Team:SZU-China/Contribution

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Contribution

Overview

Regarding contributions, this year, our team improved the existing parts, added signal peptides and added their data to the corresponding BioBricks.

Secondly, we investigated the current faecal sampling and faecal collector, summarized and analyzed their advantages and disadvantages. We proposed, made and optimized our design.

In addition, six other university teams (BUCT-China, HZAU, BNUZ, NJMU-China, SUSTech-China, BUCT) and we have jointly compiled the "INTESTINAL Program Reference Manual" and signed an online agreement. We hope it can put forward different solutions to many common problems from multiple perspectives for this year and the future team and remind them to consider issues they may overlook.

Parts

The improved part (J-SOD) and the original existing part (SOD) are presented below. You can click on the part number to see the details.

Part Numeber Name Type Part Description
BBa_K3838888 J-SOD Composite  Catalytic disproportionation of superoxide anion radicals to oxygen and hydrogen peroxide, 
 which plays an important role in the balance of oxidation and antioxidation in the human body 
BBa_M36071 SOD Basic Encodes the SOD protein
Hardware

Faecal Sampling

Standard faecal sampling devices on the market have integrated, push-type and separate designs, but their respective advantages and disadvantages are undeniable.

In this regard, we designed a breakable mechanism at the handle of the spoon. The thickness of the lower edge of the braking mechanism is reduced, and the thickness of the upper edge is increased to adapt to our actual situation and meet the requirements of high-viscosity stool sampling. At the same time, the top of the device is based on the design of a disposable dropper, which can collect unformed faeces/loose through the rubber tip while collecting shaped faeces. The product adopts a one-piece moulding process, and the entire device is composed of only one component, so it has a lower cost and a higher economic benefit. The integrated moulding process also facilitates ethylene oxide sterilization and packaging operations.

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Figure 1 :Figure 1 is a rendering of the computer modeling of the second generation fecal sampler.

We use 3D printing technology to produce our products. In order to make our products have the practical value of application and meet the different needs of doctors, patients and sequencing companies, we went to gene sequencing companies and clinical hospitals to conduct a series of opinions on our hardware. Finally, based on the collected opinions, we adjusted the size of the spoon head so that the patient could quickly determine the standard sampling amount. The hot stamping process marks the label on the tube body to help the patients determine the minimum amount of unformed stool sampling.

Faecal Collector

Most of the faecal collector devices on the market are only suitable for the large-volume collection of faeces and cannot be used for squatting toilets. Therefore, we designed a more concise and convenient disposable faecal collector. We decided to use the method of integrated stitching two pieces of water-soluble non-woven fabrics. When using the device, users only need to open the device, tear off the two-wing cloth pattern adhesive, and paste it on both sides of the toilet. Under the action of tension, the sampling section will automatically unfold. After sampling, the user only needs to tear off the cloth pattern glue on both sides, put the device into the toilet, and flush. The solution is easy for users to operate. It can be applied to most toilet environments, including squatting toilets, and has a simple design and strong concealment.

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Figure 2 AB. Figure2 A The stool collector we made Figure2 B Stool collector bearing test

We finally determined our core device design: our stool sampling spoon and stool collector are included in our stool sampling kit. In order to ensure the sterility of the collection environment, we have attached alcohol cotton pads to the kit to complete the cleaning and disinfection of the toilet/toilet environment. At the same time, to make the user's collection process more clean and hygienic and eliminate the trouble of odour, we have added an activated carbon mask to the sampling kit and disposable PVC gloves to be convenient for the operation of patients. In addition, to protect patients' privacy, we specially designed a capsule-shaped sample storage device and a patient's one-of-a-kind number for the stool sampling tube after the patient's sampling.

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Figure3 AB. Our stool sampling kit

View more information click this link

INTESTINAL Program Reference Manual

Through discussions and exchanges with this year’s close partner HZAU-China(Partnership), we found that many problems cannot be avoided during the design and conception of the intestinal project, such as how to solve the safety problem?How to deal with the ethical problems that may be caused by engineered bacteria? How to make our engineered bacteria exist in the intestine for a longer time?

These problems are not only related to our project this year that we hope to use cocktail therapy to inject engineered bacteria into the intestinal tract to assist the treatment of IBD disease, but also should be a common problem in the design of a broader intestinal project or program. To this end, we cooperated with BUCT to establish the 2021 China iGEM Intestinal Exchange Group, which attracted more than 12 teams, including THU-iGEM and BNU-iGEM, BHSF-iGEM, etc. Through candid communication and discussion, we hope that we can share experiences with each other and reduce the difficulties that may arise in all aspects of the project implementation process to ultimately achieve information sharing, mutual benefit and win-win situation.

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Figure 4 :Intestinal bacteria exchange group, sharing information about intestinal academic conferences

Furthermore, since each team needs to spend much time considering many common intestinal problems, we hope to cooperate in providing solutions for these common questions. In the exchange meeting on May 30th this year(see Meet up for details), we put forward the "INTESTINAL Program Reference Manual" concept. We hope to provide the iGEM team and other scientific groups who aim to complete intestinal related projects in the future with objective, practical and meaningful solutions to the typical difficulties and problems faced by security, ethics, colonization, bioinformatics.

Once our idea was put forward, it quickly received positive responses from the other six teams (BUCT, HZAU-China, BNUZ-China, NJMU-China, SUSTech-Shenzhen, Nanjing-China). Under our leadership, through many meetings and discussions, we agreed that even though this pioneering work was difficult, time-consuming and labour-intensive, the seven teams still decided to invest a lot of energy and time to cooperate in the preparation of the INTESTINAL Program Reference Manual. Each team is responsible for writing different sections and finally compiled into a book for other teams to refer to.

Afterwards, the seven teams began a long process of writing. We had several meetings and discussions on some details and decided on the format, section design, and other contents.

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Figure 5 :Screenshots of the meeting

Before each part is described, we will first introduce the function of this part. The content of each part is mainly supported by screening and sorting out the previous iGEM team's plans and experimental ideas and supplementing literature data.

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Figure 6 AB :INTESTINAL Program Reference Manual, introduction to each part of the preface (excerpt)

In order to complete this reference manual, we browsed through a large number of previous iGEM projects and carefully selected the related content that meets our responsibility, the "suicide switch". We provide suicide switch ideas such as L-Arabinose-Glucose-operon regulating suicide mechanism, tetracycline regulating suicide mechanism, carbon dioxide concentration regulating suicide mechanism, L-Arabinose-Glucose inducing mazF regulation and temperature regulating suicide mechanism. We also analyzed the principle and design path of the suicide switch and attached a link to the corresponding team at the end of each introduction so that the manual team can quickly find detailed information.

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Figure 7 :the part of SZU-China 2021 responsibility (excerpt)

In order to keep improving and supplementing the reference manual, we specially consulted the CCiC committee and Ms Zhang Nan of iGEM China on the follow-up operation of the agreement. We hope that the reference manual can have standardized features. The programs and operations that it designs can be used by any team that needs to use the program and can be integrated into team designs with different themes and directions. Like the "components" proposed by synthetic biology, the overall design of a project is a set of large, complex and ingenious projects. The scheme in our agreement can be used as a convenient component and integrated into any related project. In particular, we hope that our agreement can be referred to and appropriately applied when relevant teams are designing intestinal-related plans.

The "INTESTINAL Program Reference Manual" has a high degree of refinement and summary from the intestinal project's experimental design, mathematical modelling, and ethical issues. Seven teams completed their signatures on the intestinal conference agenda in the afternoon of the Fifth South China Exchange Conference (see Meet up for details). In the process of writing, the seven teams established a very close, reliable and extraordinary cooperative relationship. Therefore, the "Intestinal Project Reference Manual" itself is highly innovative and meaningful cooperation, creating a precedent for cooperation in the field of iGEM team projects.

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Figure 8 :INTAESTINAL Program Reference Manual Cover

In addition, considering that most of the participating iGEMers are full of novel ideas, but they have not experienced too many scientific research activities and cannot design solutions. Therefore, we hope that the "Reference Manual" can propose different solutions to many common problems from multiple perspectives for this year and future and consider issues that they may overlook. On one hand, it reduces the difficulty of project design and enables them to get started quickly. On the other hand, they can standardize, enrich and rigorous their project design. We also hope that any follow-up team or experts and scholars can provide valuable opinions and leave more research results and ingenuity.