Team:SUIS Shanghai/Human Practices
PARTS
HUMAN PRACTICES
Human Practice
Introduction
For our 2019 iGEM project, we focused on designing a bacterial strain that provide immunity in Koi fish against koiherpes virus (KHV). To save Koi from this often-fatal disease with the vaccine we engineered, we want to make sure our design of the whole system is practicable and can be applied and made in real fish drug industry. Therefore, we interviewed our school Head of Operation Mr. Wang to know more about our own school Koi breeding, after thatat consulted with experts in Shanghai Ocean University with technical issues we faced during experiment design. Finally, we went to the Shanghai Aquaculture Exhibition to talk to people who work in Koi fish market to collect more info on Koi business and got valuable feedback from them.
Koi pond inside our school｜May 17th, 2019
As we got our iGEM project inspiration from our own school Koi pond, the first person we interviewed was our school head of operations Mr. Wang, as he can give us the first-hand information about Koi breeding. We asked Mr. Wang specifically about the pond maintenance, the relevant cost of running the pond and fish raising (fish food etc.), the mortality rate of fish and whether the fish are getting any kind of vaccination. According to him, they feed fish every morning with fish food that containing amylose and lecithin in the ingredients that will boost the fish immune system. They also clean the pond every 2-3 months to keep the water clean. In the first few years, the school spends 2000-3000 RMB per year on purchasing new fish due to some fish died throughout the year. According to Mr. Wang, in 2017 the mortality rate of the fish was very high that they had to spend almost 3 times money on purchasing new fish than regular years. This, Mr. Wang said, might due to the extreme hot weather that summer and lack of pond cleaning that made the water quality got bad. Since the incident, they started to pay more attention on pond cleaning and the mortality rate went down significantly since then. When we asked Mr. Wang if they vaccinate the fish against any disease, the answer was no. The Koi the school purchased were the cheap ones, so they think the fish food that containing the immune system boost ingredient will be enough for our Koi.
Ocean University｜July 17th, 2019
After talking to Mr. wang and knowing more about Koi breeding, SUIS Shanghai IGEM team planned a meeting with Professor Chen Zai Zhong and Professor Gao Jian Zhong at Shanghai Ocean University to discuss our project design. Professor Chen has many years of experience in ornamental fish breeding and Professor Gao is specialized in prevention and control of aquatic animal diseases.
(Although both professors expressed strong interest in our project, Professor Gao expressed concern toward the availability of synthesizing antibodies inside the fish gut. Gut is a complicated system where many different types of bacteria coexist, so they cannot be sure if specific antibodies can be expressed and the exact amount will they be expressed in gut. Given that only forms of amino acid can be taken in into gut and amino acid does not have antigenicity. How to synthesis giant protein that can be identified by white cells and triggered the immune responses is a problem to solve. Professor Chen also pointed out that despite the model of iron Qs system can theoretically express target protein, but there are other gene expressions happened in the gut that may disturb the synthesis of antibodies.) (No idea)
Shanghai International Aquaculture Exhibition｜August 28th, 2019
After completing the design of the experiments, we want to know more about Koi breeding from the Koi fish market to decide the best way of vaccination.
We found out that the Shanghai International Aquaculture Exhibition was going to be held in late August, where all business sectors that related to aquatic product will attend. It would be the perfect place for us to reach to Koi fish breeding companies. We've been able to talk to many people that own Koi fish farms and ask them specifically about the most effective method of vaccination for different scale fish and which method they prefer to use the most.
According to them, as Koi can live for over 70 years and sell for very high price in the market, they spend big amout of money in keeping the Koi healthy every year, and vaccine always plays an important role in it. To appropriately give the vaccine, timing and method of vaccination also need to be considered. They suggested making oral vaccine for their low cost and high efficiency. Unlike injection, which may lend pressure or physically harm the fishes, oral vaccination is also the safest compare to other methods.
We are also very lucky that one of the fish drug company showed strong interests in our recombinant bacteria idea and willing to talk to us deeply in the future on making the vaccine into real sample once we proved our experiment worked as although they have been working on making fish drug and vaccine for many years, our idea of using a promoter to control the expression of the antigen with live attenuated vaccine-carriers is still brand new and full of potential.
Educational Outreach
Introduction
This project had given us a wonderful experience in get to learn so much about synthetic biology, Koi fish, the immune system and the koi disease (KHV). At the same time from talking to the university professors and Koi fish farm owners, we cannot help to noticed that at the current stage, although many people have been working on making drugs and vaccines to save Koi from KHV, as there is still no effective treatment to the disease, most of time when KHV is detected or the fish is sick, people will just kill the whole pond of fish to prevent more fish get infected. That cause big economics loss for the Koi owners. We believe by reaching a greater public, talking to them about how we applied synthetic biology in making a more effective solution to the issue and spread awareness of synthetic biology, more people will start to know and appreciate it.
Painting competition
In 21st century, where everyone (even kids) uses smart phones, we came up with the idea of using phone cases as one of the tool to educate people. In order to design the most creative Koi phone cases, we decided to get the whole school students involved. We made a presentation on the school assembly one day to talk about our project, and invite anyone who is interested in the project or painting to help us designed the Koi fish art work. To encourage more students to join this activity, we got the teachers permission for giving out community service hours to volunteers as reward. We are very glad to collect so many awesome artworks from our schoolmates to enrich our phone case design. To make the phone case educational, we put educational information about our project and synthetic biology on the underside. We planned on sending out these phone cases in specific points in Shanghai later as part of the interaction activity with the public.
Elementary School Lecture
We decided to target on our own school's G5 students who already have certain level of basic science knowledge and passion to give them a brief lesson on fundamental knowledge on synthetic biology, the Koi fish and concept of the fish immune system. As we are so lucky to have our own Koi fish pond inside the school, it was very easy to get these kids' attention on the topic. They showed lots of potentials in learning and memorizing certain knowledge.
Our teaching can be separate into three parts. The background information of Koi fish, immune system of fish and how synthetic biology can help enhance the fish immunity. We also prepared competition by the end of the class to test their gain on the lesson.
The students were really engaging in the class and definitely showed lots of passions towards the topic of our team and the field of synthetic biology. We received many excellent answers in the immune system of Koi fish and creative portraits of Koi fish.
Reaching out to the primary students was a brave act because the knowledge they hold in synthetic biology and biology were little. Our team should come up with lots of explanations for some specific terms to make sure that the information can be transmit properly and effectively. After this class, we will be able to reach more and more teaching environment and publishing the IGEM and synthetic biology into a much wider range; furthermore, we can develop potential motivations in the children.
Yu Garden
Once we finished making our special phone cases, we decided to go to Yu Garden to interact with greater public. Yu Garden is one of Shanghai's most famous sight spots which located in the northeast of the city, downtown. There are hundreds of thousand tourists come from all over the world every day visit the garden. Inside, there is a big Koi fish pond located in the center of the garden right below the well-known nine curved bridge. We believed by going there we will be able to talk to both Koi fans and experts and people who only know Koi fish by its pretty color.
By talking to people from different age group, careers and countries, we found that most middle-aged and elderly people who work in local companies prefer to raise Koi at home or in the office as Koi fish represents luck and fortune. However, most of people throw away the sick/dying fish without any diagnose or observation as they do not know how to save the sick fish. They all say if they knew more about the fish diseases or there is more effective way to save their lives, they will not give up on saving them so easily.
Surprisingly, we interviewed a middle-aged woman with rich knowledge of koi fish. She thinks it is more proper to observe the condition of the ill koi fish instead of just throwing away because the different condition of koi fish represent different symptoms, such as koi fish have digestive system disease if they sink in the water. For this symptom, she will select a traditional way which is feeding garlic or stop eating for a few days. She believes that koi fish not only represents good things, but also a spiritual sustenance and companionship.
At the same time, although Koi business is raising speedily in many other countries, few foreign friends know about Koi, let alone they can raise them. However, compare to Chinese tourists, more of our foreign friends know about synthetic biology and it's application in many areas. We introduced to them some basic knowledge of Koi fish and some important meanings of Koi fish in Chinese culture, and tell them about our project to show how we applied synthetic biology to solve a real world problem.
By the end, we gave phone cases to the interviewers as a thank you gift for their patience. We gave a little explanation on the info on the underside before they take the phone case. They all liked the design of patterns and knowledge of koi fish and synthetic biology, some of them cannot wait to put it onto their phones.
Contacting with different types of people was a big challenge as we are not sure about their degree of understanding koi fish. We have to talk to different people with diverse life experience and from different countries. We found that most of the people only know little knowledge of koi fish and seldom heard of synthetic biology. It is meaningful for us to carry out this activity and disperse knowledge about how synthetic biology can be a life changer, and we hope in the future, more people will get to learn about it and use it to create miracles.
IGEM | WANYUAN | SUIS
Website: wanyuan.suis.com.cn
Mail Box: suisigem@outlook.com
No.509, Pingji Rd, Minhang District, Shanghai