Team:Mingdao/Achievement

We submitted quantitative experimental characterization data to an existing Part from the Registry of Standard Biological Parts .
Validation can be found on our result page and registry.

Human Practices

We have significantly worked with currently registered 2019 iGEM teams in a meaningful way.

We expanded on our silver medal activity by demonstrating how we have integrated the investigated issues into our project. Integrated human practices helped to improve our design and execution of the project.

The model we developed was impactful on the design of our experiment and prototype. Our model demonstrated the effectiveness of the human Carbonic Anhydrase (CA) II enzyme in dissolving carbon dioxide in water and reducing the indoor carbon dioxide concentration, helping to prove the feasibility of our project design during initial testing prior to experiments. A mathematical correlation was found between the inflow rate of our prototype and its effectiveness, which provided us guidance on how to design our prototype. We compared the modeled results with experimental data to asses the reliability of our model. With numerous factors considered from the dissolution capacity of carbon dioxide in water, the enzymatic reaction rate of CA to photosynthetic rate of cyanobacteria, our model is comprehensive and serves as an accurate prediction for the experimental results. Through modeling, we were able to estimate the effectiveness and limitations of our prototype accurately.

We introduced synthetic biology and our project to the public, raising awareness of the danger of terrible indoor air quality. We taught younger students some simple knowledges and intrigued their interest in gene editing and the pros and cons about GMOs. We also held an one-day camp to teach them how to use basic equipment to operate easy experiments. For raising public awareness, we communicated to the voice club where students can share different ideas and discuss with others ,making our project more complete. Another took place in our own class, we asked them about their feelings both in hign CO2 concentration and low CO2 concentration , and the effect was apparent. Through surveys, we found that a lot of people were quite interested in our project and willing to give us advice to make our project better. They really encouraged us.

We visited lots of professional authorities from different fields, all of them gave us countless useful comments. We put those suggestions into practice and improve our project, finally sharing our knowledges with other teams as well. For our project design,we visited the department of environmental engineering in NCHU and a algae specialist, learning the current ways to solve the CO2 problem and the potential of the algae. For prototype design, we visited plenty of associations and companies.We learned the juncture of the indoor CO2 problems and the standard of normal air quality, which is the goal we want to achieve. Whatmore, we learned more knowledges about the algae from VEDAN, and discussed our prototype with some professors. At last, through the discussions and visits, we developed our prototype ,sharing our experience of human practice, how we produce our product, and the details of our design with the other teams.

Air purifiers are unable to remove air pollutants such as CO2 and VOCs, etc. Our goal is to solve this problem to make indoor air fresh again. In product design, we created the high-performance and outstanding devices and APP to test our product and algae purification system. CAir™ is the most convenient and portable photobioreactor with LED light, air pump, bubble disk and electric supply. CAir Pro™ is the perfect indoor air purifier equipped with extra CO2/O2 sensors, fan, blender and Arduino Nano board with Bluetooth. Users can install Mobile APP (iGEM Mingdao CAir Pro™) to wirelessly control the switch of LED, the pumps, the speed of the blender rotation, and the speed of the fan. We hope everyone enjoy our prototype and design!

The model we developed was impactful on the design of our experiment and prototype. Our model demonstrated the effectiveness of the human Carbonic Anhydrase (CA) II enzyme in dissolving carbon dioxide in water and reducing the indoor carbon dioxide concentration, helping to prove the feasibility of our project design during initial testing prior to experiments. A mathematical correlation was found between the inflow rate of our prototype and its effectiveness, which provided us guidance on how to design our prototype. We compared the modeled results with experimental data to asses the reliability of our model. With numerous factors considered from the dissolution capacity of carbon dioxide in water, the enzymatic reaction rate of CA to photosynthetic rate of cyanobacteria, our model is comprehensive and serves as an accurate prediction for the experimental results. Through modeling, we were able to estimate the effectiveness and limitations of our prototype accurately.

Indoor air pollutants are a serious problem, and CAirTM is one of the best solutions to it. To produce enzymes that can be applied to CAirTM, we developed a CAirTM kit to do so. We collected DNA materials that can be used to produce proteins that can help algae purify the air for CAirTM. Such proteins as CA and CYP2E1 can be produced with this kit. Combining CAirTM and CAirTM kit, everyone is able to purify the air by themselves. To make materials in the CAirTM kit easy to use, we designed a GFP reporter under PliaI promoter. The protein induction and expression level can be tested with this plasmid.