To highlight our efforts, we've mapped our work to iGEM's intergated human practices criteria. For a more complete perspective, we recommend reviewing our full deliverables.

How can we solve problems that affect people?

For millions of families worldwide, breastfeeding is not always an option. When infants cannot receive sufficient breast milk, formula becomes a necessity. Yet, current formulas still fall short of replicating the unique benefits of breast milk—particularly its human milk oligosaccharides (HMOs) such as 2’-Fucosyllactose (2’-FL). This gap leaves many babies more vulnerable to infections, digestive discomfort, and nutritional imbalance .

Our team, Probabyotics, envisioned 2-FLuxe as the solution to this challenge. To truly make a difference, we had to ensure that what we created was effective, affordable, and responsive to the real needs of parents and infants. The only way to achieve this was to place end-users—the families and babies—at the center of our design.

Through a human-centered design process, we engaged with families, pediatric nutrition experts, and the broader formula industry. These conversations guided our journey and shaped 2-FLuxe into a solution that not only adds 2’-FL for immune and gut health, but also integrates with other improvements in digestibility and tolerance.

2-FLuxe started as a simple idea: to provide 2’-FL through synthetic biology. But as we listened to stakeholders across the industry, we realized we could do much more.

This is the story of how Probabyotics transformed an idea into 2-FLuxe—a holistic solution designed to bring formula one step closer to the gold standard of infant nutrition.

What did we discover?

Through our interviews with families and visits to formula factories, we learned that every stage of infant formula development faces critical challenges—from nutritional gaps (missing 2’-FL and poor digestibility) to production bottlenecks (costly ingredients and limited accessibility).

To ensure that our Human Practices work was well-grounded in real-world needs, we systematically identified and evaluated our stakeholders. We adopted a Stakeholder map, in which:

• Power refers to the stakeholder’s ability to influence the direction and feasibility of our project.
• Interest refers to the stakeholder’s concern about and willingness to engage with our project.

This evaluation helped us prioritize communication and engagement strategies, making our interactions more efficient and meaningful. The following stakeholder map reflects our analysis:

During the development of our project, we prioritized key stakeholders in order to clearly identify collaboration focus and obtain support and feedback at different levels.

Primary caregivers (mothers, fathers, single-parent families)

This group is our most central and direct stakeholder. They are not only the end-users but also those who experience the problem most personally. Their real-life experiences with infant feeding directly determine the value and improvement direction of our product. Therefore, they are more than just users; they are essential collaborators in our needs assessment, solution validation, and outcome evaluation.

Infant formula enterprises

Formula companies represent our second most important stakeholder group. They control the entire industrial chain from R&D and production to retail, and have extensive expertise in the field. For us, they are not only potential partners and key drivers for product implementation, but also valuable sources of learning—whether in formula optimization, regulatory compliance, or consumer communication. Building connections with them helps us transform our project from a laboratory concept into a market-ready solution.

Hospitals and maternity care facilities & pediatricians and nutritionists

This expert group in healthcare and nutrition forms the third tier of our stakeholders. They provide scientific and clinical feedback that helps us better understand infants’ actual needs in nutrition, digestion, and immunity. Their professional recognition enhances the scientific credibility of our solution and offers authoritative support for its future promotion.

Figure: Group 1: Primary caregivers who may use the fomula milk powder; Group 2: the second important groups of target customers are Infant formula enterprises; Group 3: the last groups are Hospitals and maternity care facilities & Pediatricians and nutritionists

Online Survey

Breastfeeding is widely recognized as the “gold standard” of infant nutrition.

However, in reality, many families face multiple challenges such as insufficient breast milk supply, work-related stress, and dietary or lifestyle constraints, leading them to rely on mixed feeding or infant formula entirely. Against this backdrop, we sought to understand families’ genuine considerations when choosing formula, and thus conducted a large-scale online survey targeting families with children.

The survey results showed that most families ranked their decision-making priorities as “nutrition > brand > price.” This indicates that parents’ foremost concern is whether the formula provides comprehensive nutrition, while brand and cost, though important, are treated as secondary. In other words, the essential motivation behind choosing formula is to bridge the natural gap left by insufficient breastfeeding, with parents hoping that better nutrition will safeguard their infants’ growth. However, the data also revealed a limitation of the survey: safety did not emerge as a top priority in the ranking, but subsequent interviews repeatedly confirmed that it is in fact the number one concern for parents.

Therefore, we treated the survey as an initial sketch of overall trends and complemented it with one-on-one in-depth interviews to capture the personalized needs and hidden anxieties that a survey alone could not reveal. This combination of “quantitative trends + qualitative insights” not only clarified how parents balance nutrition, price, and brand, but also enabled us to understand the psychological pressures and underlying concerns they face in daily feeding practices. These findings provided a stronger foundation for our subsequent product design and validation.

Family Interviews

After conducting the survey, we realized that while quantitative data was useful for identifying overall trends, it could not fully capture the individual experiences and emotional pressures behind each family’s choices. To address this limitation, we carried out a series of one-on-one in-depth interviews with new parents, engaging them directly about their real-life feeding experiences.

The interviews reaffirmed that breastfeeding is universally regarded as the “gold standard” of infant nutrition. However, in practice, many mothers face challenges such as demanding work schedules, dietary restrictions, and frequent night feedings, which make exclusive breastfeeding difficult. As a result, families often resort to mixed feeding or even complete reliance on formula in order to balance their baby’s health with the practical burdens of family life.

We realized that: infant formula is not seen as a replacement for breast milk, but rather as a reluctant choice when breastfeeding is insufficient or unfeasible. Parents consistently emphasized that comprehensive nutrition was their top concern when choosing formula. At the same time, they voiced strong anxieties about safety and digestive tolerance. In fact, interviews showed that safety is the most underestimated yet fundamental priority, while convenience in daily preparation also plays a significant role in families’ decision-making and overall experience.

This insight allowed us to refine our value framework for product design: while comprehensive nutrition remains important, safety must always come first, and considerations of digestibility and convenience should be integrated into our approach. Ultimately, we summarized this logic as “Safety > Nutrition > Price”, which became the core design principle guiding our subsequent engineering improvements and product development strategies.

Through extensive literature review and field investigations, we identified several major challenges that current infant formula still faces:

1. First, the absence of key immune factors—human milk oligosaccharides (HMOs) leaves infants at a disadvantage in resisting infections and establishing a healthy gut microbiota.
2. Second, the poor digestibility of casein often leads to coagulation in infants’ immature digestive systems, causing constipation, reflux, bloating, and other gastrointestinal discomforts.
3. Third, the widespread prevalence of lactose intolerance prevents some infants from effectively absorbing nutrients.
4. Finally, there is a persistent cost barrier, which keeps nutritional improvements concentrated in high-end products, thereby limiting accessibility for ordinary families.

Although some high-end formulas on the market attempt to address these problems by adding 2’-FL and other HMOs or using partially hydrolyzed protein technology, these products remain prohibitively expensive, making nutritional equity difficult to achieve. We realized that unless safety, nutrition, and accessibility are balanced, infant formula will never truly meet the needs of a broader population of families.

Based on stakeholder feedback and expert consultation (nutritionist Zhang), we identified the biosynthetic production and application of 2’-FL as the first breakthrough point of our project. On one hand, 2’-FL is one of the most important HMOs in breast milk, proven to enhance immunity, reduce intestinal infections, and support beneficial microbiota growth; On the other hand, China approved 2’-FL as a new food fortifier in 2024, providing clear regulatory support for its inclusion in infant formula.

Therefore, we decided to focus on 2’-FL as our entry point:

• At the nutritional level: to narrow the gap with breast milk and provide infants with immune protection closer to natural feeding;
• At the application level: to leverage synthetic biology to lower production costs, making this critical component accessible to a wider market.

2’-FL Production Design

From our preliminary research, we found that traditional methods of 2’-FL production—such as human milk extraction, chemical synthesis, and enzymatic catalysis—have been applied but suffer from high cost, limited efficiency, and poor scalability. These drawbacks have significantly restricted the widespread use of 2’-FL in infant formula. To overcome this, we aimed to develop a synthetic biology-based pathway that could provide a more feasible and scalable solution.

In discussions with Professor Ye, we learned that it is possible to achieve 2’-FL biosynthesis in engineered E. coli using cheap carbon sources (e.g., glycerol). The key lies in heterologous expression of five critical genes:

• manB, manC (mannose metabolism)
• gmd, fcl (fucose synthesis)
• futC (fucosyltransferase)

With this pathway design, 2’-FL could, in theory, be synthesized efficiently and at low cost under inexpensive substrate conditions.

In our experiments, we compared two gene combinations:

• manB + manC
• manB + manC + gmd + fcl + futC

The results showed that the complete five-gene pathway outperformed the two-gene pathway, achieving a yield of 19.66 ± 2.62 mg/L, which was significantly higher.

Yield Improvement

Although we had successfully synthesized 2’-FL in our experiments, the yield still fell short of expectations. This outcome highlighted a crucial realization: beyond focusing on nutritional functionality, we must also address cost and accessibility. In the real market for infant formula, price remains one of the most critical factors for parents’ purchasing decisions. Even if nutritional benefits are substantial, overly high costs would make it impossible to achieve our vision of “providing high-quality, nutritious formula at an affordable price for more families.” Therefore, enhancing 2’-FL yield and reducing production costs became the core bottlenecks we needed to overcome.

To explore feasible solutions, we conducted an extensive literature review and found that multiple strategies exist for improving 2’-FL yield. These include metabolic pathway optimization, substrate supply regulation, and enzyme performance engineering. However, the diversity and complexity of these options also made us realize that more targeted experimental validation is needed to identify the most promising breakthrough directions.

2’-FL Production Requires Lactose Consumption

During one of our interviews, we spoke with Ms. Chen, a director of logistics at a biopharmaceutical company. She advised us to focus on the final step of the biosynthetic pathway—the conversion of GDP-fucose and lactose into 2’-FL, catalyzed by FutC. She emphasized that the key lies in balancing substrate supply:

• GDP-fucose is generated via our engineered manB + manC + gmd + fcl pathway;
• Lactose, however, depends on the level naturally provided by E. coli’s endogenous metabolism.

In other words, even if the upstream pathway produces sufficient GDP-fucose, inadequate lactose supply can still limit the overall yield of 2’-FL.

This insight led us to realize that optimizing the upstream pathway alone is not sufficient—the real bottleneck may lie in lactose availability. Therefore, in our subsequent work, we plan to:

1. Systematically assess whether endogenous lactose levels in E. coli act as a limiting factor;
2. Explore external lactose supplementation or metabolic engineering to enhance lactose availability;
3. Improve FutC catalytic efficiency to increase the overall conversion rate.

This discovery not only clarified the underlying reason for limited 2’-FL yield but also provided us with a more targeted direction for future metabolic optimization.

Switching the Chassis Microorganism

As we advanced in 2’-FL biosynthesis, we gradually realized that beyond pathway construction and optimization, the choice of chassis strain could also be a key factor affecting yield. Although the laboratory strain E. coli BL21 is widely used in synthetic biology research, in our experiments the yield of 2’-FL consistently fell short of expectations. This raised the question: could the strain’s own metabolic characteristics be consuming critical substrates, thereby limiting production?

In discussions with Mr. Tang, the plant director at Pfizer Suzhou, we gained an important insight. He explained that the BL21 strain expresses β-galactosidase (LacZ), which breaks down lactose as a carbon source for its own growth. This means that not all lactose is preserved for the FutC-catalyzed reaction, thereby restricting 2’-FL synthesis efficiency. Mr. Tang recommended that we try E. coli DH5α as an alternative chassis. Since DH5α lacks the LacZ gene, its ability to metabolize lactose is greatly reduced, allowing more lactose to remain available for FutC, and thus improving final 2’-FL yield.

Following this suggestion, we conducted a comparative experiment by introducing the same metabolic pathway into both BL21 and DH5α strains. The results were clear:

• In BL21, part of the lactose was consumed for growth, resulting in lower 2’-FL yield.
• In DH5α, the higher retention of lactose led to a significant increase in 2’-FL production.

Addition of a Solubility Tag

In our preliminary experiments and comparisons, we gradually realized that within the 2’-FL biosynthetic pathway, although manB, manC, gmd, and fcl are endogenous genes in E. coli, FutC is an exogenous enzyme that must be introduced through synthetic biology. Since FutC directly catalyzes the key reaction converting GDP-fucose and lactose into 2’-FL, its enzymatic activity essentially determines the bottleneck of the entire metabolic pathway. Therefore, to further improve yield, the breakthrough must lie in enhancing the expression and activity of FutC.

During our discussion with Mr. Ma from Beijing Single-Atom Catalysis Technology Co., Ltd., we received an important suggestion. He pointed out that by introducing a solubility-enhancing fusion tag (TrxA) upstream of the futC gene, it would be possible to improve the solubility and stability of FutC, thereby significantly enhancing its expression efficiency and catalytic activity. The TrxA tag is commonly used in the optimization of heterologous protein expression, as it helps proteins fold correctly and prevents the formation of inclusion bodies. This strategy perfectly matched the production bottleneck we were facing.

Building upon our earlier optimization of the DH5α chassis strain, we further added the TrxA tag upstream of the futC gene. Experimental data revealed a breakthrough improvement:

• Without TrxA: the maximum 2’-FL yield was about 19.66 ± 2.62 mg/L;
• With TrxA: the yield surged to 279.47 ± 22.09 mg/L, setting a new record for our project.

In interviews with fathers, many repeatedly emphasized their children’s “poor digestion,” which is a common issue faced by many families during feeding. The main protein in infant formula—casein, accounting for about 80%—often becomes an insurmountable obstacle in the immature digestive systems of infants. In the acidic environment of the stomach, it forms dense curds, which increase the digestive burden and lead to reflux, constipation, bloating, and other functional gastrointestinal disorders (FGIDs). Epidemiological data show that 33.9% of infants in China experience reflux symptoms, which has caused widespread feeding anxiety among parents. This made us realize that, to improve the applicability of infant formula, we must address the core problem of casein indigestibility.

During our visits to mother-and-baby stores, sales staff explained parents’ purchasing preferences:

• Infants with allergic tendencies or digestive issues are often recommended partially hydrolyzed formula.
• These products can alleviate allergies and digestive discomfort to some extent.
• However, existing casein-processing methods (physical, ultrasonic, enzymatic) have clear limitations: they may cause nutritional loss, lack precision, and fail to fully mimic the digestive behavior of human milk proteins.

This motivated us to focus on finding a strategy for efficient, precise, and nutrition-preserving pre-digestion of casein.

We turned to Trypsin, a natural serine protease typically secreted by the human pancreas and activated in the intestine. It can precisely cleave peptide bonds after lysine (Lys) and arginine (Arg) residues. Using synthetic biology, we expressed Trypsin in our system and experimentally confirmed its strong enzymatic activity. Functionally, Trypsin acts as a highly specific “biological scissor”, breaking complex casein into smaller peptides that are easier to absorb, thereby reducing the digestive burden on infants. By incorporating this approach, we not only reduce the difficulty of digesting infant formula but also provide a practical solution for improving gut health in infants. Compared with traditional hydrolysis techniques, our solution demonstrates greater safety and superior nutritional retention, offering clear advantages for the development of next-generation infant formula.

Lactose intolerance is one of the most common digestive challenges in infant formula. Due to an insufficient level of β-galactosidase (β-gal) in the body, lactose cannot be fully hydrolyzed. Instead, it ferments in the intestine, causing diarrhea, abdominal pain, bloating, and frequent crying, which severely affects infants’ nutrient absorption and healthy growth.

During our offline surveys in parks, many parents reported that their children experienced varying degrees of lactose intolerance. Data also indicate that approximately 30% of Asian infants suffer from lactose maldigestion. As a result, parents often have to choose low-lactose or lactose-free formula, but such products usually come with higher prices and nutritional compromises

In an online consultation, a pediatrician clearly pointed out that the most direct and effective solution is to supplement formula with lactase, addressing the root cause of undigested lactose. Inspired by this, we decided to use synthetic biology to produce β-galactosidase. This enzyme can hydrolyze lactose into glucose and galactose, significantly improving digestive efficiency, preventing fermentation in the gut, and helping infants absorb nutrients more effectively.

Our team then conducted experiments and successfully expressed β-galactosidase in engineered bacteria, confirming its strong enzymatic activity. Based on these results, we proposed a practical application strategy: pre-treating raw cow’s milk with β-galactosidase during formula production, so that lactose is broken down into absorbable monosaccharides before it enters the formula. Through this approach, even lactose-intolerant infants can safely consume formula, obtain complete nutrition, and grow healthily without being hindered by digestive discomfort.

While solving nutritional and functional challenges, we also recognized that safety is always the first red line in infant food. Without safety assurance, all improvements in function and nutrition would lose their value. As a food product designed for infants, we must ensure that its design, manufacturing, and application strictly comply with the highest safety standards.

To fundamentally enhance safety, we plan to use E. coli Nissle 1917 as our future chassis microorganism. This strain is an internationally recognized probiotic with more than a century of safe application. It is included in the GRAS (Generally Recognized as Safe) list and does not produce endotoxins, providing a reliable safeguard for our biomanufacturing system.

At the same time, our design strictly follows the principle of “ingredient addition” rather than “live bacteria addition.” In future industrial production, the final infant formula will only contain highly purified 2’-FL, trypsin, and β-galactosidase, rather than live engineered bacteria or DNA. This strategy eliminates the risk of introducing genetically modified components into the food chain from the very beginning.

From a regulatory perspective, lawyer Xia reminded us that the addition of different functional ingredients determines the product’s classification. For example, if digestive enzymes (trypsin, β-galactosidase) are included, the product may be classified as Foods for Special Medical Purposes (FSMP), which requires stricter clinical validation and approval procedures.

Based on both regulatory requirements and market demand, we designed a dual product line strategy:

1. Functional Infant FormulaCore ingredient: 2’-FL produced via biosynthesis.

Regulatory position: According to Announcement No. 8 (2024) of the National Health Commission of China, 2’-FL has been approved as a food nutrient fortifier. This product can be filed as a conventional or functional food with a relatively established approval pathway, enabling shorter time to market to meet general family needs for immune enhancement.

1. Foods for Special Medical Purposes (FSMP)Core ingredients: 2’-FL with additional trypsin and β-galactosidase, used to pre-treat cow’s milk proteins and lactose.

Regulatory position: Since this formulation has a clear medical intervention purpose (addressing protein indigestion and lactose intolerance), it falls under FSMP regulations. Although the development and approval process is stricter, it provides precise nutritional support for premature infants, allergy-prone infants, and other special populations.

Through this dual product strategy, we reinforce the safety foundation of our project while meeting different levels of market demand. This ensures that our solution can both be rapidly deployed for the general population and provide targeted, clinical-grade support for special groups.

To ensure that our research results truly move beyond the laboratory and serve more families, we have always regarded product implementation as our ultimate goal. We aim not only to solve the scientific problems of safety, nutrition, and digestibility at the molecular level, but also to identify feasible industrial transformation pathways—turning our research into formula milk powder that parents can actually purchase and infants can safely consume.

Intellectual Property

We recognize that only with a sound intellectual property protection system can project outcomes be effectively safeguarded, paving the way for market entry and consumer service. In our discussions with Beijing AVIC General Technology Co., Ltd., experts clearly emphasized that once our project successfully demonstrates functional validation, we should immediately initiate patent applications. This is not only essential for protecting innovation but also provides a solid foundation for future cooperation, financing, and commercialization.

We have therefore incorporated patent applications into our future work plan, with a focus on:

1. Key gene pathway design
2. Engineering applications of protease and lactase
3. Safe production models from “cell factory” to ingredient purification

Visits to Milk Powder Factories

We visited and studied production lines at Junlebao and Yili milk powder factories, gaining in-depth knowledge of industrial processes, equipment, and strict quality control systems. This helped us clearly understand that for industrialization to be realized, our functional enzyme preparations and 2’-FL supplementation must be integrated into existing mature manufacturing processes.

Based on these insights, we designed a preliminary implementation plan:

1. Raw material selection: using fresh, high-quality cow’s milk as the base.
2. Functional processing: incorporating our engineered trypsin and β-galactosidase into the production process to pre-treat the milk, improving digestibility and reducing lactose intolerance risks.
3. Powder processing: converting milk into powder through spray-drying.
4. Functional fortification: adding highly purified 2’-FL at the final stage to strengthen immune-supporting functions.

In this way, we aim to seamlessly integrate our scientific results with industrial production, forming a feasible pathway from research to product transformation.

Social Responsibility

During our factory visits, company representatives reminded us that while advancing product development, we must also actively shoulder social responsibility. In response, we carried out the following efforts:

• Online charity: launched initiatives through the Alipay Charity Donation platform to raise public awareness of infant nutrition equity.

• Science communication: organized popular science lectures on formula milk, helping parents better understand nutritional components, feeding practices, and product choices.

We hope to leverage education, science communication, and public welfare initiatives to narrow the nutritional gap, enabling more families to understand and benefit from the health solutions brought by synthetic biology.

Opportunities and Market Outlook

Despite a tightening regulatory landscape, China presents attractive growth opportunities for infant formula—particularly in premium and organic segments. A sustained premiumization trend is reshaping demand, with parents increasingly favoring higher-value formulas that deliver clear health benefits. In parallel, specialized products—including hypoallergenic, lactose-free, and CMPA-targeted formulas—are gaining traction as health literacy rises and clinicians guide more precise feeding choices. For our dual-pathway strategy (functional formula vs. FSMP), this environment supports evidence-based positioning, encourages clinical validation, and rewards transparent, safety-first design, creating room for differentiated offerings that balance efficacy, tolerance, and accessibility.

Future Directions for Product Optimization

After our discussions with formula manufacturers, we realized that for a product to achieve long-term development, it cannot rely solely on a single technological breakthrough. Instead, it must also find its position in market competition, consumer perception, and industry trends. To truly benefit more families, we must continually optimize product design, pricing strategies, and market application models, while maintaining advantages in safety and nutrition.

To further grasp industry dynamics, we not only analyzed the functional design and pricing strategies of existing competitors, but also visited the Shenzhen Maternal and Child Expo. There, we engaged with participating companies, industry experts, and families to understand the latest developments in the maternal and infant sector. Through this research, we gained several important insights:

• Competitor Analysis: High-end formula brands often differentiate themselves through the addition of HMOs, partially hydrolyzed proteins, or low-lactose technologies, but these products generally suffer from prohibitively high prices.
• Consumer Insights: When choosing formula, parents prioritize nutrition and safety, yet affordability and convenience also play crucial roles in decision-making.
• Industry Feedback: Experts suggested that in the future, we should focus not only on increasing yield and reducing cost, but also on compliance and brand building.

These findings helped us position our project along a dual pathway of technology development and commercialization, and led us to a clear consensus: the future of infant formula must achieve simultaneous optimization in safety, nutrition, price, and trust in order to be truly sustainable and impactful.

Postpartum Care Centers

After completing the core functional validation, we entered the product implementation stage. At this point, we had to consider how to truly bring our product into maternal and infant families to serve real users. While the ultimate consumers are scattered households, we chose postpartum care centers as our initial entry point. These centers gather our core target group—new parents—who are in the critical stage immediately after childbirth. At this time, they are highly sensitive to choices regarding nutrition, safety, and feeding methods. Therefore, feedback from postpartum care centers is extremely valuable for assessing market acceptance and guiding product improvement.

From our interviews at postpartum care centers, we gained important insights into market conditions and user needs:

• Core concerns: Parents universally prioritize safety, followed by nutritional value (cognitive development, physical growth, immune enhancement).
• Unmet needs: Cesarean-born infants often experience delayed microbiota establishment; meanwhile, the market tends to overemphasize intelligence and bone growth while neglecting gut health.
• Industry shortcomings: Consumers are not looking for more and more functions, but rather consistent quality. Past quality crises (e.g., iodine overdose, melamine scandal) still strongly influence trust.
• Competitor advantages: Nestlé dominates the high-end and FSMP markets through its partially hydrolyzed protein technology (the only FDA-approved globally) and specialized medical formulas.
• Channels and branding: Mother-and-baby stores and e-commerce are the main sales channels. Purchases are primarily planned decisions rather than impulsive consumption. New brands must build trust gradually through educational activities (e.g., mother classes), doctor endorsements, and integrated online-offline promotion.

Feedback from postpartum care centers provided us with clear guidance for product implementation:

• Product optimization: Beyond safety and nutrition, we should further address digestibility and gut health as differentiating features.
• Market pathway: Use postpartum care centers as early-stage promotion channels, leveraging their professional credibility and concentrated user base to introduce our product more efficiently to maternal and infant families.

Throughout the development of our project, we have always placed inclusivity at the core. We do not only care about what technology can achieve, but also about the real needs of families. During a community activity, we met a mother with insufficient breast milk supply whose premature baby often suffered from bloating and slow weight gain. This made us realize that scientific solutions must address the most tangible and practical problems. In our product development, we are committed to enhancing the overall nutritional structure so that it supports both the healthy growth of infants and their special dietary needs. At the same time, we bring science into real-life contexts through bilingual science communication, collaborations with mother-and-baby stores, and lectures for parents and caregivers. For us, inclusivity is not just a slogan—it means ensuring that no infant or family is left behind in terms of nutrition and trust.

Science communication and public engagement are just as important as technical development, especially in a sensitive field such as infant nutrition. Parents often have many questions and anxieties, and without scientific guidance, they can easily be misled by fragmented information or commercial marketing.Xiaohongshu, a fast-growing content platform with a large female user base and an expanding global presence, brings together many young mothers and expectant parents. It became an ideal platform for us to carry out science communication and interactive engagement.

We launched a science communication column on Xiaohongshu, covering three main areas:

• Product knowledge: explaining our functional infant formula and the scientific logic behind it in accessible language.
• Synthetic biology literacy: introducing basic principles of synthetic biology and how they are applied in food and health.
• Interactive Q&A with parents: addressing common concerns about feeding, nutrition, and formula choice.

In this way, we not only spread scientific knowledge, but also collected authentic feedback and concerns from mothers, providing valuable insights for optimizing both our product design and communication strategies.

This initiative highlighted the enormous potential of online platforms in promoting education, trust, and inclusivity:

• Education: helping the public better understand nutrition and synthetic biology, reducing anxiety caused by information asymmetry.
• Trust: continuous interaction and answers strengthened consumers’ confidence in our team and product.
• Social value: leveraging Xiaohongshu’s influence allowed more families to access reliable scientific information, thereby advancing nutritional equity and sustainable development.

Through science communication and engagement on new media platforms, we hope not only to help more families understand and trust our product, but also to enable the public to better appreciate synthetic biology’s contributions to the future of health.

Overall, our human practices journey reflects SR-China’s ongoing exploration of how synthetic biology can better serve infant nutrition and family health. By actively engaging with a wide range of stakeholders—from parents and primary caregivers to pediatricians, nutritionists, industry experts, and formula companies—we embedded human needs into every step of our project, successfully advancing the implementation of ProBabyotics.By addressing pressing societal gaps—from the absence of human milk oligosaccharides (HMOs) to the digestibility challenges of casein and the prevalence of lactose intolerance—we aimed to comprehensively enhance the safety, nutrition, and accessibility of infant formula.Through education and public engagement, from Xiaohongshu science communication to community and postpartum center lectures, we worked to improve public understanding of synthetic biology and help parents acquire scientific knowledge for infant feeding.By embedding sustainability and inclusivity into our design—ranging from strict biosafety measures to our dual product pathway (functional formula and FSMP)—we laid the groundwork for responsible industrialization.

Yet, our journey does not stop here. With the enthusiasm of high school students that never ceases, we will continue to pursue innovative solutions to improve maternal and infant health, building bridges between science and society, and together shaping a safer, healthier, and more sustainable future！

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