Team:OUC-China/Project/Background

From 2011.igem.org

        Our team’s creation comes from a world view advocated by ancient Chinese people 2000 years ago, which is called “Five Elements Theory”. We are dedicated to constructing a new signal system of E.coli to make the cellular communication correspond to the “Five Elements” concept by Lao Tzu. Furthermore, our program aims to build a new model of bacterial interaction based on our ancestor’s intelligence to demonstrate their profound ancient philosophy.

        Dating back to Zhou Dynasty 2700 years ago in China, ancient Chinese people had created a quite intricate material theory to describe all the things with the universe, which was generally referred as “Five Elements Theory” by descendants. In ancient Chinese’s view, all the things in the world came into existence by the interactions between five basic elements. These five energetic statuses were separately described as “Metal Vitality”, “Wood Vitality”, “Water Vitality”, “Fire Vitality” and “Earth Vitality”, or simplified as “Metal” “Wood”, “Water”, “Fire” and “Earth”, according to five acquainted materials. In this theory, material elements were characterized by the concept that the whole world was divided into two polarities as “Yin” and “Yang”. Things having property of clarity and convergence belonged to “Metal”. Things having tendency or property of growing and agreeability belonged to “Wood”. Things having the potential of coldness, downside and tranquility like flow belonged to “Water”. Things having the tendency or property of warmness, upside like flames belonged to “Fire”. These five statuses did not point to the five materials themselves, but described all the existences in the world, their properties and development phases.
        According to “Five Elements Theory”, the relationship among the five elements was called “allelopathy”. In another word, people thought these five elements were not constantly stable, but transformed to and contained each other. Ancient Chinese material view considered the world as a two-dimension system. Looking up to “History of The Three Empires and Five Sacred Mountains”, which was dated about 1800 years ago, we can find such sentences, “The earliest universe was like a nuclear turbid as an egg, in which a god named Pangu was born. Pangu cleaved the universe with his ax, making the universe disassociate all things according to their ‘Yin’ or ‘Yang’ property. The lithe floated up to form the sky, and the heavy sank down to form the ground.” People of that era thought “Yin” and “Yang” as two fundamental properties of substances, and their separation contributed to the emergence of all the things in the world. When “Yin” and “Yang” interacted orderly, things then derived the five statuses of “Metal”, “Wood”, “Water”, “Fire” and “Earth”, transforming and containing each other to reach balance. The relationship, as the picture shows, can be summarized as: Metal derived Water, Water derived Wood, Wood derived Fire, Fire derived Earth, Earth derived Metal....Metal restrained Wood, Wood restrained Earth, Earth restrained Water, Water restrained Fire, Fire restrained Metal....forming a cycling, repeating and balanced system thus ensured the stability of the universe. Had the order been destroyed, “Yin” and “Yang” would have mixed again and the universe would have disappeared back to its initial turbidity.
        Surprisingly, this law of development has been trusted by Chinese people through thousands of years and has been found corresponding and proved by new scientific technology discoveries. For instance, the anti-matter theory, the negative feedback regulation of bio-metabolism and the balance relationship in ecosystem all reveal high correspondence with this fundamental material views model (“Five Elements”). More interestingly, five is just the minimum cardinality to form a stable reverse regulatory system.
        Our team aimed to build five gene devices separately in five groups of E.coli by using existed and unstandardized new signal system of prokaryotes in artificially synthetic and constructive way. We designed the five groups of engineering bacteria can maintain an “allelopathic” co-existing relationship as described in “Five Elements” model. We believe that the nature of this model, deriving from the intelligence of the ancient 2700 years ago, is a continuous, cycling feedback regulatory system which is integrated to the maximum limit. It can overcome perfectly the obstacles for long-term existence and stable cooperation of multiple bacteria. Besides, the dependence among different bacteria species can provide valuable solutions for biologic safety during the functional process of integrated engineering bacteria. In the meantime, we are aware of the urgent demand of more effective inter-species signal system to compose different engineering bacteria’s functions in the area of synthetic biology. Our work not only can construct a basic model for this proposition, but can also introduce a new signal system proposal to the area of standardization of biobricks in synthetic biology.