Team:Jiangnan China/Public Engagement
Education & Public Engagement
A. Education
Based on our idea “Science for all”, we vigorously engaged ourselves into education and science advocating activities. All events have served for our final goal in long run: creating a science culture for all generations in our community in the future.
On June 22th The first station: Tian-E-Hu kindergarten
I. Science speech
In this section, we introduced probiotics to children, and talked to them about the relationship between probiotics and our daily food, including yogurt, pickle and others. We also explained how probiotics work in our intestines. They showed great curiosity and asked us lots of questions about probiotics. We answered them patiently in an understanding way.
II. Drawing bacteria
In this section, we asked the children to image how bacteria look like and draw them down. What they have drawn showed their rich imagination and understanding about our introduction.
In summary, what we have done in Tian-E-Hu kindergarten enabled these children to understand the probiotics, and inspired their interest in science.
On July 8th The second station: the youth palace
This section was meant for adults and teenagers. We made some display boards, which articulate and connect fundamental ideas in genetics, synthetic biology and iGEM without technical vocabulary and dense detail. Parents whose children was engaged with our other activities can come and listen. We got great feedback from them. They asked many questions and learned a lot in this section. This is also a mutual understanding between our project and its potential consumers.
B. Communication with related Companies
Eager to know market demands and trading policies, as well as solving problems encountered during the experiments, we went to visit several biopharmaceutical companies. In the process of communication with the company's R&D personnel, we first introduced our project and raised our questions, and then they provided us with some suggestions. In short, by communicating with corporates, we have gained a lot and what we learned played an important guiding role in the follow-up experiments.
（1）On June 20th ------- Yakult Location: Wuxi, Jiangsu
At Yakult, we understand the great benefits of probiotics for human health. Yakult's live probiotics have strong acid resistance. Because of company secrets, we can't know how its acid resistance was improved. It is known that it is screened from many strains, which gave us some inspiration.
（2）On June 29th ------- Meiji Location: Suzhou, Jiangsu
First, we watched the propaganda film of Meiji and learned about the company's products, market and corporate culture. Then, we visited the company's workshop under the guidance of the staff. The streamlined production made us feel the advanced technology of the company. After discussion with the marketing staff, we learned that Lactococcus lactis has a large share of the probiotic market.
（3）On July 9th ------- Shandong Xinhua Pharmaceutical Limited by Share Ltd Location: Zibo, Shandong
Firstly we went to Xinhua pharmaceutical company. At this company, we learned that most of their current drugs are still relatively common drugs, and they are also used in the traditional way of taking drugs. However, some drugs need to be prepared in the form of coating, and need to control the time and dosage, which is not very convenient. Also, the granules are relatively large. We have initially explored the possible application of our project in pharmacy, such as making a live vaccine, etc. They gave affirmation, especially in the safety, and also proposed some problems, which is also the problem we need to solve in the future.
（4）On July 10th ------- Shandong Vland Biotechnology Co. Ltd
Later, we went to Vland biotech company to discuss the problem of frozen stress in the process of microbial fermentation and preservation and transportation. Although protective agents can be added to reduce the harm of acid stress and frozen stress, the advantages of Lactobacillus lactis in anti-acid and anti-freezing are self-evident. And they raised the issue of safety, not only the safety of the bacteria, but also the emissions of the natural environment, and they encouraged us to add a suicide mechanism, which was consistent with our idea, so we considered the suicide mechanism in the design of subsequent experiments.
（5）On July 13th ------ Biogrowing Bioengineering (Shanghai) Co. Ltd
Guided by the head of the R&D department, we visited the company's laboratories, learning a lot about some high-tech equipment. In the conference room of the R&D department, we conducted a far-reaching discussion with the person in charge. He told us the application regulations and policies of genetically engineered bacteria, which made us realize that genetically engineered bacteria cannot be eaten directly, which caused substantial changes in the direction of our project. We no longer stuck to the probiotics direction and try to find new application directions.
