Xueba's life simulator

Chapter 164 in full swing
A few days after Zhou Ming released the announcement of recruiting experimental assistants, Zhou Ming received hundreds of resumes in his mailbox.

And these resumes met Zhou Ming's conditions, which made Zhou Ming feel that they were okay. There were less than fifty people who could participate in the interview, and there were only about 30 people who actually came to the interview in the end.

Among the people interviewed by Zhou Ming, there are both from the University of Science and Technology University and outsiders, both undergraduates and doctoral students.

As for those who passed Zhou Ming's interview and made Zhou Ming feel satisfied, including Liu Yongxue, there were only twenty or so of them.

Of these twenty or so, only thirteen were able to stay in Zhou Ming's laboratory in the end.

It took a while to confirm the personnel left in the laboratory, and Zhou Ming withdrew the notice posted on the official website of the School of Biological Sciences of HKUST about his recruitment of laboratory assistants.

Thirteen people are enough, including Zhou Ming's biological experiments at Metalworking University and the few biological experiments he did after he came to HKUST, there are only three people.

On the 28th, Zhou Ming finished reading another book, and pushed the book task forward a bit. It reached 5/50, and now there are 45 books left to complete the book task.

By April 4th, Zhou Ming’s experiment on aging was finally over. He wrote his paper for two days, and on the 10th, he successfully submitted the paper to the journal Nature, and he will wait for his paper to be published later. up.

As for such experimental results, Huaguo's official media naturally carried out relevant reports.

In the following time, Zhou Ming focused his attention on artificially synthesized food and artificial intelligence.

Since the aging experiment was over, Zhou Ming started the experiment of artificial glucose without waiting for the end of the artificial starch project.

As for the hands of the artificial glucose experiment, they were naturally the same people when he was studying aging.

When you are immersed in one thing, time always flies by, and time flies by again.

By the end of March, in Zhou Ming's artificial synthesis project, the experiment on artificial starch was almost over, and there was some beginning and end work to come.

The experiment on artificially synthesizing glucose has not been completed yet because it started late.

In addition, several artificial intelligence projects that Zhou Ming participated in in the company have also achieved some results.

Up to now, Zhou Ming has improved a lot in completing the task of the artificial simulator. The progress of the book task has reached 10/50, and there are 40 books left to complete the book task.

The experimental tasks have also reached 5/10. Biological experiments on aging and artificial starch are two, and artificial intelligence experiments are three.

However, out of the 10 tasks bound by Zhou Ming, only 3 were related to artificial intelligence, and he completed them in more than a month, so he didn't have to go to the company's artificial intelligence laboratory anymore.

The progress of this kind of experiment is faster than Zhou Ming originally imagined, but the progress of the book task is slower than he expected.

"Professor, we fed the high-purity acetic acid solution obtained by electrosynthesis to Saccharomyces cerevisiae, hoping to further synthesize food molecules such as glucose through the yeast's metabolic engineering. When denying it, we found that it was also metabolizing glucose while synthesizing glucose, so we Trying to use yeast to convert the acetic acid converted from carbon dioxide into glucose will not work."

While Zhou Ming was handling the first and last work of the synthetic starch project in the laboratory, he suddenly received a notice from the synthetic glucose project team.

The one who reported the situation to Zhou Ming was Xia Xiao, a Ph.D. graduate from Huaguo Agricultural University. This was also a girl, and she was also one of the thirteen people Zhou Ming recruited into the laboratory and stayed behind.

As for the question Xia Xiao mentioned, it is necessary to briefly talk about Zhou Ming's thinking on the artificially synthesized glucose project.

According to what Zhou Ming said to the experimenters who participated in the artificial glucose experiment, this artificial glucose project is divided into several steps.

The first step is to design a novel electrochemical catalytic device, through which carbon dioxide can be catalyzed into carbon monoxide by Ni-NC single-atom university, and then carbon monoxide can be catalyzed into acetic acid through grain boundary copper.

The acetic acid produced by conventional electrocatalytic devices is mixed with many kinds of electrolyte salts, which will poison living cells if used directly. The advantage of Zhou Ming’s new solid-state electrolyte device is that it can stably produce pure acetic acid for a long time using only carbon dioxide and water. Yeast Bacteria are not poisonous either.

After converting carbon dioxide into acetic acid artificially, the second step is to use yeast to convert carbon dioxide into glucose.

In fact, after the carbon dioxide is artificially converted into acetic acid, the path is not limited to the step of converting acetic acid into glucose. It only needs to replace the fermenting cells to synthesize pigments, fatty acids and various drugs.

However, Xia Xiao encountered a problem when converting acetic acid to glucose.

And the problem Xia Xiao mentioned is like a chef eating while cooking. In this way, although the food is cooked, it will never be served.

Because all the dishes made by the chef are eaten by the chef himself.

"You guys continue to work on other things. I'll go over as soon as I finish processing here." After speaking, Zhou Ming hung up the phone.

After dealing with the matter here, Zhou Ming immediately felt that Xiao Xia had gone to the laboratory over there.

"In the situation you just mentioned, we can directly edit the genes of Saccharomyces cerevisiae and knock out the genes that metabolize glucose in the yeast. We only need to abolish its ability to use glucose, and at the same time insert several foreign genes to make the cells Other substances are also converted to glucose, and so on.

This not only frees the yeast cell from consuming glucose, but also increases its production of glucose. "

After returning to Xia Xiao's side, Zhou Ming talked to them very easily.

Xia Xiao and the others originally thought that Zhou Ming could come up with some method. This method is easy to say, but it is not very easy to find out the genes that metabolize glucose in yeast.

Moreover, several foreign genes must be inserted at the same time, and this progress will at least be delayed for a long time.

But what they didn't know, the reason why Zhou Ming came up with this idea was that he already knew where the yeast's glucose-metabolizing genes were, and which foreign aid genes should be inserted.

This process can be understood as converting carbon dioxide into acetic acid, the "food" of Saccharomyces cerevisiae, and then Saccharomyces cerevisiae is constantly "jealous" to synthesize glucose and fatty acids.

If the research only ends here, using artificial and semi-artificial methods, even if it is to manufacture pigments and produce drugs, it only needs to keep the electrocatalytic facilities unchanged and replace the microorganisms used for fermentation.

After that, it is to develop the scientific research results into large-scale applications. As for the artificially synthesized starch that has entered the beginning and end, Zhou Ming is going to let the company under him do the step from scientific research results to large-scale entry into the market.

Artificial + biological, that is, artificial in the front and using the function of biological enzymes in the back, this is how artificial starch is synthesized.

But when it comes to artificially synthesizing glucose, Zhou Ming is not going to stop here.

Since it is said that the artificially synthesized glucose should be completely artificial, Zhou Ming must do what he says.

After completing the knockout and insertion of yeast genes, he will start working on yeast replacement.

In Saccharomyces cerevisiae, the acetyl coenzyme enters the glyoxylate cycle to synthesize oxaloacetate to form glucose-6-phosphate through the gluconeogenesis pathway.

As long as this step in Saccharomyces cerevisiae converts acetic acid into glucose through non-biological means, and its speed and cost are better than using fermenting microorganisms, it can replace fermenting microorganisms and realize complete artificial glucose synthesis.

However, only Zhou Ming knows this step.

In the following period of time, under the leadership of Zhou Ming, the research group for artificially synthesizing glucose soon successfully knocked out Glk1, Hxk1, Hxk2 and other hexokinases, and at the same time introduced the glucose phosphatase gene agpP from Pantoea and Escherichia coli HAD4 gene yhix and other exogenous genes were inserted into the experimental cells to make them successfully expressed, and finally greatly increased the production of glucose.

Afterwards, they combined the previous electrocatalysis to continuously replace Saccharomyces cerevisiae with other fermenting microorganisms, knocked out and inserted corresponding genes through gene editing technology, and successively successfully used the semi-artificial method of artificial + biological to produce pigments , production of drugs.

Time passed unconsciously, and soon it was April.

In April, the artificially synthesized food laboratory was still researching semi-artificially synthesized other substances. Zhou Ming did not immediately start to replace the fermentation microorganisms, but used this time to continue reading.

Since the laboratory has already implemented several experiments of semi-artificial synthesis of other substances through this method of electrocatalysis and microbial fermentation, these are also experiments that Zhou Ming bound before.

All of a sudden, the progress of Zhou Ming's experiment was quickly raised to 8/10. Now there are only two experiments left, and Zhou Ming will be able to complete the task of the experiment.

It is the task of reading. Although Zhou Ming tried his best to use his spare time to read books, he still only completed 16/50 of the progress, and there are still 34 books short of completing the reading task.

In April, there were more and more foreign school students who wanted to contact Zhou Ming among the students who wanted to study in the combined master and doctor programs, direct doctor programs, and master programs in HKUST. Among these people, there were both mathematics majors and biology-related majors.

On the morning of April NO.15, Zhou Ming, who had just returned to the office from the laboratory and was about to read a book, was interrupted by a knock on the door.

After Zhou Ming said please come in, he realized that the people who came to him today were actually Li Mingzhi, the dean of the School of Science, and Zhang Mingjie, the honorary dean of the School of Life Sciences.

This made Zhou Ming feel very strange. It was reasonable for Zhang Mingjie to come to him. After all, he has been busy with the project here recently.

But Zhou Ming has nothing to do with mathematics recently, why did Li Mingzhi come to him?

More importantly, why did these two academicians whose research fields do not overlap find themselves at the same time this time?

"Dean Li, Dean Zhang, why did you two come together today?"

Zhou Ming pointed a book in his hand, he stood up, walked towards Li Zhizhi and Zhang Mingjie, and said to them.

"If you have nothing to go to the Three Treasures Hall." Li Mingzhi smiled and said, this is what he said when he was joking with Zhou Ming before, "We came to you together this time, there is indeed something."

"Sit." Zhou Ming told them to sit down while pouring water for them politely.

"Actually, we also know that you have been very busy recently. Your research results on aging last month and the results on artificial starch announced this month are very shocking.

Especially the synthetic starch project, whether it is inside or outside the circle, the discussion is very hot. "

Zhang Mingjie also said that they were not in a hurry to tell Zhou Ming the specific purpose of their visit this time.

"I also see that you don't seem to go to the laboratory much recently, and it happens that the notice will be issued this month, so I asked Academician Li to come to your office to talk to you about this matter."

Zhang Mingjie continued to talk, but when he said this, Zhou Ming just passed over the poured water.

"We came to you together this time, mainly because of the graduate students who will be enrolled in our two colleges next year." Li Mingzhi said.

"Recruitment of graduate students? Isn't this only April? Next year's first-year graduate students will not start school until September next year, right? They won't start until September or October this year... oh..."

Zhou Ming was still a little confused at first, but he thought of something as he talked, and he looked suddenly enlightened.

"It seems that you should have thought of what we are going to talk about.

Although there is still more than a year before the start of the first year of graduate school next year, we have to prepare for one year from now.

You should have recently received more emails than before from students who want to come to our school for graduate study next year, right?And you also went to the summer camp of Nankai College of Life Sciences last year, so you should have some understanding of these. "

Zhang Mingjie took a sip of the water Zhou Ming handed over when Li Zhizhi was speaking just now, and then said to Zhou Ming after Zhou Ming gave a long "Oh".

Li Mingzhi and Zhang Mingjie's visit to Zhou Ming this time was related to the summer camp that was about to start during the summer vacation.

Although the summer camp will not start until the summer vacation, the relevant announcements will start in April and May.

"You are now a professor of the school's School of Life Sciences and School of Mathematical Sciences, and you also have enrollment targets for the School of Mathematical Sciences and our School of Life Sciences.

You, as the possible future mentors of the graduate students of our school, so we want you to participate in the summer camp this summer, so that you can get acquainted with them and get to know each other.

We have also heard about your incident in Nankai last year, and you must be familiar with it. "

When he said this, Zhang Mingjie smiled, and he couldn't help asking Zhou Ming a question.

"You were with your girlfriend when you went to Nankai College of Life Sciences last year, right? At that time you went there as a student, but now it's only a year, and you're going to attend the same summer camp as a teacher. What do you feel?"

"It's okay, last year at this time I was only a third-year student in a non-"985" or "211" college, and now I'm already a professor at HKUST, and I'm still a second-level professor.

This kind of contrast has been experienced too much in the past year, and I have almost adapted to it, so I don't feel much about it. "

Zhou Ming said it very normally.

After Zhou Ming finished speaking, Zhang Mingjie and Li Mingzhi nodded at the same time, and they continued talking about their visit this time.

(End of this chapter)