Team:Tianjin/Public Engagement
Essay Activity
In order to promote the public's in-depth understanding and rational thinking of synthetic biology, and to understand the views and suggestions of contemporary college students on the future development of synthetic biology, we organized a "Future Synthetic Biology" essay activity for all the students and friends from all walks of life who are concerned about our WeChat public address.
Three tracks were opened for this campaign:
What will the future look like? It should be your dream. And synthetic biology is undoubtedly the rainbow-like brush that you can use to shape the future.
Please use synthetic biology to write the future of your dream. It requires that the scientific and technological means of synthetic biology can be realized, with unlimited words and subject matter, and can be written into interesting science fiction stories.
Please design a possible, brilliant application value or purely interesting a research project on synthetic biology, complete the development and design of the project (encourage expansion, encourage rigorous thinking) and consider:
Summary of Project Topics
Sources of project ideas
The possible impact of the project on the world (e.g. economy, environment, society, morality, security)
Possible difficulties and solutions in project development
Application value or significance of the project
As an undoubtedly Frontier Science in the new era, synthetic biology should also consider the potential ethical and security issues that development may bring while we are surprised at its broad prospects and the great improvement it may bring to human society.
Please take the ethical and safety issues of synthetic biology development as the topic of discussion. You can write down your thoughts and worries in the light of the hot topics that have recently attracted public attention.
After nearly a month's solicitation and ten days' selection of iGEM members, we have selected a number of interesting articles which not only contain great brilliance, but also lay out very interesting ones.
Below is some excerpts from an excellent article:
"The origin of life can have an infinite number of material bases for storing information, and on earth the basis of that material is DNA, but our four-base, three-base adjacent codon form corresponding to 20 amino acids is not the only possibility, life has an infinite number of possibilities."
"Eight bases of DNA information storage, four bases codon transcription messenger primitive cells divided occupied the whole of the earth, to detect again, Qinghe Jiang has finally found the original traces the formation of RNA, and to the biological evolution may have traces of the four bases of DNA, has found the evolution of the former way in one thousand, he was put in the sleeping time of original cell block and destroy completely."
"A study of the four-base codon RNA messenger found that it could carry theoretical 256 amino acids. Known as the hand of god, synthetic biologists have introduced a variety of new synthetic small molecule modules to make up the body, and a variety of new functional tissue and organ designs, realizing the ultimate transformation of the human body."
>>Click here to view the special prize works of the essay activity
Through the feedback of this essay activity, we saw the vision of the future of the participants using synthetic biology, and learned some participants' thinking and worry about the future development of synthetic biology:
"In 2018, He Jiankui's infant edited by gene stirred up a storm of public opinion and touched the sensitive nerves of the public. Can the so-called gene editors really resist AIDS? Even if it is true, can the infant edited by gene still be regarded as a human species at present? And for babies themselves, is it necessary to carry out an AIDS vaccination experiment? Will they grow up to be socially exclusive?"
"There is no doubt that synthetic biology is rising, and it is also increasingly prominent to promote human civilization. Artificial beef burgers, using genetically modified plants to produce meat proteins, are expected to reduce carbon emissions while solving dozens of the growing food needs of billions of people. The transformation of yeast to produce various drugs from cattle islets has been played at our fingertips, greatly improving the health care of human beings..."
We believe that scientific researchers need to obtain information from the outside world and enhance communication and understanding with the public. We hope that the "future synthetic biology" essay activities can become a good channel to build a bridge between scientific research and society, and provide some reference for other teams to carry out public participation.
Interesting Laboratory Opening
In order to let more people know about synthetic biology and build a bridge between biological textbooks and synthetic biology. This year, iGEM-Tianjin held two interesting laboratory opening activities. Nearly 100 students entered our laboratory in batches and participated in this activity.
In our laboratory, we introduced some experimental instruments and some basic experimental operations for them, and explained the laboratory safety problems that need to be paid attention to. At the same time, we also shared them with our project this year and had a positive discussion on its possible impact on the world and new applications.
The last part seems to be their favorite. We have prepared for them the activity of "using microbes to paint pictures". Under the guidance of us, participants played the imagination in the tablet, and also felt the charm of the biological experiment.
What do we hope to get participants to know through this activity?
1. Feel the charm of synthetic biology and increase laboratory knowledge.
2. Understand our project and how it will have a beneficial impact on the world.
3. Create their own ideas for new applications of our project
Paintings of participants
Team members are talking with participants
According to the feedback we received from the participants, we believe that this interesting laboratory activity has succeeded in meeting our expectations. Most of the students who visited the laboratory showed great interest in biological experiments, and they raised many interesting questions to us. When we introduced our project to the students, 80% of them could understand the impact of our work on the world. What's more, we were surprised that in the continuous communication with the students,two students put forward their own novel ideas for the new application of our project:
1. Under the framework of "Cell Workshop", can we use mixed bacteria system to realize "self-assembly" of composite products?
2. Can Saccharomyces cerevisiae be used as a platform for lipid and biofuel production?
Preaching and Teaching
This year, Tianjin university has ushered in 4804 new students, who have a variety of new week activities. At the same time, it's also a good time to spread synthetic biology ideas and promote the iGEM competition to these new college students. We held two iGEM seminars for freshmen. We told them about the development and frontier fields of synthetic biology, and introduced and publicized the iGEM in detail.
In this speech, we learned that most of the freshmen have only vague knowledge of synthetic biology, and few of them have knowledge of iGEM. We shared them with our academic experience in synthetic biology and participation in iGEM. We also introduced the achievements of the iGEM-Tianjin team and experience in participating in iGEM competition for twelve consecutive years.
After the lecture, the students showed great interest in iGEM and synthetic biology, and our efforts were highly appreciated by every visitor.
Joint Video Shooting
In order to popularize synthetic biology scientifically and enhance public interest and understanding in this field. This year, iGEM-Tianjin contacted a number of domestic teams to introduce various "the world of microbes" to popular science in the form of interesting videos.
Our joint video
Public Address Announcement
With the rapid development of the media, the WeChat public address has become one of the hottest public media platforms in China. We recognize that we can make use of WeChat public platform to popularize synthetic biology and iGEM ideas to more people. We have created the iGEM-Tianjin public platform, one of the most popular ways to promote information and get information from outside.
We introduced the related knowledge and ideas of iGEM contest on the platform of public address, and introduced synthetic biology on the public address. At the same time, the public address is also one of the platforms for us to liaison with other teams and organize the "future synthetic biology" essay actuvity. Through our use of the public address, we believe that this is a good way to publicize the synthetic biology and iGEM.