Difference between revisions of "Team:OUC-China/Human Practices"

For more details, see the Public Engagement page.

1.4 VR&Mini-lab: the real life of lab

During reaching out to the communities, we found that many people were interested in microbial and molecular experiments but had no chance to come in the biological lab. iGEM encouraged us to spread synthetic biology to the public by developing new tools. It’s also our responsibility to get more people to experience lab life. By using VR technology, a great synthetic biology laboratory was built! It’s a golden opportunity for amateurish people to get in touch with laboratory. We have carried on the sharing and the propaganda in the school, has obtained the extremely high praise!

Due to the large size of our VR equipment and the public assets of the school, we are very sorry that we cannot share our VR creation with you on the scene. But we still want to try our best to bring this creation which gathers the enthusiasm and wisdom of many iGEMers to the Jamboree and receive some feedback. We also created a “mini lab” to make it easier to share lab life with the public. We look forward to anyone who is interested in microbiology and molecular experiments to join us! We have shared our micro laboratory with iGEM team, and they have given us good suggestions and feedback!

For more details, see the Public Engagement page.

1.4 Software

By introducing stabilizer and tuner, riboswitch can normally regulate GOI. To expand riboswitch function, more tuners was designed. In practical production applications, when using riboswitch, synthetic biologists should select an appropriate tuner to regulate the expression of GOI, achieving their all kinds of goals. With the development and popularization of computer science, more and more scientific research works benefit from it，"Cloud-based" biology has become a necessity.To make it easier for biologists to design modular riboswitch with our principle, we developed a software. When user offer the original riboswitch, the natural gene , GOI and desired expression level, the complete sequence will come up in a short time. It turns out that our software can achieve the desired effect. We've exposed the code in the wiki, and we're looking forward to helping future iGEM teams design the riboswitch and asRNA they need more easily and accurately.

For more details, see the Software page.

1.5 Experiment manual

Invited by our teachers in Experiments Center, we edited an experimental manual including some basic microbiological operations and molecular operations independently. Our teacher wants to set up an experiment course with this experiment manual. We hope that our experimental operations will provide a reference to other students. We are very willing to share to realize the inheritance of iGEM.

For more details and get the PDF, see the Experimental manual.

1.6 WeChat Platform

OUC-China has built up a WeChat public platform, a worldwide platform with billions of users for documentation, communication and popularization. To engage with the public and help them attach importance to synthetic biology and bio-safety,we published some articles. Fortunately, all these articles are rather approachable and most of them received positive feedbacks.

1.7 OT-2 video

This year, we were very lucky to get an ot-2! It's just a really cool robot that can help you do a lot of basic experiments under control, even if you're not in the lab. In order to express our gratitude to Opentrons and share ot-2's operation method and experimental process with more iGEM teams, we made a tape of video with great sincerity, which included our experiments with ot-2 controlled by program and detailed explanation of the whole process! I promise this is very fun!

2. Communicate iGEM values

Before spreading synthetic biology around the public, we successfully constructed the above educational tools. So we make good use of them to engage with the public. We hope everyone can actively participate in science popularization. By these effective tools, it’s easy to narrow the gap between synthetic biology and the public and achieve the purpose of improving the depth and breadth of science popularization, strengthening the inheritance of synthetic biology

For more details, see the Public Engagement page.

3. Get more inspiration and optimize our project

3.1 More tuners are expected

During our journey of human practices, we visited some new and dynamic biological enterprise. After visiting the factory , laboratory and production line of the enterprise, we introduced our project to the researchers in the laboratory, who gave us a high evaluation of our project. They affirmed that riboswitch would become a popular and attractive tool in real industries, because by responsing to ligand, riboswitch can regulate gene expression without dependence upon protein. However, due to limited dynamic range, the use of riboswitches is often restricted. The researcher said that the original riboswitch had a single response curve, which cannot meet the needs of industrial production. So we were encouraged to improve riboswitch function and make riboswitch response curve diverse.

Inspired by the biological company, we established model and designed different tuners to construct many modular riboswitches based on the original one. In fact, when the same amount of ligand is added, different tuners can make the modular riboswitches regulate different expression levels. In the process of interaction with biotech companies, we gained a lot and integrated it with our project. Finally, we successfully expand riboswitch function!

For more details, see the Model page.

3.2 How to control the on-off state of Riboswitch

Because small molecule, such as inducer and ligand, is often hard to degrade in the experimental culture system, we cannot change the state of our system, which will cause some problem and make the system away from our prediction. So we focused on the problem and consulted Professor Wang, who studies aptamer for many years. She said that comparing to the thermodynamic switch, the kinetic switch could not easily toggle between the on and off state. She inspired us to think deeply and find an esay and effective way to change the on-off state of riboswitch in a short time.

By referencing many studies and comparing different approaches, we chose antisense RNA, a well-studied category of RNA regulators that has been used extensively in engineered systems to achieve our goal. Our idea was praised by Professor Li who study non-coding RNA. With the help of her, we successfully achieved this goal!

For more details, see the Results page.