Team:OUC-China/Human Practices
Overview
Our human practice efforts to popularize synthetic biology to the public, especially endeavor to raise awareness of importance of quantification, which becomes an advanced research hotspot. We made video to help people understand synthetic biology more easily and clearly and over XXX people watched it, we gave out 1000 brochures about synthetic biology and iGEM, we hold lectures for different people from all walks of life.
This year our project is to develop a new and precise regulatory method based on synthetic biology. We firstly made questionnaire survey about quantification in daily lives but we found most people lacked basic perception about quantification. For example, 40% people didn’t considered meals combination as an example of quantification. Considering quantification research has drawn increasing attentions, we decided to focus on educating different people and popularizing synthetic biology through customized ways.
Popularization to the public
For the public, we tried to publicize synthetic biology using relatively easy language toward as many people as possible through our activities. We went to communities and tourist attractions and met people from the young to the old. With the help of our brochures, we explained basic knowledge of synthetic biology and explained the meaning of quantification in their daily lives. They then realized that basic necessities of life were closely linked to quantification, like dietary recipe. We also posted our video on website which used simple language and vivid flash to introduce what is synthetic biology and how it can make our life better.
Deep communication
Specific to people working on science and technology industry, we tried to promoting synthetic biology in a deeper way. Therefore, we held academic lectures in Qingdao Association for Science and Technology for a delegation from Tibet, China. Over 90 teachers participated in lectures and they had more knowledge about synthetic biology. Moreover, due to coming from Tibet where the economic and educational development is relatively backward, these teachers could bring the conception of synthetic biology to Tibet and promoted it in these remote regions.
Youth education
For people who are more interested in nature science like university students, we designed series activities for them to enjoy personal experience about syntheticbiology. We held a summer camp and invited about 30 students from different universities all over China, like Shandong Agricultural University etc. By holding jamboree to present posters, doing experiment of molecular biology, doing literature based on research, students enjoyed themselves in synthetic biology and achieved necessary skill for academic exploration. In our school, we also held similar academic activities to attract more potential students to join in synthetic biology. For example, we held lectures for about 100 students to introduce synthetic biology in details.
Consulting with specialists
When designing our project in April, we went to visited researcher Chengang, Xu in Qingdao Institute of Bioenergy and Bioprocess Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. At that time, we wanted to have the feasibility analysis of our design. More importantly, we met problems about chassis. We initially design our project based on B.subtilis, a kind of gram-positive bacterium but after consulting Professor Xu, who did research related to our project and suggested us to use E.coli, which would make our experiment more feasible. We then compared the enzyme system both in B.subtilis and E.coli and found that in E.coli there was no enzyme cleavage from 5’. Therefore, we finally determined to use E.coli, the more versatile chassis.
In September, we joined the CCiC( Conference of China iGEMer Committee), which was a platform for Chinese iGEM teams to communicate with each other. About 30 teams and 300 iGEMers from all over China gathered together this year and we got numerous responses from others, including suggestions on the thoughts of experiments, heated discussions on pathway design, and reflections on safety and application. Attendance of CCiC helped us acquire both reflections and inspiration from communicating, and improved our projects in the end.
Particularly, we consulted our project and experiment with Haoqian, Zhang, the co-founder of an iGEM startup in China named Bluepha. He was the former leader of Peking iGEM 2010 and had rich experiment of iGEM. At the beginning, he thought quantification had the significant meaning in synthetic biology as well. He then gave us lots of specific and useful suggestion. For example, he advised us to exchange the upstream and downstream proteins to make our project more powerful. We adopted this suggestion and modified our project when we came back from CCiC. Besides, we met problems with our modeling. Another former leader of OUC iGEM, Yang, Liu suggested us to solve these problems in other alternative ways, which would make our work more efficient.
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