Team:SDSZ China/Human Practices

Human Practice
Overview
        Welcome to the SDSZ Human Practices page! Here’s the overview of our work!
        Our HP Subsection is separated into two parts: "Integrated Human Practices" & "Education".
        The Integrated Human Practices concludes results of the survey, inspirations of each interview and field visit, and achievements in online human practices conference with several iGEM teams. It also summarizes research that has been conducted before, during, and after experiments and human practices. The Education part introduces the offline presentations we gave in our school, and online courses we produced and taught to children all over the country. It also includes the one-to-one collaboration with the iGEM team from China Agricultural University in presentations and online course productions.
        Sincerely thanks to those people who have filled our survey and helped us build an impression of public perceptions, and those students who have come to our collaboration lecture. Sincerely appreciate those professors and specialized people who we interviewed with and once offered help with our work. Further, sincerely admire those people who are currently or once have contributed their intelligence and time to repair and restoration of ancient architectures.
Integrated Human Practice
        We spent a lot of time understanding what “integrated” means. However, as we continue to interact with the “outer world”, we gradually understood this word by communicating, researching, and modifying. We started to realize that only if we frequently and actively interacted with society and integrated information from various sources could we solve the problem that we defined to a larger extent and made our product be better applied.
        Based on the understanding above, we designed several activities to not only gain valuable information and helpful suggestion but also dive into the area that is closely related to our project, through which we could have an inter-discipline insight into the problem.
        We have searched for large amounts of information including policy from different countries and reports on similar projects based on which we identified some notations and saw how we could do better. We also interviewed several experts on synthetic biology and architecture to learn detailed information about our purpose and application. This part is especially important for us. We realized that when communicating with and interviewing people in a meeting room, we were able to learn specific information that was hard to attain from the internet, and we were more likely to actively ask and think during the interview. To better observe how our product could be potentially applied to the real world, we went to visit a construction. Luckily, an architecture expert of the construction gave us a short introduction of how restoration and repair were conducted, which largely enriched our experience of the visit.
        Further information about “outward” can be found in “Education”.
Diverse Policy Research
        Based on the knowledge that there are strict regulations on building repair or restoration, we want to know what are policies about this topic like and what guidance can we get from those regulations which help shape our project. Therefore, we searched for a wide range of policies or regulations about building repair to attain the information that we need. Surprisingly, in the process of searching for information, we also formed a clearer understanding of some architectural terms and the possibilities of application, which assist in the following research as well as interviews. When we searched for relative information, we especially highlighted the diversity among different countries. Investigating policy on architecture restoration, a broader understanding of regulations had been established, which provided us possibilities to branch out our product and to apply it in various countries around the world.
        Here is the Policy analysis report based on the five policies that we excerpted. We had gained a lot of useful guidance and notice from each specific regulation.
View Policy Analysis Report
Expert Interview
        After establishing a general mind about how can our product applications in the real world, we formed an urgent problem, which is the specific forms of our product. In addition, we are eager to learn about the whole process of designing a product used for architecture repair and restoration. A quite effective way to enrich the project through feedback is to do so by consulting experts in the field of study as has been done previously in iGEM. To attain more detailed information and expect surprising gaining, we interviewed several experts, from the area of synthetic biology to architecture.
1. Mr. Zhang from MCC
        In this interview, our team interviewed Mr. Zhang from MCC. Through the interview, we learned a lot about the cutting-edge technology of building restoration. This was very helpful to our team.
        This time, Mr. Zhang introduced us to a technology that is similar to ours. The material produced by this technology can repair cracks by reacting with water to produce compounds. However, this technology is also not yet mature and is not used in the market on a large scale. This technology inspired our project to think about the water start-up switch and the length of time it would last. At the same time, when asking Mr. Zhang for his opinion on the future of our material, Mr. Zhang made practical suggestions. Mr. Zhang thought that if we want to get our goods to market, we need to make visual and significant results and presentations. The example she gave us was to put a cracked stone tile into our restoration solution, and if the crack is significantly mended in a week or so, then it would be an excellent result that we can use as advertised. The advice provided by Mr. Zhang not only inspired us but also made us reflect on our own project. From her suggestions, we learn how to promote commercial aspects and realize that research on materials cannot be limited to the laboratory but also need practice. Our team benefited from this interview and it was a very meaningful one.
2. Mr. Tang Youfu, Chairman of China Railway Fifth Survey
        We interviewed Mr. Tang Youfu, chairman of the China Railway Fifth Survey and Design Institute Group Co., and asked some questions about building restoration. Through the interview, we learned about the main methods of building restoration, the prospects of our microbial restoration technology, and the significance of building restoration for railroads. Also, we obtained valuable suggestions for our project. In this conference, we learned about the main methods of building restoration, which are: surface treatment, grouting, filling, structural reinforcement, electrochemical protection, and self-healing techniques, etc. Furthermore, Mr. Tang affirmed the prospect of our restoration technology. If it is more effective and economically affordable, it will have a great economical and architectural prospect. Through this interview, we obtained a lot of knowledge about the field of architectural restoration. Moreover, we reflected upon our project. It was a very interesting interview.
3. Doctor Wang Yanyi
        On October 11th, we interviewed Doctor Wang Yanyi, who is from the Materials and Physical Biology Division of the School of Physical Science and Technology, ShanghaiTech University, and published a nature article named as the Living material fabricated via gradient mineralization of light-inducible biofilms. Our experiments were partly inspired by hers, especially the Calcium mineralization part. We successfully contacted her through email and WeChat and had been looking forward to the interview for a long time. On October 11th, we interviewed Doctor Wang Yanyi, who is from the Materials and Physical Biology Division of the School of Physical Science and Technology, ShanghaiTech University, and published a nature article named as the Living material fabricated via gradient mineralization of light-inducible biofilms. Our experiments were partly inspired by hers, especially the Calcium mineralization part. We successfully contacted her through email and WeChat and had been looking forward to the interview for a long time.
        Our interview mostly concentrated on the technical part, particularly some difficulties or further questions about our experiment. We prepared eight questions, including:
1. Why did she choose escherichia coli as the engineering bacteria?
2. What is the relationship between bacteria and the quantity of mineralized production?
3. Is there any other way to increase the quantity?
4. How did she optimize the protein (considered that we faced some difficulties while managing to separate Mfp5 protein and constructing the plasmid).
5. How did she assess the quantity of mineralized production?
6. Is there anything that she thinks can further improve the whole development of mineralization biofilms?
7. How to control the quantity and density of mineralized production?
8. How to improve the adjustment of bacteria in the environment?
        During the interview, we first briefly introduced our experiment. Then she answered our questions respectively and patiently. We talked about some precise designs of her experiment which we can implement in our experiment. We also listened to the further introduction of her experiment which she published in Nature. She told some anecdotes of her experiment, such as buying a projector and showing different kinds of light to mimic light and creating light-inducible biofilms, as well as some small tips to improve our experiments, like using another protein to maximize the success probability of protein expression and Calcium mineralization. Moreover, we also talked about ways to make our application more practical. For example, changing the engineering bacteria from escherichia coli to bacillus subtilis in order to increase survival rate during the mineralization.
Construction Site Visit
        Practice is a significant part of designing and shaping our project. Being equipped with basic knowledge on building repair and restoration, we were eager to know the real situation in practice.
        When contacting offline factories for a visit, we encountered difficulties. We found that there were hardly any reinforcement factories in Beijing, so we were unable to conduct an offline tour. After investigation, we found that the reason for this was that the factories for reinforcement materials were polluting and had all been moved to Fangshan. By this, it can be shown that the current technology of processing materials production has a certain amount of pollution and needs to be improved. Our building restoration technology, because it uses biological materials, can partially solve this problem.
Century Jinyuan Hotel
        On October 16, 2021, being guided by Expert Zhang, three members of SDSZ-China, Jingyuan Zhang, Chang Dong, and Xiaotong Gu, visited the construction site of Century Jinyuan Hotel. The leader of workers warmly welcomed our team and arranged a visit. Expert Zhang led us to visit the hotel restoration.
        First of all, we had to wear helmets to ensure our safety. (When entering the construction site, you must wear a safety helmet and tie the strap. Wearing slippers, high heels, barefoot or shirtless are not allowed to enter the construction site).
        Later, we entered the first floor of the hotel and took a close look at the thickening of the load-bearing beams on the first floor.
        The focus of our visit to the hotel is to investigate the traditional filling and repair technology. At present, most of the sites are using grouting resin. Through the air pressure machine, the grouting resin is injected into the floor tile empty crevice.
        After the visit, we had an in-depth discussion with Expert Zhang at the site, focusing on the advantages and drawbacks of traditional methods and how could our project learn from the experience.
        Expert Zhang stressed the need for building repair: exposure to wind and sun, acid rain, and the use of deicing salt cause part of the cement wall to corrode. He agreed that biomineralization is ideal for repairing such damage and put forward some practical and economic suggestions for our project: biological mineralization is a kind of warning information. When the cement cracks, it can be detected in advance by utilizing biological mineralization.
        After this visit, we have a deeper insight into the progress of biological mineralization and the benefit that our project may bring to the restoration of constructions.
Comparison between Synthetic Biology Method and Traditional Method
        We also found that the traditional use of building repair methods may lead to potential danger and is not convenient to conduct. To do this, we searched for more traditional methods and made a comparison between our design of the product and the traditional ones.