Team:SJTU-BioX-Shanghai/HP/Subject Cross

From 2013.igem.org

Human Practice


Subject Cross

measuring the parameters of LED
group photo with associate professor Hong Zhou


Nowadays, subject cross is a pivotal trend in the field of the synthetic biology. We think the development of synthetic biology needs the help of other subjects, who can keep sending new energy to the field of synthetic biology.


The name of our team, SJTU-BioX-Shanghai, actually reflects our interest in subject cross. "BioX" just stands for the combination of Biology and other subjects, such as computer science, chemistry, etc. So our team always has passion on the subject cross between biology and other subjects.


This year, we paid great efforts to realize subject cross in our project as the aspect of human practice. As soon as we put forward the idea, Metabolic Gear Box, a crucial question rose up. How can we confirm that our luminous device is valid? To attain accurate data substantiating the validity of our device, we asked the physical scientists of our school for help. Though buried in much work of themselves, they still offered patient guidance to us. With the help of them, especially associate professor Hong Zhou, we finally assured many parameters of our device in a physical lab, which are important to guarantee the wholeness of our project.


In this process, we had deeper understanding of subject cross. If we just did biological experiment, our research may be limited in lab and it has little possibility to realize our project in factory. But through subject cross, we successfully constructed our elaborate device, which can help our project to be realized in factory. With accurate data of the light distance, light strength, and so on, we can persuade corporation to manufacture our device and to use our "metabolic gear box" to optimize biological reaction.


Considering the importance of subject cross, we think that researchers may have done a lot to investigate the application of subject cross in the field of synthetic biology. But to our surprise, there are few papers about it when we searched in the database "Pubmed". We think it's unbelievable, especially when it's compared with the fast development of synthetic biology. In our opinion, figuring out the role of subject cross is important for the further development of subject cross. So we were determined to do a research, whose theme is about subject cross in the field of synthetic biology. The research may point out a possible direction for the further development of synthetic biology.