Urszula Czerwinska

Summary

Metro microbiome sequencing
Biotech

• start-up foundation - acellerator l'OpenLab
• project manangement
• business plan
• wet lab work
• graphical design
• networking

Study of biodiversity in Paris metro stations. Student-driven project relized with Crisitna Garcia Timermans. All materials presented here were created though our synergic effort.

The idea

In France, around 70% of the population lives in urban areas, according to the UN. Cities are our new environment. This environment has a huge impact on us: our emotions, feelings and our daily life. One of the things we are most surrounded by, is the microbiome. In fact, there are billions of bacteria around us, and even on us. They are are fundamental barrier between us and the environment, keeping us away from many pathogens.

In Eco-Smart Solutions, we want to study the Microbiome of the City: all those species that interact with us every day. We will start by one of the most know parisian institutions -no, it's not the Tour Eiffel- the metro of Paris. It receives 1.5 billion people per year. It is the second busiest subway in Europe and one of the densest of the world.

Once we will study the Microbiome of the Metro of Paris, we will study the effect of probiotic cleaners in  the metro. Instead of cleaning everything with toxic agents, such as bleach, that recent students link to respiratory infections, we propose to use 'good' bacteria, that will 'eat' - will metabolize - the waste, helping us to have a greener smarter city.

We have a vision of the City of the Future. Its a city that has a small ecological footprint, is self-sufficient and allows citizens to live in harmony with their environment.

The experiment

We conveyed two studies:

1. The microbiome of the metro of Paris
2. How cleaning products impact the metro microbiome

1. We have collected genetic material from 32 most and least transited metro stations in Paris in three different spots: station seats, ticket machines and walls. Which maked over 100 samples to analyse. We have designed collection kit and established protoicls for DNA extraction and PCR amplification. Samples were sent to GATC company for sequencing analysis.

We also tested for five busies stations of Paris if the bacterias we collected were antybiotic resistant to: ampicillin, chloramphenicol and kanamycin

2. We tested 4 different cleaning products -bleach, soap and 2 probiotic cleaners. After inoculating a surface with a sample of the station Gare du Nord (most frequented station in Paris), we cleaned the surface with the corresponding product and took samples over 6 days that we sequenced and we will further analyze.

Entrepreneurship

We have expanded our knowledge about the process of creating a start-up: how to present our idea and structure it, how to communicate it to scientific and non-scientific public and how to target the people that would be potentially interested in our project.

We have participated and pitched in multiple events: Sorbonne Mash-up , Hacking Hotel de Ville, BIG BPI, Hello Tomorrow and Future en Seine. We wrote a proposal for the call of the Ministry of Education, i-LAB : CONCOURS NATIONAL D'AIDE À LA CRÉATION D'ENTREPRISES DE TECHNOLOGIES INNOVANTES. We also attended the bi-weekly meetings in the L’Open Lab where we exchanged ideas with other colleagues and were giving update on our progress.

We created a Facebook page, posters and leaflets to communicate our ideas. We also contacted a designer who made our start-up logo and we have acquired design skills during this internship in purpose to prepare graphical support.

Sequencing results

After the tedious filed work we waited with impatience for sequancing restults from GATC. After putting our best efforts and consulting with bioinformatic research team MetaSUB Paris, the amount of DNA turned out to insufficient to draw any conclusions. Therfore unfortuantelu we were not able to uncover the microbiome of Parid metro, neither confirm the efficiency of cleaning products. We sill hope our effforts will be a foundation for another projects and ideas!

You need to fail to suceed

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank a lot the co-founder of EcoSmartSolutions Crisitna Garcia Timermans , the l'OpenLab, GATC customer service, AIV teachers: Pascal Hersen and Ariel Lindner for their support.

Ressources and overview

All the protocols and details can be acessed here