Team:CPU CHINA/HP/Silver
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TED speech on campus
TEDxCPU is another student organization on our campus, they were licensed by TED officially. They provide a platform at school to tell stories, share interesting thoughts. In their Summer Lecture 2018, our leader, Huandi Xu made a speech named “Synthesis Biology—Create a better future.” He showed how synthesis biology can make our life more convenient and introduced iGEM to the audience, to promote public awareness of this field and this great international competition. There were nearly 100 people in the field watching. Some of them showed keen interest in synthesis biology after the speech, and approach Huandi for more information. (Click here to watch the video).
CPU Bio-X Club
CPU Bio-X Club, the first student-based school organization for life sciences of China Pharmaceutical University, was established by our senior schoolmates—2017 CPU_CHINA iGEMers . Thank them for all their effort. Our club aims to promote iGEM, trainnew iGEMers and provide an academic exchange platform for allstudents who are interested in life sciences. In order to do that, we organizevarious activities throughoutthe whole year on campus.
Journal Club (JC)is held every week. Each time one of our club members presents a recent article in the biomedical literature and/ora former iGEM case. Sometimes weinvite faculty members to talk about their researches. Before the eventwe inform our schoolmates of the specific materials to be discussed with a poster. All who are interested are welcome.After the presentations, audience are allowed to raisequestions and give opinions of their own.
Apart from JC, we try to organize novel activities to get more people involved. Last year we had “Academic Debate Contest”. For this year, we organized the activity “Surviving in the BioValley ”. It was anorienteering event but combined with quiz of synthetic biology, molecular biology and biochemistry. This activity emphasized public engagement and allowed all participants to broaden their biological knowledge in an entertaining way. There were about 200 people participated in the activity.
After the activity, we helped our junior schoolmates hold a recruitment for 2019 iGEM team. We interviewed more than 20 students and selected those who are talent in academic, mathematic modeling and art design.
Surviving in the BioValley was an orienteering event but combined with quiz of synthetic biology, molecular biology and biochemistry, which allow all participants to broaden their biological knowledge in an entertaining way. There is no need for the participants to worry that they can't solve the problems. Every team is allowed to research the answers by various?ways, such as finding answers in the books, Internet and so forth. The fastest team finish all the games will be the biggest winner. Now, let's begin the game!
The first stop is the synthetic biology venue. Here we borrow the projects of Fudan team and SDU_CHINA team in 2017 iGEM. In the first project, you need to construct the "stripe" to response to different intensity signal input. In the other project, you should construct two plasmids based on CRISPR technique to cleave PD-L1 gene in cancer cells and make sure they are safe for normal cells simultaneously. The guide will tell you the function of every part. If you can't decide how to construct the plasmids, you can skip this part, but with total time increasing 20 minutes.
The second stop is the venue of molecular biology. In this level, you can engage in Dodgeball of gene. Choose a theme, then knock the uncorrelated cups down with a ball. For example, in transcription theme, there are seven cups marked with telomerase, enhancer, promoter and so on. So you need to knock down the cups labeled with telomerase.
Now, we arrive at outdoor venue of the biochemistry theme. There are two tasks, Draw something and Bio-hopscotch, that you need to accomplish. Draw something is the game that one person draw some required biochemical terms like t-RNA, chromosome, and the other guess what the picture is. One who paints can't speak or write any words. Bio-hopscotch test the gamer's knowledge of biochemical reactions. You can choose lower difficulty of Draw something for five questions to match higher difficulty of Bio-hopscotch of glycolysis and Kreb's cycle. Or higher difficulty of Draw something for eight questions match lower difficulty of Bio-hopscotch of Hatch-Slack Cycle. This outdoor activity also attracted many passersby to engage in it.
During the activity, we also interviewed the participants, asked them some questions about synthetic biology and introduced iGEMas well assynthetic biology to the participants in a professional way. Let’s listen what they said .
We asked some questions about liver cancer in the survey. Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the fourth most common and the third most lethal cancer in China, accounting for 85–90% of primary liver malignancy. It is particularly prevalent in China because of the high prevalence of chronic hepatitis B infection.
Among the 200 participants, up to 11% report that their relatives or friends have been diagnosed with HCC. However, the interviewees generally only have a brief understanding about this disease, only 3% knows its early symptoms. Therefore, it is of vital importance to popularize relevant knowledge to the public so that the development of HCC might be discovered or prevented at an early stage.
Tip:Please click here to read our booklet !
Tip:Please click here to read our booklet !
The World Health Organization believes that more than 40% of cancer can be prevented. Studies have shown that the occurrence of HCC is closely related to viral hepatitis, cirrhosis, aflatoxin and alcohol intake, all of which are preventable. Healthy lifestyle (e.g., regularly taking vitamins E and B) may also reduce the risk of HCC. Contrary to such facts, only half of the interviewees agree that cancer can be avoided with certain measures. What’s more, the majority consider cancer as some kind of senile disease and therefore no special attention is currently needed for the prevention of cancer.
In question 21, only 33% report that they take vitamins on a daily basis, suggesting that we can persuade people of the benefits of vitamin intake and furthermore reduce the probability of HCC by helping people develop vitamin-taking habits. Inspired by these results, we wrote a booklet about the prevention of HCC.(Click here to see the booklet).