Team:SCAU-China/silver
Synthetic biology and the International Genetically Engineered Machine Competition is incredible. We seize every opportunity to promote synthetic biology and our projects. In the two years since our team was founded, we have hosted so many events such as open days, talks and booth display to engage the public in our work, iGEM and synthetic biology.You can get more detailed information on the Public Engagement & Education page.
When we promoted in some high schools and tried to help the high school team , we found that high school faced different and more complicated problems with the university when building the iGEM team.The refore, we analyzed some common problems and made some suggestions, hoping to give some reference to the high school IGEM team. What’s more, we also maintained close contact with the two high school teams, validating the feasibility of our recommendations and effectively helping them to work in the 2018 iGEM competition. You can see the details of our help to these two high school teams in Integrated Human Practices.
In our survey of high school teams or high school students who want to build iGEM teams, we find that high school students face some similar problems in the establishment of the iGEM team.
For high school students, without school funding, it is not easy to convince others to invest in their teams and projects. Whether it is the cost of competition registration ($4,500) or the Jamboree registration fee ($695) for each person, it is a huge cost for high school students, not to mention other possible expenses.
We listed some of the possible costs of participating in the iGEM competition.
High school iGEMers may be able to raise funds from the following aspects:
1.School
Students receive awards in international competitions and have certain benefits for the reputation and development of the school. Some schools may have relevant funds to apply for, come up with a feasible plan, convince your school that you have the chance to win, and maybe get a certain amount of funding from the school.
2.Company
It is a good way to seek funding from companies. Although it is difficult to get financial help directly, it is still possible to get some useful discounts on purchases or get some sponsored items. If the company you contact is interested in your offer, they may reply to you or ask for more information. If you can convince the company that you have the ability to achieve your goals, some companies will be willing to give you some help. You can list a list of sponsoring companies you want and then get in touch with them via email. Your email needs to be concisely stated for your purpose and to prove your ability (can be accompanied by a simple plan). It's important to note that if you can make good publicity for the company, you are more likely to get more funding. Therefore, if you are willing, it may be helpful to do some publicity for the company on your promotional campaign or social media. You can also use the corporate communication as a conditional exchange to get some supplies. (It may not be easy to get some funding from the company, but don't be discouraged.If you try a lot, you may have results.) In addition, on the iGEM official website, you can also get some corporate sponsorships that can be applied.Taking 2018 as an example:
1.IGEM 2018 teams can receive 20 kb of FREE custom DNA or Alt-R® CRISPR Genome Editing products from IDT
2. GenScript is offering a team grant opportunity worth $4000 in products and support, as well as 20% off select products and services for all teams in 2018.
3.MathWorks will provide free MATLAB Software License and technical support to all iGEM teams for use in the 2018 competition.
4. Opentrons plan to give 10 iGEM teams the means to automate many of the most common protocols done as part of the 2018 iGEM competition.
5.Promega plan to sponsor 10 iGEM teams from throughout the world by providing each team with up to $2,000 in free Promega products.
3.Universcity Team
Although most college teams do not have extra funds, it is difficult to get financial assistance directly from the university team, but get some helps of some equipments and borrow venue in the university team is usually feasible. You can try to contact some of the nearest university teams to get help on the equipments and on the field.
4.Social Fundraising
It is possible to raise a certain amount of money through social fundraising, but the object needs to be selective. In general, fundraising is easier to succeed in a group of parents or alumni.
As a high school team, it is obvious that the equipment is difficult to be as complete and sophisticated as the university team.In addition, many instruments and equipment require a certain amount of training, or obtain a certain qualification to have permission to use, which is indeed a problem for high school students.
In China, where we are in the region, many high schools are not equipped with specialized biological laboratories because of the discipline allocation. The equipments and venues for high school iGEMers to do experiments are a big problem.
For reference, we have listed some of the equipment that are indispensable in the iGEM experiment work (may need to be adjusted according to the actual situation).
It is a good way to seek funding from co>Although not easy for high school, most of the equipment that must be used in the iGEM project can be easily found in universities. So it’s a good idea to plan your own equipment early and ask for help from the university. Similarly, if there are some devices that require the ability or qualifications that are difficult for high school students, you can also seek help from the university.
It is a good way to seek funding from co>Although not easy for high school, most of the equipment that must be used in the iGEM project can be easily found in universities. So it’s a good idea to plan your own equipment early and ask for help from the university. Similarly, if there are some devices that require the ability or qualifications that are difficult for high school students, you can also seek help from the university.
In general, it is much easier to get help from the lab where your PI (instructor, advisor) work. Second, you can also get help from other university iGEM teams through collaborations. On the iGEM official website, there is a collaborations page (http://xxxx(year).igem.org/Teams/Collaborations) where teams can share information about ways they wish to collaborate to reach all of the 2018 iGEM teams.
Compared with college students, middle school students may face more challenges in knowledge storage during the competition. Through our survey of some high school teams, we analyzed that the knowledge challenges of high school students may come from these aspects : theoretical knowledge, experimental skills, wiki, modeling, art design. Next, we will make specific recommendations on these aspects.
To have a basic understanding of synthetic biology, the most convenient and quick way is to ask if your PI (instructor, advisor) is willing to conduct a basic course for you. Besides, online classes are a good choice, and you can easily find many relevant university boutique courses on MOOC (massive open online courses).(Maybe your country will have other online course platforms in the corresponding language.) After having basic theoretical knowledge, you may also need to read a lot of other teams' wikis to really understand iGEM's projects.
To learn basic experimental skills, training in the lab for a while under the leadership of a mature experimenter will have some effect. You may be able to find help from your PI (instructor, advisor) or some college team. Some college teams may be willing to provide some guidance for the high school team when completing their own experiments. (Like our team, we offer a two-day bio-experimental skills training course for a high school. More detailed information can be found on our Public Engagement & Education page.)
In order to meet the iGEM competition award requirements, there are some sub-pages on the wiki that must be completed. You can find the relevant requirements on the page of iGEM's Pages for Evaluating Criteria for Medals and Awards (http://xxxx(year).igem.org/Judging/Pages_for_Awards). In addition to understanding the basic requirements, you also need to have or learn some basic knowledge of web page writing (html css js). It might be helpful to look at some of the corresponding video lessons or to go to the web production forum. After you have the basic web page writing knowledge, refer to the excellent wiki and understand the popular framework to help you write a better wiki.
In order to meet the iGEM competition award requirements, there are some sub-pages on the wiki that must be completed. You can find the relevant requirements on the page of iGEM's Pages for Evaluating Criteria for Medals and Awards (http://xxxx(year).igem.org/Judging/Pages_for_Awards). In addition to understanding the basic requirements, you also need to have or learn some basic knowledge of web page writing (html css js). It might be helpful to look at some of the corresponding video lessons or to go to the web production forum. After you have the basic web page writing knowledge, refer to the excellent wiki and understand the popular framework to help you write a better wiki.
In iGEM competitions, it is often necessary to have art design skills.We have listed some areas where art design may be needed and include official requirements and instructions (if any).
To complete these designs better, you may need to learn the basic skills of designing common software such as Photoshop and Illustrator. You can easily find a lot of graphic and video tutorials on related software online. Sites that collect some material or images that can be used can also make a big difference.
In fact, it may be wise to collect as many members as possible when recruiting players. The type of player you need to have in your team:
•A member of the basic synthetic biology theory and basic experimental skills
•A member who has a web page writing foundation or is willing to learn to write a web page.
•A member with a mathematical foundation who can or is willing to learn mathematical modeling
•A member who can perform basic operations on art design software and is interested in art design
•A member who can speak English, able to plan activities, schedule the team, and be a team representative to get in touch with different organizations (including sponsorship)
For high school students (especially high school students in China), they don't have as many college students as they can in the lab. If some equipments need to be borrowed, it may not be timely. Therefore, it is important to have a clear timeline and division of labor. How to arrange the time reasonably is a question that every team deserves to think about all the time.
"Desertification" refers to land degradation in arid, semi-arid and sub-humid areas caused by various factors include climate variability and human activities. [1] Nowadays, desertification has become one of the major environmental issues that are currently widely concerned around the world. [2] It affects the livelihoods of millions of people.
According to the Ecosystems and Human Well-being. Some 10-20% of drylands of the earth are already degraded. The world averages about 5 to 70,000 square kilometers of land desertification each year, with the most rapid development in tropical savannah and temperate semi -arid grassland areas. Desertification also has strong adverse impacts on non-drylands as well. Affected areas may sometimes be located thousands of kilometers away from the desertified areas. The biophysical impacts include dust storms, downstream flooding, impairment of global carbon sequestration capacity, and regional and global climate Change.[3]
Therefore, whether it is dry land or non-dry land, desertification is one of the biggest environmental challenges of today, and desertification management is imminent.
Our project CuPId is committed to harnessing the methods of synthetic biology to combat desertification. In addition, we have conducted a survey of public awareness of desertification and synthetic biology.
In this questionnaire, we design eleven questions. A total of 260 individuals participate in this survey. We distributed questionnaires on "Public Cognition Survey on Desertification and Our Projects" to the public during the Bauhinia Festival of Science 2018.(See our Public Engagement & Education page for exciting events at our Bauhinia Festival of Science)A total of 300 individuals participate in the survey. They cover a wide range of age groups, from teenagers to seniors, and people from different occupations. After stating these questionnaires, we make charts in order to make our Investigations more clearly and vividly. Through the statistics, we can get our conclusions. Then we analyze the results and have our recommendations.
Analyse:
More than half of the people who participated in the questionnaire (69.6%) believe that China's current desertification status is very serious. People who think that China's current desertification status is generally or not serious account for 28.8% and 1.5% of the total number of people surveyed.
How The participants (69.6%) who insist that China is facing the severe desertification think about the desertification in China now？
Analyse:
More than half of the people who participated in the questionnaire (69.6%) believe that China's current desertification status is very serious. Nearly half (45.3%) of them believes that the current status of desertification is gradually improving,1/5 ( 19.9%) believe that the current status of desertification has not changed much, and a quarter (24.3%) believe that desertification is gradually deteriorating. Only 1/10 (10.5%) of people know nothing about the development trend of land desertification in China.
How the rest people think about the desertification in China now？
Analyse:
Nearly half (53.2%) believes that the current status of desertification in China is gradually improving, and one-fourth (25.3%) believe that the current status of desertification has not changed much, and 12.6% believe that the status quo of desertification is gradually deteriorating. No knowledge of the development trend of land desertification in China (8.9%) accounts for only 1/10 of the total number of people surveyed.
Among the people who participated in the questionnaire, people have high hopes for the current desertification governance, accounting for less than a quarter (18.1%), but the vast majority (74.6%) believe that desertification plasmids will take a relatively long time (but in the end it will be cured). Only a few remain neutral (5.4%) or negative (1.9%).
Conclusion：
In general, the above data indicates that the vast majority of the public has an understanding of the current status of desertification in China and is optimistic about the prospects for desertification in China.
Analyse:
Only a small number of people (0.8%) who participated in this questionnaire have not heard of "genetically modified", "synthetic biology" and "iGEM". One-fifth (23.6%) of those who have heard of "genetically modified" have heard of "iGEM", and nearly half (48.8%) have heard of "synthetic biology."
Analyse:
The vast majority of people who participated in the questionnaire (91.5%) supported the application of synthetic biology to desertification control, and only 1 in 10 (8.5%) did not support the application of synthetic biology to desertification. More than half of them (56.8% (For), 54.5% (Against)) have heard of "iGEM" or "synthetic biology."In addition, we have also collected some suggestions from the public about our use of cyanobacteria as a material to use synthetic biology methods for desertification control. Below, we have selected some exciting views.
Conclusion：
The above data shows that the public has less understanding of "iGEM" and "synthetic biology" compared to "transgenic", but in general, the vast majority of the public support the application of synthetic biology to desertification.
Summary：
Through our investigation, we can draw the conclusion that:
1.Most people recognize the seriousness of desertification and believe that desertification governance is necessary
2.Most people are optimistic about desertification governance (but also believe that desertification governance takes a long time)
3. Most people have heard of genetically modified and synthetic biology, some of whom has a certain degree of understanding.
4. After having a basic understanding of our project, most people expressed support for trying to use synthetic biology to combat desertification and look forward to seeing our results.
[1]According to the U.N. Convention to Combat Desertification, signed in Paris in October 1994.
[2]According to the statistics of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP)
[3]Ecosystems AND HUMAN WELL-BEING(Desertification Synthesis).MILLENNIUM ECOSYSTEM ASESSMENT
These are some suggestions for our high school iGEM team. If you have any other questions, please feel free to contact us by email, we will be happy to help you. •E-mail：scau_igem_2018@foxmail.com (official mailbox) jihahuazou@foxmail.com (communication member mailbox)