Team:XMU-China/Public Engagement
Xiamen Science and Technology Museum
XMU-China iGEM team held science popularization activities in Xiamen Science and Technology Museum in August to advertise more for synthetic biology. The main audiences were preschool children and primary school students, as well as their parents.
The team members designed a kind of stamp card named circuit jigsaw. Four stamps which should be taped on the card represent four basic elements in the genetic circuit: promoter, RBS, target gene and terminator. The children needed to gain all four stamps by participating in four games to make the circuit express unimpededly. This game, visually displaying the genetic circuit, helps children and their parents better understand the thoughts of engineering and modularization.
Furthermore, we also arranged some basic games:
(1) The Matching of Base Pairing: The complementarity of base in DNA molecules can be simulated by matching corresponding cards. Players could find the two sets of cards, “A & T” or “C & G”, to win this game.
(2) “Guess what?”: Children could draw the shape of the experimental instrument by lining the numerical spots and then guess the name of the instrument commonly used in biological labs.
(3) The Demonstration of Protein Denaturation: We did the demonstrative experiment of protein denaturation by mixing milk and copper sulfate solution for these children.
(4) The Learning of Microstructure in Life System: These kids drew gene bars with colored pens or finished the jigsaw of cell structures under our guidance.
The designs of all these games combined interesting games and basic knowledge in biology together, which were loved by children and parents. The children in the hall even stood in long lines in front of the showcases to join in games. Many children and parents enthusiastically asked the team members for more biological principles and then became interested in XMU-China team and iGEM competition, which encouraged the members to work harder for promotion.
“Fighting for the Mooncakes!” is a lively traditional event for citizens to celebrate with family and friends during Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival in Xiamen City, China and some areas around. People can win different kinds of mooncakes and other presents by rolling dice to get different lucky points.
After the freshmen enter the school, a freshman seminar was held in Siming and Xiang’an Campus of Xiamen University respectively. Conducting this event, the team members also distributed brochures to the participants so as to propagandize iGEM and the theme of this year’s project. Many students expressed their interests in iGEM and synthetic biology, and consulted the team members about the details of the competition and principles of project.
Hundreds of students passed by our booth and took part in the event on that day. About 90 of them joined the online chat group so that they could consult more at any time. At the same time, the participants were invited to fill out the questionnaire whose main goal is to collect public feedback about the project. If visitors of this webpage want to browse details of the questionnaire, please click the link.
XMU-China team developed a mobile real-time card game APP in order to publicize the project and help the public understand the design of this year’s topic. Four kinds of bacteria roles were designed for players to choose to act as. Each type of bacterium has different genes and functional characteristics. The players involved can cooperate or compete with each other for more survival resources in order to keep one’s role alive.
The players can experience the relationships between groups of bacteria in our project in this simulated scene provided. Comprehension of the rules about how to use cards of this game can help players better understand the function of genes in our circuit and the working principle of some functional proteins. In addition, the proportion and quantity of various cards in each round are not exactly the same due to the use of dynamic database, which could stimulate the different environments. Consequently, the change of relations among these bacteria fighting for survive will be presented.
The servers has been set up both in Shanghai and the eastern United States in order to facilitate the participation of players wherever in China or overseas. Lovely and adorable images involved, the interface and characters in the game are animated, which would make our project more attractive and prevalent.
