Introduction
According to the World Bank, the total world electric power consumption in 2014 almost reached 3.2 thousand kWh per capita, and the trend continues to increase linearly. China’s electric power consumption in 2014 is 3.9 thousand kWh per capita, which is higher than the world average. As the fastest growing economy, China’s electric power consumption is increasing exponentially and until 2014, up to 99.998% of the population has access to electricity.
Upon noticing this high demand for electricity, our team drafted an eco-friendly solution of using glowing plants to replace light. To ensure that our project can gain the public’s approval, we first gathered statistical data from China’s largest online selling platform, Taobao.
Although these “glowing” products glow in a different way than our tobacco plants, the numbers are enough to show the popularity of luminescent products. If we could make our plants auto-luminescent, then it is very likely that the public would accept it. We further conducted a survey to ensure this hypothesis.
Survey
In this survey, we designed a total of 9 questions in both Chinese and English investigating the public’s interest and opinion on luminescent plants. We received 391 responses in total. The demographics of our respondents include twice as many females than males, and nearly 40% are below the age of 18 while about 24% are between the 41 to 50 years old. The age demographics of the survey may seem unbalanced due to the large percentage of respondents under 18. However, the amount of economically independent and dependent respondents is approximately even as 49.13% are below 25 years old and 49.87% are above 25. As a result, we are able to collect voices from both younger and elder audiences.
From the results of the question above we can conclude that most of our respondents have certain knowledge about luminescent plants previously. As a result, they may be able to provide more insights or opinions about luminescent plants.
Next, we provided an example product of a luminescent plant and asked respondents to rank how likely they would purchase the plant. 1 star represents not at all likely to purchase while 5 stars represent extremely likely to purchase. Around 16% of the respondents are not at all likely to purchase the plant while 33% of the respondents are extremely likely to purchase the plants. However, the average score given is 3.47, showing that although a larger percentage of people are extremely interested in purchasing the plant, the majority remains uncertain. This is a reasonable result as exact details and functions of the plant are not yet provided.
Next, a follow-up question is designed for those who are not at all likely to purchase luminescent plants in order to investigate their reasons. Given 5 possible choices or boxes to check, the two most common reasons of not purchasing are “concerned with potential health effects” and “prefer a regular night lamp or other decorations.” As a result, this emphasizes the importance of reassuring the safety of our synthetic luminescent plant and making sure that it has no negative effects on human health. At the same time, it is also important for us to improve the luminescent plants’ functions, such as brightness or life span, in order to separate it from regular night lamps.
In our sixth question, we asked the respondents’ highest acceptable price range, and the result seems to be relatively equally distributed. This indicates that the public’s opinions are widely divided as respondents fall in various age ranges.
In addition, from results of question 7, the most common use of luminescent plants is decoration as around 88% of the respondents chose decoration as one of their purposes of purchasing the luminescent plant. In addition, multiple people included using the plant as a study material for children to observe in the extra commentary box. Thus, this provides an additional purpose in which the synthetic luminescent plant may be used for.
Furthermore, in question 8, we once again asked what characteristics of bioluminescent plants are people most concerned about. Similar to question 5, the largest concern is its effects on human health. In addition, numerous people mentioned about the life expectancy of the synthetic bioluminescent plant as they are concerned whether the genetic modification process will damage the plant’s health. Also, they are concerned whether the luminescent plants can be easily taken care of and kept alive. These additional commentaries indicate that besides the appearance or brightness of the plant, another important task is to make sure that the plant remains healthy and buyers can easily take care of it.
At the end of the survey, we asked our respondents to rate our current research and development on a scale from 1 to 5, with 1 being completely not interested and will not support and 5 being interested and will support. Around 60% rated 5 and the average rating is 4.31. This shows that the majority of respondents are interested in and support our research and development of luminescent plants. In other words, although people have several questions and uncertainties about luminescent plants, such as the price, life span etc., the market for luminescent plants remains potential as people are interested in this fantastic and fictional product.
Poster
After conducting this survey, we started the design for our experiment. Since most people are concerned with the possible health effects that auto-luminescent plants may have, we altered our original method of using gene guns to using agrobacterium-mediated transformation so that it would cause less damage to the plant. We also made a poster to explore more about the biosafety of using such a method.
Social Media
We posted the survey and the poster on different social media platforms so we can target different audience. Since our main social outreach would be in China, we first created a WeChat official account to post regular updates on our project progress.
We also created facebook and instagram accounts so we can contact with different iGEM teams out there in the world.
Fundraising
Fundraising is also a major component of our human practice. We started a fundraising campaign on a famous Chinese fundraising website: Modian. Over the course of a few months, we raised a total of 4,601.11 RMB on Modian, most of which were spent on purchasing more lab equipments.
We also posted several updates on the website so that the project is more convincing to our donators.
Shanghai Botanical Garden Activity
Besides online public outreach, we also introduced our project and synthetic biology to the public in the Shanghai Botanical Garden.
After going through levels of applications and approvals, our team finally presented our iGEM project to the public and spread more knowledge about plants and synthetic biology in the Shanghai Botanical Garden, the largest plant display and science education garden in Shanghai. We deeply appreciate the opportunity that the Shanghai Botanical Garden provided us with and we are very honored.
On October 15th, six of our team members went to the Shanghai Botanical Garden for the exhibition. After considering the complexity that the public is able to understand, we simplified some of the experimental concepts and design process, focused on the more interesting topics and possible application of our product. In addition, we also explained the basic mechanisms behind synthetic biology to tourists showing demonstrated interests in this field and corrected some misconceptions relating to synthetic biology. We hope that this public outreach event could provide the public with a more authentic understanding of genetically modified products and genetic engineering. Our team members also learned a lot through this event. Through answering people’s questions about our project, or just synthetic biology in general, we gained more presentation and discussion skills, which better prepare us for the upcoming Giant Jamboree presentation.
Our Exhibition Brochure
Poster designed for the event: simplified so easier for public to understand
Event Photos
