Overview & Design
Our education and public engagement work are divided into two major areas, one for students and one for the public. Students, especially college students, have a good knowledge base, so we can discuss the true meaning of synthetic biology and promote the iGEM competition. Of course, the rigorous logic of synthetic biology has to be cultivated from an early age. Therefore, we contacted Beijing Chaoyang Foreign Language School and led the middle school students to make biological models together, to complete their own designs and to experience the engineering ideas in synthetic biology. In the process of making biological models together, we were also influenced by the novel ideas of the children and opened up our minds. For the public, many biological terms are not easy to understand, so we use WeChat platform and scientific animations to make more people understand synthetic biology.
The"Synthetic Biology Corner"
We received support from 7 professors in our college and introduced the ideas of synthetic biology to the students in biology-related courses such as molecular biology, microbiology, and microbial genetics, and after class, we discussed with them about what's on their mind. Because it was introduced in front of the classroom ten minutes ahead of each class, we called it "synthetic biology corner." This trick of using piecemeal time to introduce knowledge has aroused the interest of many students, and we usually continue our discussion after class.
iGEM Competition Propagation
We hosted an iGEM competition propaganda talk in our university and invited students from all grades and from all divisions to participate. In order to let more students know about it, we sent WeChat posts to expand the influence, hung our own poster in the campus, and distributed the iGEM brochures for the participants. At the meeting, we introduced the history of iGEM competition, the award requirements, team formation and the design of our E.SPA. The students who participated in the talk also raised many questions. Many students expressed their wish to participate in the competition next year.
Middle School Workshop
In addition to promoting synthetic biology at the university, we also went to Beijing Chaoyang Foreign Language School to uncover the genetic secrets to the middle school students. After teaching the basics of DNA structure and central dogma, we set up a small workshop and made biological models together. The children’s ideas such as using E. coli as a coating that can automatically change color according to temperature are very creative, and have given us inspirations too.
Below are some excellent examples made by these children.
Figure 1 Animal Cell Structure Model by Zhiming Luo
Figure 2 Eukaryotic Genetic Information by Haoran Gao
Figure 3 DNA structure model by Lijing Xu
Scientific Animation - The World of Microorganisms
During the project E.SPA, we have always been thinking about how to popularize the power of microbes to the public. Therefore, we accepted the invitation of iGEM-Tianjin and joined the production of the " The World of Microorganisms " video compilation with 7 other teams. Based on the properties of the three bacteria species used in our project E.SPA, we created their cartoon characters with a simple introduction to arouse the public’s interest and deepen their understandings of microorganisms.
WeChat Official Account - iGEM CAU
According to the statistics, WeChat has 1.04 billion users in 2018. In China, everyone uses it and it has become the most important social media platform. Therefore, we created our own WeChat official account iGEM CAU and regularly post updates of our project E.SPA as well as the knowledge of synthetic biology, expecting to bring our knowledge to more users.
