Team:BNDS China/Public Engagement

Synthetic biology and artifacts seem irrelevant, but they share one thing in common- mysterious. Synthetic biology is reminiscent of some Frankenstein experiment and artifacts repairing sounds like forbidden handicraft. Thus, our goal is pretty clear: to raise public awareness of both synthetic biology and artifacts repairing. It's easy to say yet hard to perform. The crowd isn't students and we aren't teachers: people won't stop to listen unless we catch their attention. A lot of thought goes into this attraction of attention.

Red Window Market

The "Red Window Market" is an annual flea market on our campus, where students sell products designed/manufactured by them. It is a platform for students to express their ideas using products as a medium. We, BNDS_China, seized this chance, launched a product line about "Synbio X Artifacts".

Our Products

Postcards with biology-related paintings made by our team members.

Spinning Wheel: Who would say no to a giveaway? However, to get our prize, some biology facts are needed. We have prepared random questions about general biology and antique repairing.

Our Results

Learning with earning! All of our products were sold out. Even though we run out of prizes for the quiz, many students asked for the quiz to play the spinning wheel! Our biology teacher in our school even asked for our question bank to help her at her advanced biology course.

Inspiration

Public opinion about synthetic biology is a topic that recurs in many teams' public engagement activity. Indeed, opinions of synthetic biology are essential for this new science(relatively). However, this topic has been explored by our predecessors many times. While reviewing some of the public engagement, we found 2 flaws in the majority of previous projects.

The sample size is too small. For example, for activity towards public/society, opinions are gathered took place in a single campus or a park.

People get confused with the concept "Synthetic Biology" A lot of people do not understand what synthetic biology is. Besides, most of the teams explain synthetic biology by purely their own project, giving the audience a partial view of synthetic biology. Which often can't demonstrate synthetic biology as a whole, sometimes with a negative impact of overgeneralization to synthetic biology.

Project Description

"more than just Bulletin Board" is a small but big project, the method we use is simple: An empty bulletin board and a poster.

Brief Translation: It saves (life): "A technology from MIT may renovate immunotherapy for cancer" "AIDS is one step further from complete cure using new technology"
It kills: "Crazy scientist is creating a huge amount of gene-edited babies" "Gene editing will create superman, the natural human will be extinct soon."
"Who is it?"
"It's Synthetic Biology."
*the definition of synthetic biology from Nature."
The key element of this project is our target. We focus on our campus, not only a single campus but campuses. We narrow our target from the large society to a small society-campus. Accordingly, we dug deeper, we collaborated with other 3 teams (BSC_United, SHSBNU_China, ShanghaiFLS_China) across the whole country. Our result is not a representation of views about synthetic biology in a school, but the views of synthetic biology in the whole Greater China Area.

Process

We posted our board in our campus' science building, and briefly introduces synthetic biology to all students after school. Then we asked them to answer 3 questions based on their previous knowledge and our poster:

Before we introduce synthetic biology, what do you know about it?
What do you think about the future of synthetic biology?
What is your concern about synthetic biology and the technology behind it?(e.g. gene editing(CRISPR_Cas9))

Result

Based on the results we received from 4 schools, we were surprised to found how little and how much our classmates know and thought about synthetic biology.

A lot of students know about CRISPR_Cas9, because of the NSDA debate topic.
Gene-edited babies had a very bad influence, some students and teachers thought this and Professor He at first.
A lot of people couldn't differentiate gene-editing and synthetic biology.

Lacquer Workshop

Lacquerware is all about art. Traditional lacquerware is made to make an artwork. We hosted a workshop with the subject "lacquerware art" in our school's art class.

Social Media

We drew comics about molecular biology experiments and designed cute personified figures of E. coli and yeast. By posting them on social media like WeChat in our official account, we interacted with more than 900 users, discussing with them the safety and potentials of synthetic biology.