Team:NKU CHINA/Human Practices
Human Practice
Don’t aim for success if you really want it, just stick to what you love and belive in, and it will come naturelly.
As a worldwide event, iGEM is not only a competition for us, but also a chance to influence and even to change this world. NKU_CHINA has been working hard to practice the topic that the society impacts experiments and experiments that affect society. At the beginning of choosing the project, we hoped to benefit more ordinary people and to make some contribution to the community through synthetic biology. Therefore, we searched for the projects which had strong applications. With several discussions with the professors in our college, we finally chose Screening Strains with high glutamic acid concentration intracellular by intelligent metabolic pathways as our major concern. In order to make our project not only be restricted to our own, we carried out a series of activities around education and propaganda, team communication, market research, Communication improvement, and transformation of results.
We mainly performed and enhanced our project from the following aspects:
Silver HP
Propaganda and Education
Science Popularization Lotus Festival
On June 24th, 2018, the Lotus Festival, a campus open day was held in Nankai University, our iGEM team participated in this event and successfully propagandized knowledge about synthetic biology as well as iGEM, let a lot of high school students and their parents for the first time knew about our competition and synthetic biology. We built a bridge between iGEM and the public.
Investigation and Propaganda in Western China
To investigate the education and the popularization of biological science in western China, we went to Yinchuan, Ningxia from August 1st to August 7th, 2018. We went to Minning Middle School to teach students some funny knowledge about synthetic biology. Through the research, we found that people in the western China knew little about biological knowledge, and we need to increase publicity and popular science.
Synthetic Biology Propaganda in Tianjin No.13 Middle School
After meticulous preparation, three iGEM teams came from Nankai University, Tianjin University and Tianjin University of Science and Technology went to Tianjin No.13 Middle School to publicize the knowledge of synthetic biology and iGEM, meanwhile, to understand the current situation of education about biology in middle schools.” While these students have only been exposed to biology for a year, they like it very much”, the teacher said.
Biological Science Popularization Day in Nankai University
In order to show the charm and essence of iGEM, and at the same time to better promote iGEM and synthetic biology among college students so that more people can focus on synthetic biology and participate in iGEM, we have organized the science popularization report on July 7th, team NKU-CHINA, Jilin_China and TUST_China took part in the publicity. Each team introduced their respective experiment directions and preliminary work with the synthetic biology as a common theme. After the report, outside the venue, the teams also answered the audience’s questions one by one in front of their own exhibition boards, expanding the public's understanding of synthetic biology, iGEM competition and experiment projects. Finally, the iGEM team of Nankai University organized a visit to the iGEM lab to get more closer with iGEM and our experiments. Through our publicity, many students showed great interest in synthetic biology, which is a meaningful publicity.
Team Communication
The iGEM University Joint Conference in Nankai University
On July 6th, we held the iGEM University Joint Conference in Nankai University. This event aimed to promote communication and cooperation between various universities teams, and at the same time carry out science popularization to show the charm and essence of iGEM. This was the first time that our school iGEM team successfully conceived and held this large-scale joint conference. Each team introduced their experiments and other aspects of the work. After the show, we discussed our experiments and look for teams that can cooperate according to our needs, the exchange atmosphere was warm and reflected a good collision of thoughts. Finally, we organized everyone to visit our iGEM Lab to get a better understanding about our experiments.
TEAM NPU-China
When we visited Tianjin Institute of Industrial Biotechnology, we happened to meet Team NPU-China. We discussed our experiment and Human Practice and put forward some suggestions about their project. At the same time, we told them that we had some problems in Tet A gene expression recently. Fortunately, they suggested that we should communicate with team XJTU-China because our projects were very similar. Through their suggestions, we successfully communicated with team XJTU-China and improved our experiments. What a wonderful experience!
CCiC
The 5th CCiC Conference was held in Shanghai University of Science and Technology from August 27 to 31. More than 60 teams from China participated in the Conference. The conference is divided into two parts: presentation and posters. Teammates of NKU_CHINA listened carefully to each team's statement and learned their advantages and our wonderful show was so Brilliant that many teams communicated with us. In the evening, all the teams are showing their unique design posters. However, our poster attracted a large group of people to seek cooperation. Thanks to our excellent presentation and poster display, we won the best Poster Award, which was a great encouragement for us. After the meeting, we exchanged views and ended our travel to CCiC meeting with a group photo.
TEAM OUC-China
When attending the CCiC conference, we met OUC-China fortunately and cooperated with them in public education and science popularization.
OUC-China team provided a science brochure about synthetic biology we used when we promoted synthetic biology in Tianjin’s Middle Schools. The popularization of science was as important as the innovation of science and technology. It was the wings of innovation and development. We took synthetic biology as the foothold of science popularization and participated in the popularization of science together, which greatly improved the depth and breadth of science popularization and strengthened the inheritance of synthetic biology. This is an innovative cooperation.
Science Popularization Lotus Festival
For further collaboration in this and next year , our six universities in Beijing and Tianjin (BNU NKU THU TJU TUST UCAS) had this meet-up together in China institute of biophysics on September 16, In this conference we talked about our experiental plans and HP cooperations in the future. At last we all agree that there should be more relationship among us , we can find more oppotunities in spreading synthetic biology knowledge to senior and junior high schools and use others experimental facilities in next year's experimental part.