The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) School of Life Sciences team formed by postgraduate students, Stephen King Pong Leung and Jacky Fong Chuen Loo, and undergraduate student, Leo Chi U Seak, supervised by Professor King Ming Chan, working on synthetic biology project has won the first prize award at the "Challenge Cup" - Nationwide University Students Extra-curriculum Technology Contest in Guangdong China this November. This is the first time School of Life Sciences team out of all postgraduate teams of CUHK achieved first price award. Also, only CUHK among universities from Hong Kong achieved Winner’s Cup, the top 2^nd to 21^st overall contribution and awards in the particular university among all universities.

The project of the CUHK School of Life Sciences team was named “Solution for One-step Sewage Treatment- Genetic circuit construction to simplify denitrification”. Current processing of nitrogen waste such as ammonia (NH⁴⁺) in sewage treatment works utilizes microbes under a two-step method - aerobic and anaerobic treatment (with and without oxygen respectively), which is inefficient to remove nitrogen waste. Untreated nitrogen waste causes algal bloom, where neurotoxin released from algae and absorbed by fishes leads to food poison. The team performs genetically engineering of Azotobacter vinelandii, a nitrogen-fixing bacterium that grows rapidly under aerobic condition while it provides an anaerobic intracellular environment for engineered anaerobic nitrogen-removing enzyme cascades (denitrification) to function. Therefore, the design could to increase the efficiency, by both reducing the process time and valuable land and increasing denitrification speed, of sewage treatment, thus increase the lifespan of the existing sewage treatment plants.

About "Challenge Cup" - Nationwide University Students Extra-curriculum Technology Contest

"Challenge Cup" is a representative, authoritative student science competition nationwide and being described as "Olympics" of science and technology for Chinese college students. This is the most focus and popular competition, allowing Chinese students to show their creativity and novelty in science and technology and awards are given to high quality projects. This year, the nationwide "Challenge Cup" competition is held in Guangdong China. There were close to 800 projects selected from thousands of projects with two millions participants to enter this finalist competition among all the universities in Mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau this year. Among them, only top 8% teams achieved first price award in the competition. For more information, please visit http://www.tiaozhanbei.net/

中大生命科學學院隊榮獲2015年度“挑戰杯”全國大學生課外學術科技作品競賽一等獎

由香港中文大學（中大）生命科學學院博士生梁敬邦和盧芳泉，和本科生石致宇組成的基因工程隊伍，由陳竟明教授指導下進行合成生物學項目，在“挑戰杯”全國大學生課外學術科技作品競賽中榮獲一等獎。此外，香港所有的大學中只有香港中文大學取得了優勝者杯，這是頒給首二至二十一名最多整體貢獻和獎項的院校 。

今次中大生命科學學院隊獲獎的題目為“污水處理一步通 - 構建基因電路簡化脫硝程序”。現時污水處理廠一般使用微生物來去除氮廢物如氨(NH⁴⁺)，但卻需經過有氧及無氧兩個步驟較為低效。凡未經處理的廢氮會導致赤潮，其中藻類釋放出神經毒素被魚類吸收能導致食食物中毒。基因工程隊伍改造棕色固氮菌 - 一種能在有氧環境下存活但其細胞內含有微量氧氣，使其在有氧的環境下進行脫硝作用來處理氮廢物。這設計可以通過減少處理時間和寶貴的土地和增加污水處理的反硝化速度以提高效率，從而提高現有的污水處理廠的壽命。

“挑戰杯”全國大學生課外學術科技作品競賽 簡介

“挑戰杯”是一個代表性，權威性的全國中國大學生的科學競賽，被描述為科技“奧運”比賽。本最重點和熱門的比賽鼓勵中國學生展示科學和創新技術，獎項只頒給高品質的項目。今年，“挑戰杯”競賽在中國廣東舉行。從個項目進入所有的大學在中國內地，香港及澳門數以千計的項目，共兩百萬計的參與者中選擇了800個項目進入決賽。其中，只有百份之八的隊伍在選拔中取得一等獎。 網址： http://www.tiaozhanbei.net/

Our team in front of the booth

團隊在展台前合照

Our team member is giving presentation to the audience

團隊成員向觀眾介紹中