Team:SUSTech Shenzhen/Judging Form

Judging Form

Judging Form of our project

About Judging Form

BRONZE

1. Competition Deliverables

We have completed the Wiki, presentation video, and judging form.

2. Attributions

Everyone in the team finished their work and did their best, the detailed information please read the attribution form.

3. Project Description

As a major health problem in the world, diarrhea causes roughly 11% of death in children under the age of 5 (0.801million). To overcome diarrhea-caused death in sanitation less-developed regions, and to help people around us in trouble of diarrhea, we decided to solve this problem from the perspective of engineered bacteria.

4. Contribution

We set up a club named Spring Buds to popularize synthetic biology and diarrhea, and it will continue to operate in the future, providing a platform for future teams to hold activities and accumulate valuable experience for future activities.

SILVER

1. Engineering Success

We achieved engineering success in Engineering Page, which can be verified by parts (BBa_K3914103, BBa_K3914104, BBa_K3914105, BBa_K3914113, and BBa_K3914114)

2. Collaboration

We attended a meeting hosted by SCUT-China. Five iGEM teams were participating: SCUT-China, SYSU-CHINA, SYSU-Software, SCAU-China, SUSTech_Shenzhen, and SZU-China.On May 15, 2021, our team carried out a communication meeting with the CSU-China iGEM team. On June 27, 2021, we contacted the team at the National University of Singapore, NUS_Singapore. Then was the Gastrointestinal meeting, which was an inter-school academic exchange meeting jointly organized by the seven iGEM teams from SUSTech-Shenzhen, BUCT, SZU-China, NJMU-China, HZAU-China, BNUZ-China, Nanjing-China. We fully demonstrated the progress of the project and provided helpful suggestions to each other in many aspects.

3. Human Practice

Please see the description of Human Practice in the GOLD part, thanks!

4. Proposed Implementation

We considered the proposed end-users, and popularize diarrhea and synthetic biology in different ways. Safety and risk control is one of the most important aspects of our thinking, and it permeates our projects throughout.

GOLD

1. Integrated Human Practice

We first released a questionnaire to survey public awareness of diarrhea, followed by a discussion with doctors from the First Affiliated Hospital of Xi 'an Jiaotong University and the Second People's Hospital of Shenzhen about clinical manifestations of diarrhea and current diagnostic therapies, and a discussion with Feiru Biotech about technology conversion into products. Through the Deep Blue Charity, we popularized diarrhea and synthetic biology to school students and had a deeper communication with a scientist, and doctor in SUSTech Hospital.

2. Project Modeling

We designed two models to simulate the biological system in the experiment. Ordinary differential equations are used to calculate the concentration change of each molecule in the circuit with the change of time. Meanwhile, Boolean Network is constructed to help us narrow the scope of troubleshooting when an experiment failure occurs.

3. Proof of Concept

We rationally designed and developed engineered bacteria to store water to provide a broad spectrum treatment for diarrhea and to reduce the incidence of antibiotic-induced intestinal diseases.

4. Partnership

We had a partnership with SZU-China, we attended the five school meetings and the Deep Blue Charity together, we went to the Shenzhen Second People’s Hospital and SUSTech Hospital and had cooperation negotiation.

5. Education and Communication

We organized a lot of popular science activities with volunteers through the Spring Sprout Club and made a connection with the First Affiliated Hospital of Xi 'an Jiaotong University and the Second People's Hospital of Shenzhen, and Feiru Biotech.

6. Excellence in Another Area

During the entire project this year, we felt that the best thing we did was inheritance. Including the inheritance of knowledge related to synthetic biology among the public, the inheritance of relevant competition experience, and the inheritance of propaganda platforms.

Model

We created two models to analyze the biological circuit both qualitatively and quantitatively. First, we constructed the Ordinary Differential Equation model to express the concentration change of each molecule in the circuit. To simplify the construction of the model, we divided the whole circuit into three parts and built their ODE models, respectively. Then, we used MATLAB to do quantitative research and utilized the simulated result to guide our experiment. Second, to help us narrow the scope of trouble-shooting, we established Boolean Network(BN) to qualitatively analyze the cause when the outcome was not as we expected. It can significantly reduce the time wasted on finding the actual cause of the error.

Education

Through the Spring Buds, we combined Shenzhen's characteristic volunteer culture, popularized synthetic biology and diarrhea to more people through the way that we first trained volunteers and then carried out activities by volunteers. Our activities included interesting theoretical classes and hands-on operations, through inoculation of hand bacteria on clean LB plates, plasmids design, and other ways to pass on knowledge and advocate good health habits. In addition, we overcame the obstacles of distance and the epidemic and completed popular science activities online through Cloud West education activities.

Human Practice

First, we released a questionnaire to investigate the public's understanding of diarrhea, we found that most people did not have a correct and systematic understanding of this disease. We contacted doctors from the First Affiliated Hospital of Xi 'an Jiaotong University and the Second People's Hospital of Shenzhen to discuss the clinical manifestations of diarrhea and the current treatment methods. We also contacted Feiru Biotech, we learned about the general ways and requirements for technology to be transformed into products. During the Deep Blue Charity, we have carried on the diarrhea science popularization and the project propaganda to the school teachers and students.

In the middle of the project, we introduced the Boolean Network model to a professor who knows more about it for some advice.

When progressed to a later stage, SUSTech_Shenzhen and SZU-China went to the Xili People’s Hospital to consult with a chief physician of the Department of Gastroenterology.When our experiment progressed to a later stage, to better understand the value of our project in the clinic, SUSTech-Shenzhen and SZU-China went to the Xili People’s Hospital to consult with a chief physician of the Department of Gastroenterology.

>