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We held a mini-lecture with our partner, NAU-China, to illustrate the basic knowledge of synthetic biology. We have invited a member of NJMU-2022, Yuxuan Ma, to give us the lecture. Ma showed us the application of synthetic biology in the therapeutic field. He hoped his lecture could inspire us to construct our ideas, including designs, finding topics, etc.

His lecture was divided into three parts, The Paradigm of Synthetic Biology for Medicine, Engineering bacteria for diagnosis and treatment, and Engineering eukaryotic cells for diagnosis and therapy.

During the mini-lecture, Ma mainly focused on engineering bacteria and engineering eukaryotic cells. These microbes could then be transmitted into human or animal bodies to regulate their metabolism or identify the RNA and so on. The common uses of engineering bacteria are cancer treatment and intestinal therapy. As to engineering eukaryotic cells, Ma said in the future we were looking forward to seeing engineering autologous cells’ applications in diagnosis and treatments.

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When it comes to listeners, Ma’s lecture combined charts, diagrams, and statistics together to let us grasp the knowledge of synthetic biology. In addition, case analysis with each part truly opened an insightful world to us. We’ve learned about the basic concept of synthetic biology, the common applications in the therapeutic field of synthetic biology, and what can we strive for to explore the new applications of synthetic biology.

Different from us, our partner, NAU-China, weren’t medical students. Therefore, they may have difficulty understanding pathogenic or other medical processes. We, as medical students, were ready to help solve their problems. We’ve all known that only through collaboration can we make progress together.

The mini-lecture lasted about one hour, and members who attended got their understanding of the application of synthetic biology in the therapeutic field. We are looking forward to the next meeting with our partner.

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On September 23, our team cooperated with Sino-Foreign Exchange Association and invited more than 30 students and more than 10 international students to participate in this activity. To express our welcome and goodwill, we presented our team’s exquisite gifts to the international students, such as hanging ornaments and bookmarks. The international students said they appreciate our gifts very much. Then our team introduced synthetic biology and autism in two languages. Subsequently, all of us introduced ourselves and got to know each other.

After that, we divided into two groups and huddled together to discuss synthetic biology in the form of focus group. The form of focus group is more flexible and free than the question-and-answer mode of traditional discussion. Under the guidance of the moderator, we expressed our ideas actively and freely with the international students. After intense exchanges, we reached a basic consensus on the diseases that synthetic biology can treat, its uses in life, and the ethical issues in its use. Finally, the "Share with you" cultural exchange salon came to a successful conclusion.

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The communication with overseas students not only makes us meet a lot of foreign friends, but also broadens our thinking and horizon. At the same time, this activity is not only a clash of ideas among Chinese people, but also an exchange between different cultures. The international students' views on synthetic biology gave us new ideas, pointed out areas where our program could improve, which really helped us a lot.

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ABOUT MEETING:

The iGEM team of Nanjing Medical University and the iGEM team of Nanjing Agricultural University had an offline meeting. On the premise of the last exchange, we took turns to exchange the improved projects and plans. Respectively, the experimental group, the modeling group, the HP group and the art group introduced oue achievements and future plans. Among this exchange, the experimental group, following the suggestion of NAU-China, reduced the length of the target gene, and proved that the shortened target gene had better transcription and translation level in the follow-up experiment.

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After the meeting, we will consider the recommendations made by NAU-China. In the future, we will focus on establishing more extensive and profound partnerships with other institutions and organizations throughout the country. At the same time, with the advantage of our medical major, we answered their questions about how to express and translate the target genes more efficiently in the biological body. In this activity, we further understood each other's project with NAU-China, reached a consensus on the future research direction, and continued to strengthen communication and cooperation.

Our team participated in the volunteer service lecture hall of Nanjing Medical University and heard the practical experience of many excellent volunteer teams. With the theme of the design and implementation of college students' volunteer service project, the experts from outside the university gave us a detailed explanation from the aspects of project planning, implementation and management, monitoring and evaluation.They analyzed the current situation and thinking of university volunteer service under the new situation, and introduced the key points of design and implementation of volunteer service project in a simple way based on a number of project cases. The lecture allowed our team to have a new understanding and plan for a series of voluntary activities to be carried out by ourselves.

Our team participated in CHINAGUT 2023 Intestinal Conference held in Beijing National Convention Center, which gathered more than 100 well-known scholars to discuss academic topics such as microbiome, tumor, metabolism, immunity and nutrition, focusing on 10 major industrial forms.CHINAGUT also carried out the closing exhibition of "Intestinal Science and Art" popular science illustration, "Intestinal · Dao" speech and other activities. It was a wonderful, efficient and influential event for industry-learning-research exchanges.

During this conference, many intestinal professors and experts revealed the subtleties and wonders of the intestine to us, presenting a top-level academic event and an unparalleled knowledge feast for all intestinal people. At the same time, the Intestinal Congress also invited many young scholars in basic research and clinical medicine to share scientific research achievements and the progress of transformation and application. After this meeting, we collectively read the academic list released by the China Intestinal Congress, and learned the new ideas, new technologies and new achievements of intestinal science in the past year, which provided new ideas and new directions for our projects.

During weekends in March and April, members of our team returned to our hometowns and conducted a series of interviews with local communities and residents' committees. We interviewed people of all ages, including the elderly, young people and children. Our goal is to educate those without a background in science or engineering about autism in order to raise public awareness and care for people with autism.

During our interviews, we found that many local residents do not know much about the status, diagnosis and treatment of autism. This made us realize the importance of public awareness, and also provided important guidance for the team's future science education work. Through promotion and publicity, we hope to increase people's awareness of autism, and encourage more people to take action to care for and support people with autism.

Nanjing C-Foundation was established on 26th December 2013, which is funded by Jiangsu Cefepein Pharmaceuticals Co. Before the foundation was established, Kefepein Pharma has been involved in all kinds of public welfare services, such as participating in the medical assistance after the earthquake in Ya'an, helping students in poor mountainous areas in Yunnan, and delivering medicines to the surrounding areas of Nanjing, etc. With the development and growth of the company, and in order to better fulfil its social responsibility, Kefepein Pharma set up the Nanjing C-Foundation, hoping to participate in the public welfare services with more professionalism and dedication. This time, we communicated with Nanjing C-Foundation by email.

Nanjing C-Foundation's programmes are mostly based on project funding. It often works with autism care associations and other organisations to plan and carry out autism public welfare painting exhibitions in colleges and universities, as well as institutional accompaniment activities. During the exchange, we found that in the past, our team neglected the cooperation with related enterprises and foundations, which is not conducive to the development of social medicine research. Since then, we have actively contacted public welfare organisations and institutions around the region, such as Nanjing Mingxin Children's Puzzle Education and Training Centre, Liuhe Ailox Recreation Centre, etc., and docked with enterprises to participate in volunteer services, hoping that this will further strengthen the connection and communication and cooperation with the community and the region.

“Haizhixing” Autistic Children Rehabilitation Center, a private non-profit charity organization for special children, is a rehabilitation training institution for autistic children and children with intellectual development disabilities in cooperation with Jiangning District Disabled Persons' Federation. In the past few years, the iGEM team of Nanjing Medical University has established a long-term cooperative relationship with Haixing, and the team members have a lot of communication and contact with the institutional training teachers, autistic children and their families.

In order to promote the development of the project, we interviewed several teachers and parents of “Haizhixing” this year to understand the life situation of autistic children and the current social concern. As for parents, they are generally concerned about whether treatment can effectively relieve the symptoms of autism, and whether the treatment is safe. As for the lack of professional teachers mentioned by the teacher of “Haizhixing”, we hope to expand the coverage of our science popularization and make use of the characteristics of network media to let more people know about the lack of volunteer teachers for autistic children in society.

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After each event, we will send out a questionnaire designed for the content of the event to get everyone's feedback on the event.

In July 2023, we participated the Microbiology Society Petri Dish Art Competition. This is a competition sponsored by Jiangsu Provincial Microbiology Society, aiming to create art on the Petri dish through microbial culture technology, so that the microorganisms growing on the medium and expressing different colors can form a variety of positive energy patterns to form creative bacterial paintings.

Our team members successfully painted the design pattern on the petri dish -- a whale swimming freely under the stars, expressing a novel and unique design concept and demonstrating excellent microbial culture and experiment skills. Our team believes that society's attention and care for autism is far from enough, so we will continue to devote ourselves to the research of microorganisms, hoping to develop microbial drugs that can treat or even cure autism.

Source of inspiration

Our design was inspired by a whale named Alice. On December 7, 1992, Commander Velma Lanquay of the Whidbey Island Naval Observatory picked up a signal, a frequency of 52Hz, which in terms of sound patterns is somewhat similar to the Blue Whale, but the blue whale frequency is between 15 and 20Hz. So Alice was found and tracked. Because the frequency of the sound is different from other whales, Alice is like a mute in the eyes of other whales. She can never communicate with other whales, and Alice's story resonates with the current situation of children with autism. Often referred to as the "kids from the stars", children with autism are unable to communicate with others normally, suffer from social difficulties, communication difficulties, narrow interests and stereotypical and repetitive behavior patterns, and are often misunderstood by their peers because of abnormal behavior.

Design ideas

Our team mainly studies autistic children, so we designed a pattern of a whale named Alice on the theme of autism, with the purpose of expressing the unique inner world of autistic people who do not communicate with outsiders.We hope to call on the society to pay attention to autism and protect autistic children. The sailing boat represents hope. Lonely Alice is still accompanied by the sailing boat, which means that autistic children are not lonely. Autistic children are called “kids from the stars”, so our team added the element of stars. The pattern we designed, which is a whale surrounded by stars, represents the resonance of Alice's story and the current situation of autistic children, and also represents the expectation that autistic children can be understood, helped and cared for, hoping that every autistic child can shine bright like a star.

Operational Approach

In October 2023, we participated in the National Youth Mock CPPCC Proposal Solicitation Contest. Sponsored by the Department of Youth Rights and Interests of the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League and the Secretariat of the All-China Federation of Students, the contest provided a platform for young people who cared about the country, society and people's livelihood to make their voices heard.

The students in our team put forward a proposal on "Strengthening the social integration of autistic children" based on the series of problems found in our social practice and long-term companionship with autistic children. From the perspectives of background research, cause analysis and suggestions, we summarized the social disorders of children with autism spectrum disorder, and analyzed the causes and influences of the problems of social integration of children with autism. On this basis, we put forward our solutions:

Set up autism training institutions and
special employment positions in the community

The government should support the opening of special employment positions and provide training to autistic persons before they are employed, so that they can meet the entry standards and the autistic group can create value through their own hands. For units offering special jobs, the government should offer appropriate preferential policies, such as rent reductions and medical subsidies.

Create a friendly school environment

School is an important place for children with autism to interact socially, and a friendly and inclusive environment needs to be created. Schools can conduct autism education training to increase staff's understanding of autism and its specific needs. At the same time, support groups can be organized to promote peer relationships and encourage positive interactions and friendly behaviors. Schools can conduct autism education training to increase staff's understanding of autism and special needs of the patients. Schools can develop individualized support programs tailored to the specific needs of each child with autism.

Create a friendly school environment

In the past, both the official media and the self-media publicized vulnerable groups such as autistic children, often paying attention to their particularity and the inconvenience encountered in life. Although this is conducive to the public's care and kindness for them, it also led to social prejudice against autistic groups. Therefore, we call for comprehensive and objective publicity of autism to the public, both to publicize their differences and to report their bright points. Only when the public removes their prejudice against the autistic community and patiently tolerates the autistic community can they truly integrate into society.

Our proposal on “Strengthening the social inclusion of autistic children” is expected to improve the living standards of autistic children in the country, influence national conditions, and even change policy direction. At the social level, we can let more people understand and care for autistic children, thus creating a good social environment for them, which help autistic children integrate into society. In the future, this proposal can be expanded to more vulnerable groups, and improve China's policy support and economic assistance for vulnerable groups.

When selecting anti-autism antibodies or components, the experimental group read a lot of literature and found options such as anti-phospholipid antibodies, anti-ganglioside M1 antibodies, serum anti-nucleosome antibodies, Fc receptors, etc., which may meet the conditions. In order to further narrow down the scope, we asked Professor Ran Huo from the Department of Tissue Embryology, School of Basic Medicine, Nanjing Medical University.

Under the suggestion of Professor Huo Ran, we found that although these antibodies and small molecules that had been found were satisfied in the paper, we did not do correlation analysis and did not take into account regional factors. The students in the modeling group of our team then carried out the association analysis. Through the search of Chinese autism sequencing, we removed irrelevant literature such as bacterial sequencing and single gene, and finally screened out twelve Chinese cohort genome sequencing papers, extracted all genes mentioned in the text, de-duplicated and obtained the enrichment analysis of the total gene list pathway to obtain the target molecules and antibodies we were looking for.

In further practice and communication, we found that different institutions have different treatment methods and contents for autistic children, which makes our publicity and popularization of autism stalled. In order to clarify the standard treatment process of autism, we actively sought help from the outside world. We successfully invited Professor Yingmei Lu from the Department of Physiology, School of Basic Medicine, Nanjing Medical University to answer our relevant questions.

According to Professor Yingmei Lu, in the treatment of autism, rehabilitation training is the main method, with the assistance of drugs. The earlier the intervention, the better the effect. Whether it is a special training institution or a doctor's clinical intervention, it is necessary to treat autistic children's symptoms such as emotional agitation and repetitive and stereotyped behavior. Inspired by Professor Yingmei Lu, we realized that our team of college students has a special advantage in promoting and popularizing science. At the same time, although the progress of autism research is relatively slow at present, it also provides a lot of space for our research. We will sum up our own medical knowledge, actively learn emerging knowledge and technology, and apply more innovative thinking to the development of new autism treatment methods.

With the development of our project, in the process of contact with autistic children, we have encountered difficulties in carrying out activities, communication with children's parents,caring children and other problems. In order to better develop our human social practice and better contact with autistic children, we decided to seek help from experts. So we interviewed Professor Xiaoyan Ke, deputy chief physician and associate professor of the Child Psychology Research Center of Nanjing Brain Hospital.

Under the suggestion of Professor Huo Ran, we found that although these antibodies and small molecules that had been found were satisfied in the paper, we did not do correlation analysis and did not take into account regional factors. The students in the modeling group of our team then carried out the association analysis. Through the search of Chinese autism sequencing, we removed irrelevant literature such as bacterial sequencing and single gene, and finally screened out twelve Chinese cohort genome sequencing papers, extracted all genes mentioned in the text, de-duplicated and obtained the enrichment analysis of the total gene list pathway to obtain the target molecules and antibodies we were looking for.

When obtaining the antibody structure file, the modeling group obtained poor homology modeling results. To solve this problem, we consulted Professor Wang Qianghu from the Department of Bioinformatics, School of Biomedical Engineering and Informatics, Nanjing Medical University.

After carefully reading our homology modeling process and results, Professor Qianghu Wang suggested that we try again with alphafold2. According to Professor Wang’s suggestion, we successfully performed better homology modeling of antibody structure and completed the subsequent molecular docking.

With the continuous progress of the experimental group, the small molecule polypeptide we designed has been formed. In order to ensure the ethical safety of our team and deepen our understanding of the ethical issues of synthetic biology, we invited Professor Yong Li, professor of the Department of Medical Ethics, School of Marxism, Nanjing Medical University, to answer questions about the ethical safety of our project.

Regarding whether the project conforms to the current ethics in China and the relationship between synthetic biology and ethics, Professor Li stressed that the research of synthetic biology must be carried out under supervision and in a safe and controllable scope. In the future, if our project is to be applied to clinical practice or drug development, we will follow his suggestion, build a complete ethical review and supervision system.At the same time, describe and prove the source of raw materials for the experiment in detail, and ensure the safety of the experiment and treatment for vulnerable groups such as children and pregnant women.

Using the communication skills taught by Director Ke, our human practice was carried out smoothly. In practice, we found that many autistic children have food intolerance, but after searching the literature, our members in the HP group and the experimental group found that there were few studies in the relevant neighborhood. In order to understand the problem of food intolerance in autistic children, Our team interviewed Director Hongye Li, chief physician of the Department of Pediatrics at The Affiliated Sir Run Run Hospital of Nanjing Medical University.

Regarding food intolerance, Li introduced to us a treatment concept created by Faming Zhang, a pediatric expert in The People’s Hospital of Jiangsu Province, which relies on the brain-gut axis——fecal bacteria transplantation, that is, by transplanting the intestinal flora of a healthy person into the intestinal tract of a patient, and then changing the structure of the intestinal flora of the patient through the healthy intestinal flora. To improve their cognition as well as their clinical symptoms in terms of action and mental health, and to play a therapeutic role. This method in more than two years of clinical treatment has achieved a certain therapeutic effect. This leads us to a new direction in the treatment of autism: through the brain-gut axis, we can achieve a much simpler follow-up treatment plan, and potentially make the treatment process much simpler. Ultimately, we decided to move forward with our product in the form of a drug that promises to be more convenient and effective than what's already available on the market.

In the course of the follow-up experiment, we encountered many problems in the study of antibodies. For example, the amino acid sequence or 3D structure of anti-GAD was not found in the database; We found the structure of anti-myelin basic protein antibody anti-MBP, but it was artificially modified and could not be used, and no amino acid sequence or 3D structure of other Anti-MBP was found in the database. We found an article with a murine-derived Anti-GM1 antibody sequence (4 kinds of IgM), but no amino acid sequence or 3D structure of other anti-ganglioside antibody anti-GM1 was found in the database.

To address these questions, we consulted Professor Xiaoming Wang from the Department of Immunology, School of Basic Medicine, Nanjing Medical University.Professor Xiaoming Wang provided us with a strategy to search for natural IGg-anti-F (ab ') 2 antibodies, and found that the increased levels of IgG, IgG2 and IgG4 in serum and the decrease of total IgA in blood were correlated with autism in patients with autism, which pointed out the direction for follow-up research. As for the search of IgA deficiency and IgA specific autoreactive antibodies, we plan to learn the single molecule docking tools: Autodock Vina, hsg1.pdb, ind.pdb, Autodock Vina+Chimera, PKB, 3QKK.pdb.

The experience of volunteer escorting in Autistic Children Rehabilitation Center made our team deeply realize the importance of rehabilitation therapy. In order to know more about rehabilitation therapy, we invited Mr. Hu, CEO of Juliao Rehabilitation Medical Center, to answer questions for us.

We learned that the center mainly provides medical treatment, teaching and other services for children with autism, ADHD and other neurodevelopmental disorders. At present, more than 300 children have been treated in the past three years, and 90% of them have achieved good results after treatment, which greatly makes up for the hole in the society that autistic children cannot be effectively treated. According to Teacher Hu, food allergy is the most common subtype, so we hope to understand and explore the treatment methods of other subtypes in the future research.

With the smooth progress of the experimental group, our project began commercial design. During the design process, our team was confused about the production process and commercialization of the physical chemical plant. In order to further promote the commercialization of our project, our team came to Nanjing Jiangbei New District Singleron Biotechnology Co., Ltd. to visit and observe.

In order to achieve the large-scale production of the laboratory and pave the way for putting into the market, we added the entry form and raw material confirmation form in the laboratory under the suggestion of the CEO of Singleron Biotechnology Co., LTD., Yunlai Zhou, formulated a strict quality control book for the experimental link, and studied the regulations of commercial packaging and intellectual property in detail. At the same time, we introduce the advantages of our products to the public in the form of tweets or videos. After investigating the target users and their backgrounds, our team held some small-scale industry academic conferences with the help of the platform of the School of Basic Medicine of Nanjing Medical University and the instructor Xingyin Liu.

In order to bring more inspiration to our project, we interviewed the person in charge of the car wash center, and worked in the car wash center for half a day to experience the work of employees with autism, and communicated with them in the process (on the premise of obtaining consent and understanding the basic conditions of corresponding employees in advance).

During the half-day of working with autistic people, we gradually learned how to communicate with them: first, we could talk with them about their interests and hobbies, and then we could have in-depth communication with them when they no longer resisted. In addition, they are relatively lacking in work ability compared with ordinary people, but the person in charge of the car wash center makes them grasp the work quickly by breaking down the work and modeling the method. At the same time, we can give full play to the advantages of our college students team to popularize social employment agencies for disabled people, and promote the public's understanding and tolerance of staff with autism.