"Human Practices is the study of how your work affects the world, and how the world affects your work." Through various Human Practices in different forms this year, we have been shaping our project with feedback from local experts and contributing what we have learned back to the community.
Since the very start of this iGEM cycle, we have been participating in different HP events. We visited Kiang Wu Hospital to learn more about current cancer screening processes, and we also joined the Beamline for Schools Programme. During our Outreach trip to the United Kingdom, we met with top scientists like Mr. Chen Jia En from Goodenough College to seek further advice on the implementation part. Meanwhile, we used our award-winning kit from our 2022 iGEM project and organized a charity sale. An assembly talk was also hosted to introduce iGEM and synthetic biology to a wider audience.
We have also engaged in different Integrated Human Practice activities this year. Firstly, during our visit to LSP, we learned about the prevalence of cancer in Macau, which led us to consider DNA damage detection as a means to assess the genotoxicity of various products. Secondly, during our visit to Kiang Wu Hospital, we discussed our concerns about the RecA system and learned about their use of biosensors, which helped us develop our human cell system. Thirdly, with Mr. Edison Ong from Moderna, we gained a clearer understanding of the impact of DNA damage on cellular function and mechanisms. We visited GENENET Technology to learn more about entrepreneurship and implementation. Furthermore, Dr. Chan from the University of Hong Kong advised us to perform gold standard tests for validation and gain deeper insights into our usage of the HEK293 cell line. Lastly, a second meeting with Mr. Ong involved a discussion on the validation of the RecA protein using Western blotting or qPCR to confirm its structure. Additionally, we were advised to use ELISA and cell imaging techniques to confirm the structure of the expressed proteins. Moreover, he provided ongoing guidance on protein modeling, specifically side chain packaging.
Our project attracted interests from different parties including government laboratories (IHP 1), hospitals (HP 1 & IHP 2), industry (IHP 3 & IHP 4), and academics (IHP 5). In these events, we not only promoted our idea of cancer prevention using synthetic biology but also further improved our work to tackle problems these stakeholders are interested in.
We are also trying to align with several values, including environmental, social, and scientific values. By focusing on cancer prevention and DNA damage detection, we address environmental concerns regarding carcinogens and their impact on human health. We also aim to contribute to social well-being by promoting sustainable agriculture and supporting underprivileged communities. Furthermore, our project is rooted in scientific principles, and we consult with experts and engage in rigorous scientific practices to ensure the validity and reliability of our work. We consulted with experts (HP 3, IHP 3 & IHP 6), visited laboratories (IHP 1), and engage in discussions with professionals in the field (HP 1, IHP 2 & IHP 5) to ensure our project aligns with scientific standards and best practices.
The proposed end users of our project could include medical professionals, researchers, and individuals interested in cancer prevention and early detection of DNA damage. Our project aims to provide tools and methods for detecting DNA damage caused by carcinogens, which can be utilized in various settings such as medical laboratories, research institutions, and potentially even in-home testing kits.
We envision that thers can use our project as a resource for understanding and implementing techniques for DNA damage detection and cancer prevention. Researchers and medical professionals can utilize our methods and findings to further their own studies and potentially improve current cancer screening processes. Additionally, our project can serve as a foundation for the development of new tools and technologies aimed at enhancing early detection and prevention strategies.
To implement our project in the real world later on, we would further validate and refine our methods through experimental testing and collaboration with relevant stakeholders, such as medical professionals and research institutions. We would seek regulatory approvals and certifications to ensure the safety and effectiveness of our tools and techniques. Additionally, we are experimenting with entrepreneurship as well as looking for partnership with the industry and healthcare organizations to scale up production and distribution of our DNA damage detection systems. Continuous monitoring, evaluation, and improvement would be crucial to ensure the long-term impact and sustainability of our project.
We visited Kiang Wu Hospital's laboratory on 1st of April, where we had the opportunity to explore various laboratories and their techniques related to PCR tests. Additionally, they provided us with advice and information regarding DNA damage.
During our visit, we inquired about non-invasive methods for obtaining samples in cancer diagnosis. They informed us that for non-invasive approaches, they utilize blood tests and a procedure called Fine-Needle Aspiration Biopsy (FNA or FNAB) to collect samples. FNA is a safe procedure commonly used when patients detect a lump on their body. In this procedure, a doctor inserts a needle guided by ultrasound to withdraw the necessary samples, which are then sent to the laboratory for further testing.
The experts from the Kiang Wu Pathology Department also introduced us to their laboratories where PCR tests are conducted. We learned that with advancements in technology, various machines such as real-time PCR and multiplex PCR are available to aid in the detection of DNA damage, reducing the reliance on manual labor. We were highly impressed by their professional methods and the meticulous steps involved in the tests, which hold significant importance for our project.
We would like to show gratitude to Kiang Wu Hospital again for giving us this valuable opportunity.
We joined the Beamline for Schools Programme this year. We proposed to utilise the particle accelerator for studying our protein 3D structure. We hoped that through the experiment we could further investigate the properties and structure of fluorescent protein and discover how we can improve the efficiency of the FRET system. Furthermore, we wanted to see how our FRET system would react to DNA damage in eukaryotic cells induced by the proton synchrotron and radioactive particles generated at CERN. Through writing the proposal we got to explore how synthetic biology can be combined with other scientific fields. We also joined an online tour of their facility and got to know more about particle accelerators and its use in different scientific fields.
https://beamlineforschools.cern/Photo 3. Beamline for Schools is a competition where students submit proposals of experiments they want to perform at beamline, a part of a particle accelorator.
In April, we embarked on a journey to the United Kingdom to connect with top scientists from different fields, so as to seek advice on both our experiments and implementation processes.
During our visit to the UCL campus on the 20th of April, we were fortunate to have Danny (JiaEn) CHEN, a postgraduate student in Medical Physics and Bioengineering, as our guide. Danny introduced us to various remarkable facilities, including the OpenTron machine, Goodenough College, the Zayed Centre for Research into Rare Disease in Children, and the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery. Walking through the campus, we marveled at the cutting-edge technology and state-of-the-art research being conducted. One particular highlight of our visit was the opportunity to engage in a discussion with Danny at Russell Square. We shared insights and ideas about our respective projects, which proved to be a truly enlightening experience. This interaction broadened our horizons and provided us with a deeper understanding of the role more automated systems can play in the medical field.
In conclusion, our journey to the United Kingdom was an invaluable experience that filled us with gratitude. We are grateful to have Mr. CHEN for guiding us through the remarkable facilities at the UCL campus and engaging in enlightening discussions. We are truly thankful for the invaluable insights and opportunities we encountered during our visit.
Photo 4. We toured Goodenough College with Danny (JiaEn) Chen, a a PhD student at the University College London of Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering.
In 2022, we focused on supporting food supply by improving hydroponic agriculture. During the course of our project, we designed a hydroponic self-farming kit, which eventually won Best Hardware in the high school track in the 2022 iGEM Grand Jamboree. Encouraged by this achievement, we set to market this kit as an educational and recreational tool for our community by organizing a charity sale. In the process, we also aimed to promote concepts such as sustainable agriculture, and to allow more people to experience the novelty of hydroponics.
As consumer awareness of environmental and health concerns increases, hydroponics presents a great opportunity to promote and attract consumer attention and interest. The target market for our designed self-farming kits primarily includes households, schools, and restaurants, where there is a high demand for green plants. Moreover, with the growing demand for compact home products, self-farming kits as space-saving plant cultivation equipment also hold significant market potential. We conducted promotional campaigns targeting not only students but also the local community, such as social media advertisements. The positive response and feedback we received from the students and community members have shown their great enthusiasm and interest in our hydroponics kit. To date, we have sold 86 hydroponic kits to the students and faculty of our school, and many other supporters.
Over three months, our crew of 17 students was able to produce 100 kits. In June, we ordered supplies such as the acrylic exoskeleton of the kits, LED light strips, air pumps, and planting pods and sponges. The assembly took place in July and August, involving attaching the light strips to the top of the kits, soldering them together, merging the cords of the lights with those of the air pumps, and putting the planting pods and sponges in their respective places. Quality checks were conducted for each kit before wrapping them with protective packaging. After a final inspection, we plan to distribute the kits to our buyers around late September to early October.
Industry partners have taken notice of our innovative design and expressed their keen interest in featuring our hydroponics kit in their stores. We have actively participated in local exhibitions, showcasing our hydroponics kit, and engaging with potential customers and partners. Back in December 2022, we first showed our prototype hydroponic kits to the public at the 2022 Macao International Environmental Co-operation Forum and Exhibition (MIECF) where we gathered advice and ideas from stakeholders and experts of various industries. Since then, we have changed the model of the air pump and other physical aspects of our kit to increase its durability and performance. In August 2023, we participated in the 2023 MIECF again, this time to further introduce it to our community and beyond, as well as promote the concept of self-farming in urban areas and sustainable agriculture. In the words of Wynn Macau’s Pressroom, our work was “a testament to the innovative spirit of Macau's talented students, and their achievements will lead to a significant boost in creativity across the disciplines of environmental protection and education.” (1) Moreover, receving the advice and suggestions from the public at the MIECF, our team members collected some used solar panels and installed them on the rooftop of our school.
Photo 8 & 9. We set up second-hand solar panels on our school's rooftop.
Photo 10 & 11. Our team at the 2022 (left) and 2023 (right) MIECF.
After deducting the production costs of the hydroponics kits, we have donated all proceeds to support the underprivileged communities in Macau, demonstrating our commitment to making a positive impact in our region. After deducting the costs, we successfully raised over 1500 USD in donations for the Fuhong Society. After introducing our kit to them, they were amazed by its design and suggested that it can be used in psychiatric rehabilitation as growing plants will benefit patients’ mental well-being. It was a realization for all of us that our initial research was just a small step towards environmental protection. This experience has inspired us to persevere and strive for successful implementation and entrepreneurship of our solutions.
Photo 12 & 13. Group photo with the managers of Fu Hong Society and our donation cheque.
Aiming to reach wider audience and invite more students in our school to join iGEM, we hosted a talk in our School Assembly Hall with secondary three and four students. We introduced iGEM and the concept of Synthetic Biology, as well as presented our project this year.
In the Q&A session, students actively participated and raised hands to answer questions about SDGs, our outreach events, project concept, and global issues that need to be solved.
Overall, the students engaged in and enjoyed the talk.
At the very beginning of our iGEM journey, we reached out to the Macau Public Health Laboratory (LSP) as we would like to develop a project targeting health and environmental problems.
From the visit, we got to know more about what the current medical system is like. In addition to providing testing services for infectious disease prevention and diagnosis, the LSP also offers monitoring services for food, water quality, drugs, and tobacco, as well as providing testing support services for public health emergencies. LSP’s Virus Department is divided into three groups, including Molecular Biology, Virus Culture, and Serology. The instruments are up-to-date, efficient, and accurate, including Next Generation Sequencing (NGS), Sanger sequencing, real-time PCR, integrated nucleic acid testing equipment, and fully automated immunoassay analyzers. Understanding the work and services provided by LSP, we see the importance of public health laboratories in preventing and controlling infectious diseases and protecting public health and safety.
The experience at the LSP surely served as a cornerstone for us in deciding the direction of our project, DNA damage. We would like give thanks the LSP for the opportunity and their general support!
During our visit to Kiang Wu Hospital, while we were able to share our project and ideas, we also received helpful advice from scientists from different fields that shape our project significantly.
Experts at Kiang Wu Hospital were concerned about the efficiency of RecA-eGFP plasmid since DNA damage reporters in bacteria may not report carcinogens that will harm human bodies. They advised us to explore the potential of DNA damage detection in human cells by recognizing the interaction between proteins in the DNA Damage Response.
After our visit, we implemented substantial improvements to our project by narrowing our research scope to a particular form of cancer damage. Moreover, we made the decision to discontinue the use of confocal microscopy due to its tendency to consume a significant amount of time and its vulnerability to disruptions caused by environmental factors. Instead, we gained valuable insights into employing staining reagents, ELISA, and PCR as effective methods for targeting specific proteins.
In addition to these advancements, we also gained insights into an alternative approach for extracting wild cells. We recognize the utmost importance of exercising extreme caution when extracting wild cells, as they can potentially be contaminated by various factors such as concentration, aseptic technique, and detection. This newfound understanding has reinforced our commitment to ensuring the accuracy and reliability of our experimental procedures.
Overall, our visit not only prompted us to refine our project by specifying the type of cancer damage under investigation but also led to the adoption of more efficient techniques for protein targeting. Additionally, we now possess a heightened awareness of the critical considerations involved in the extraction of wild cells, thereby strengthening the integrity of our research methodology.
To enhance and refine our project, we sought the expertise of Mr. Edison ONG from Moderna for a comprehensive review of our presentation, seeking their valuable suggestions. Through this collaboration, we have recognized the need to strengthen our project's focus on DNA damage, in terms of understanding the various types of DNA damage, their incidence rates, what disease it will cause, and their connection to cancer. It is also important to mention that when the extensive amount of DNA damage accumulates, there is a greater chance of mutation, leading to malfunction of cells and eventually cancer. These aspects hold significant importance and require clear elucidation within our project and presentation.
Furthermore, Mr. ONG emphasized the importance of clearly explaining our project's objectives and rationale. He suggested that we should conduct a thorough examination of the advantages and disadvantages of the methods we discussed, which we found to be extremely helpful in establishing the principles of our experiment later on.
In April, we embarked on a journey to the United Kingdom to connect with top scientists from different fields, so as to seek advice on both our experiments and implementation processes.
As we are interested in entrepreneurship this year and want to learn how to run a startup, we visited Stevenage Bioscience Catalyst, which is a top locale for businesses to create and market cutting-edge therapies. We presented both our iGEM 2022 project and iGEM 2023 proposal to the founders of GENENET Technology, which specializes in genetic circuit designs and modeling cells after neural networks. Apart from receiving feedback on our presentation and the overall direction, we were also able to visit their laboratory and have a glance at what it is like to create and run a start-up. We got to know about how to find sponsorships and join subsidizing programs. They advised us to plan for implementation including the details of targeted users, cost and sponsorship, milestones and goals, and technical difficulties. The founders of the company shared their experience realizing their scientific achievements, as well as the obstacles they encountered on their way, such as budget and other technical difficulties.
In conclusion, our journey to the United Kingdom was an invaluable experience that filled us with gratitude. We express sincere appreciation to the top scientists we connected with and the founders of GENENET Technology for sharing their expertise. We are truly thankful for the invaluable insights and opportunities we encountered during our visit as they have fundamentally shaped our implementation process and our entrepreneurship.
We were honored to hold a meeting with Professor CHAN Chi Fung from the University of Hong Kong. He is an experienced researcher in the medical field, and he provided us with exceptional knowledge and insights. After this meeting, we had a clearer picture of our experimental design. He asked us why we chose the HEK293 cell line, mentioning that it is important to be aware of all the experimental conditions so that we can obtain a promising result. We told him that this cell line is more suitable in transfecting viruses to produce different proteins. As our protein design is enormous (around 10000-11000 bp), he recommended that we aim to first ensure our proteins work and can be successfully transfected into the cells.
In addition, he encouraged us to draw comparisons with other existing systems and standards. This will help us validate our result so that we can guarantee the dosage of carcinogens we treated the cells do lead to DNA damage. Furthermore, he said that we are welcome to seek assistance from him in the experiment part in the future.
We would like to thank Professor CHAN for his time and effort in providing us with such helpful comments.
Our first meeting with Mr. Edison ONG from Moderna took place in April, during which we discussed the potential directions of our upcoming project. Three months later, as our project was entering its final stages, we consulted him once again for advice on validation and further improvement.
First, we discussed the validation of our wet lab work, which included our FRET-based DNA damage biosensor and our RecA-GFP system. In both of these sections, he advised us to perform validation of protein expression and mRNA expression by western blotting and qPCR. To further confirm the structures and congregation of the proteins, he suggested we do an ELISA assay and use cell imaging.
Secondly, he commented on our protein modeling and recommended other forms of docking to investigate the interactions of our proteins further. He suggested adding DNA to our docking since we are working with DDR proteins. In addition to rigid body docking, which we have achieved, he said we can attempt side chain packing, which provides more detailed findings.
Overall, he was impressed by our efforts over the 4 months, and the results of our functional tests were promising, and the meeting has brought us to a whole new level of protein modeling. We would like to thank him for his continuous involvement in improving our project.