Team:SDU CHINA/Human Practices
Initial Stage
At the initial stage, we visited many companies to learn about the application of co-cultivation technology in food engineering and industrial fermentation currently.
We have learned that co-cultivation technology is now widely applied in production. At present, in industrial production, there are mainly two ways of co-cultivation:
| Method | Advantage | Disadvantage |
| To directly inoculate different microorganisms in a certain proportion | Simple, low cost | We can only control the initial ratio. The ratio is difficult to regulate during the fermentation process |
| To culture the microorganisms in different containers in which the liquid is connected and the connecting tubes can kill the microorganisms. | Metabolic pathways can be split into two microorganisms without taking proportional control into consideration | High requirements on equipment, and the control system is complex. |
We communicated our idea to the technical directors in the companies. They appreciated the innovation of our project and made a series of suggestions for our system from the perspective of industrial production. In our initial system, we plan to use an inducer to control the proportion of bacteria. The technical directors pointed out that in industrial production, the fermenter is very large. So it requires a large amount of inducing agent, which will greatly increase the production cost. At the same time, the large amount of inducing agent may lead to the presence of the residual inducer in the product, and to remove it will not only increase the cost, but also lead to a decrease in the yield and purity of the final product. Therefore, we finally chose to use light to achieve dynamic and precise regulation of the proportion of bacteria. The advantage is that light can directly change the state of the protein inside the bacteria and will not produce residue in the system.
We were invited to attend the 3rd iGEM exchange meeting in Nanjing by China Pharmaceutical University. The attendees included 12 teams from University of Science and Technology of China, Tongji University and so on. In the meeting, we presented our project and had in-depth discussion with the students from Zhejiang University of Technology. Besides, Dr. Haoqian Zhang gave us some advice on the quorum sensing part.
Education and public participation
Education and public participation
At the opening day of the State Key Laboratory of Microbial Technology in 2019, many elementary, junior, and high school students came to visit and study. In this open day, some of our team members participated as volunteers to show the children the common techniques and principles of life sciences and synthetic biology.
When we approved and initiated our project, we hope that our co-culture technology can not only be applied in the industry but also other fields such as scientific research and drug development. Therefore, we went to the hospital to investigate the status quo in the research and application of microbial co-culture technology in related fields.
The pharmacy pharmacists, laboratory doctors, etc.told us that co-culture is promising in the development of new drugs. At present, the antibiotics we use are secondary metabolites produced by the interaction among different microorganisms. However, our research methods on microbial interactions are very limited. Antibiotic resistance is growing faster and faster and new antibiotics are urgently needed to alleviate this situation. By using microbial co-culture techniques that can be dynamically regulated, the proportion of microbes in nature can be simulated in the laboratory, so secondary metabolites can be induced during their interaction. The new antibacterial drugs can be developed by screening unknown secondary metabolites.
We went to Chongqing to participate in the Exchange in Chongqing Region. In the meeting, we conducted a presentation and showed the poster. We exchanged the ideas with UCAS-CHINA. The parts of YF1, FixJ, PhlF, etc. we used are from UCAS-CHINA. We learned a lot of experience and matters needing attention, such as control of wavelength and light intensity. They also gave us some suggestions.、
August
When the project was almost completed, we paid a return visit to the Shan Dong Ju Neng Golden Corn Co. and asked them to evaluate the value and prospects of our co-culture system. Their businesses include many aspects such as bio-plastics, sugars, and amino acids, and cooperate with many research institutes. The company's technical director believes that the LCBC system has a high utilization value as a chassis creature. But there still exist two problems: First, it is difficult for light to penetrate the medium used in industrial fermentation; secondly, our system is currently only validated in E. coli. Although E. coli is widely used, the system will be more valuable if it is suitable for more kinds of bacteria. He also gave us some ideas for solving the first problem: the led lamp column can be inserted and placed around the stirring paddle in the centre of the fermenter as a control rod so that the bacteria can be irradiated and the cost of upgrading the fermenter can be lower.
We headed to Shenzhen for Community of China iGEMer, where we showed our project and received a plenty of useful suggestions. We also exchanged our thoughts with many teams on modelling, the quorum sensing part, optogenetic tools, etc.
In September
In the course of our project, we also went to relevant government departments to look into the relevant policies and related industries of genetic engineering strains in actual production. We learned that because the technology occurred a short period ago and developed rapidly, the current restrictions on genetic engineering strains in China are mainly imposed in the food and agriculture fields, and there are fewer policies in the industrial and pharmaceutical areas. At the same time, due to various reasons, the approval is directly at the provincial and ministerial level and the local department only plays a supporting role. Besides, we also introduced the advances in the academic community and people's evaluation of related technologies and applications to the government offices. We expect them to be more aware of the meaning and prospects of the researches about synthetic biology.
