After listening to the project introduction, the government staff said that our ideas are very novel, and they will support the following work of our project. Meanwhile, they put forward some suggestions.
- It should be taken into account whether the genetically modified organisms has negative impacts on the ecological environment, and how to solve this problem?
- How about the economic and time cost of training people, equipment production and maintenance, and salvage recovery, which may determine whether the project can be achieved.
- They suggested that we should conduct a field investigation in the heavy metal sewage treatment factory.
We therefore proceeded to next step of human practice.
Figure 2: Official Logo for Guangzhou Municipal Ecological Environment Bureau
Enterprise Access
On September, 2021, we went to Guangya Metal Rubber Products Co., Ltd. and visited their production workshop and sewage treatment factory. Through communication with engineers, we learned that sewage mainly contains inorganic and organic pollutants and heavy metal pollutants, especially cadmium and nickel. The current heavy metal wastewater treatment technology is mainly physical and chemical methods, through absorption, precipitation, filtration, ion exchange and other processes to make the concentration of heavy metals in the wastewater to get the national emission standards.
However, the process need to add alkali into the sewage treatment, which may pollute the environment. Moreover, the treatment process requires a lot of energy consumption and space. They expect to design a unique device combined with Chlamydomonas technology, so that will solve the problem of heavy metal pollution with less time and space .
After the visit, we took several sewage samples back for the laboratory experiment, which may verify whether our Chlamydomonas can be used in a real sewage environment.
Figure 3: Enterprise Access for Guangya Metal Rubber Product Co., Ltd.
Device Upgrade
In order to use our Chlamydomonas in the real environment and guarantee the requirements of biosafety, we designed a device. In the process of human practice activities, we have upgraded the device many times, which greatly improved the practicability and safety of the device. Please refer to the hardware for detail.
