Introduction

This project had given us a wonderful experience in get to learn so much about synthetic biology, Koi fish, the immune system and the koi disease (KHV). At the same time from talking to the university professors and Koi fish farm owners, we cannot help to noticed that at the current stage, although many people have been working on making drugs and vaccines to save Koi from KHV, as there is still no effective treatment to the disease, most of time when KHV is detected or the fish is sick, people will just kill the whole pond of fish to prevent more fish get infected. That cause big economics loss for the Koi owners. We believe by reaching a greater public, talking to them about how we applied synthetic biology in making a more effective solution to the issue and spread awareness of synthetic biology, more people will start to know and appreciate it.

Painting competition

In 21st century, where everyone (even kids) uses smart phones, we came up with the idea of using phone cases as one of the tool to educate people. In order to design the most creative Koi phone cases, we decided to get the whole school students involved. We made a presentation on the school assembly one day to talk about our project, and invite anyone who is interested in the project or painting to help us designed the Koi fish art work. To encourage more students to join this activity, we got the teachers permission for giving out community service hours to volunteers as reward. We are very glad to collect so many awesome artworks from our schoolmates to enrich our phone case design. To make the phone case educational, we put educational information about our project and synthetic biology on the underside. We planned on sending out these phone cases in specific points in Shanghai later as part of the interaction activity with the public.

Elementary School Lecture

We decided to target on our own school's G5 students who already have certain level of basic science knowledge and passion to give them a brief lesson on fundamental knowledge on synthetic biology, the Koi fish and concept of the fish immune system. As we are so lucky to have our own Koi fish pond inside the school, it was very easy to get these kids' attention on the topic. They showed lots of potentials in learning and memorizing certain knowledge.

Our teaching can be separate into three parts. The background information of Koi fish, immune system of fish and how synthetic biology can help enhance the fish immunity. We also prepared competition by the end of the class to test their gain on the lesson.

The students were really engaging in the class and definitely showed lots of passions towards the topic of our team and the field of synthetic biology. We received many excellent answers in the immune system of Koi fish and creative portraits of Koi fish.

Reaching out to the primary students was a brave act because the knowledge they hold in synthetic biology and biology were little. Our team should come up with lots of explanations for some specific terms to make sure that the information can be transmit properly and effectively. After this class, we will be able to reach more and more teaching environment and publishing the IGEM and synthetic biology into a much wider range; furthermore, we can develop potential motivations in the children.

Yu Garden

Once we finished making our special phone cases, we decided to go to Yu Garden to interact with greater public. Yu Garden is one of Shanghai's most famous sight spots which located in the northeast of the city, downtown. There are hundreds of thousand tourists come from all over the world every day visit the garden. Inside, there is a big Koi fish pond located in the center of the garden right below the well-known nine curved bridge. We believed by going there we will be able to talk to both Koi fans and experts and people who only know Koi fish by its pretty color.

By talking to people from different age group, careers and countries, we found that most middle-aged and elderly people who work in local companies prefer to raise Koi at home or in the office as Koi fish represents luck and fortune. However, most of people throw away the sick/dying fish without any diagnose or observation as they do not know how to save the sick fish. They all say if they knew more about the fish diseases or there is more effective way to save their lives, they will not give up on saving them so easily.

Surprisingly, we interviewed a middle-aged woman with rich knowledge of koi fish. She thinks it is more proper to observe the condition of the ill koi fish instead of just throwing away because the different condition of koi fish represent different symptoms, such as koi fish have digestive system disease if they sink in the water. For this symptom, she will select a traditional way which is feeding garlic or stop eating for a few days. She believes that koi fish not only represents good things, but also a spiritual sustenance and companionship.

At the same time, although Koi business is raising speedily in many other countries, few foreign friends know about Koi, let alone they can raise them. However, compare to Chinese tourists, more of our foreign friends know about synthetic biology and it's application in many areas. We introduced to them some basic knowledge of Koi fish and some important meanings of Koi fish in Chinese culture, and tell them about our project to show how we applied synthetic biology to solve a real world problem.

By the end, we gave phone cases to the interviewers as a thank you gift for their patience. We gave a little explanation on the info on the underside before they take the phone case. They all liked the design of patterns and knowledge of koi fish and synthetic biology, some of them cannot wait to put it onto their phones.

Contacting with different types of people was a big challenge as we are not sure about their degree of understanding koi fish. We have to talk to different people with diverse life experience and from different countries. We found that most of the people only know little knowledge of koi fish and seldom heard of synthetic biology. It is meaningful for us to carry out this activity and disperse knowledge about how synthetic biology can be a life changer, and we hope in the future, more people will get to learn about it and use it to create miracles.