Team:OUC-China/Public Engagement

Team OUC-China: Main

Public Engagement

Fig1 what we have done?

Introduction

“How to spread science knowledge around the public in an effective way? How to narrow the gap between synthetic biology and the public?”

We hope everyone to actively participate in science popularization, achieving the purpose of improving the depth and breadth of science popularization, strengthening the inheritance of synthetic biology.

Comic book all over the world: In order to provide a platform for children of primary and middle school students in the world to know more about synthetic biology, we decided to display some concepts of synthetic biology in the form of stories and pictures and enlighten the thinking of scientific exploration of them. OUC-China drew a comic book and till now it has been translated into 13 languages. More than 27 iGEM teams participated in our science education with different languages versions. Our comic book left a footprint in 10 countries and popularized in 16 schools.

A five day life science summer camp: We held a 5 day life science summer camp from August, 8th, 2018 to August, 13th, 2018, recruiting students from 3 different schools. During 5 days, we gave 7 lectures to these students, involving synthetic biology and iGEM, metabolic engineering and synthetic biology, PCR technology and cytometry introduction, literature search ability training and so on. Apart from that, we taught them 4 experimental operations in our lab, such as DNA extraction, PCR experiments, marine microbial separation and observation, butterfly specimen making. Finally, every summer camper did a report according their interest and literatures, which was a show time similar to Jamboree.

A game based on our project：As is known to us, the mechanism of biological and chemical reaction in microorganisms is difficult to understand for most amateurish people. But now solves this problem successfully. The leading role of this game is an enzyme Cys4 that is used in our project. The game presents a microscopic view of the world with a more vivid picture. In this way, we can tell the story of Csy4 as well as the CRIPSR system to more people, thus achieving the goals of propagandizing our project and synthetic biology.

Establish a bridge with biotechnology company：Given that the ultimate goal of foundational researches is application and benefiting for human, we suppose that making a dialogue with biotechnology companies is significant and meaningful. We went to 3 biotech companies and 2 research institute to integrate our project with social reality. In this way, we can know about the current social needs and improve our project accordingly. At the same time, we established a long-term relationship with them. On the one hand, they can provide us an effective way of converting foundational research to actual application, on the other hand, we will inform them of the latest results in the lab, by which we can promote each other and make progress together.

Provide examples for iGEMers: Now many iGEM teams engaged in foundational advances are confused how to integrate their project with practice. So four other teams and OUC-china form the foundational research transformation group. We use our project as an example to specifically describe how to apply project to practice and how to adjust our project accordingly. Then we shared our experience with Tianjin University, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Zhejiang University, National Defense Science and Technology University to explore the transformation of basic research results and form joint a report, hoping to provide a reference to future iGEM teams.

Give lectures in OUC: In order to promote the spread of synthetic biology in our campus, we gave lectures to those who are interested in it and helped them form a syn-group. More than 20 students form different majors join this group. These members gave presentations once a week according to their interests and interacted with others, improving their ability of reading papers and their understanding of synthetic biology. As their advisors, we do our best to help them and guide them. During one year, syn-groupers have learn synthetic biology, molecular biology, microbiology and lots of papers, which helped them improved a lot. It is really a good way to promote the spread and inheritance of synthetic biology in our schools.

Education for children: Comic book all over the world

Fig2 A comic book: E.coli Spaceship

Fig3 The cover of comic book

To popularize synthetic biology in a more interesting way, we put our comic book collaboration request on the website and more than twelve teams contact us and help us translate comic book into other languages. Furthermore, they use our comic book to popularize synthetic biology at the local, hoping to let more people in more countries know the comic book. Under the help of other iGEM teams all over the world, now, our comic book has been translated into more our comic book into Chinese, English, French, Estonian, Russian, German, Italian, Spanish, Catalan, Greek, Portuguese, Lithuanian and Turkish, totally 13 languages. 16 iGEM teams take our comic book E.coli SPACESHIP to local areas for science education.

Fig4 The comic book left a footprint in more than 10 countries

Click to download different comic book versions:

French version translated by Aix-Marseille
Click here to see their wiki https://2018.igem.org/Team:Aix-Marseille/Collaborations
Estonian version, Russian version translated by Tartu_TUIT
Click here to see their wiki https://2018.igem.org/Team:Tartu_TUIT/Collaborations
German version, Italian version translated by Duesseldorf
Click here to see their wiki https://2018.igem.org/Team:Duesseldorf/Collaborations
Spanish version, Catalan version translated by UPF_CRG_Barcelona
Click here to see their wiki https://2018.igem.org/Team:UPF_CRG_Barcelona/Collaborations
Greek version translated by Thessaloniki
Click here to see their wiki https://2018.igem.org/Team:Thessaloniki/Collaborations
Portuguese version translated by McMaster
Click here to see their wiki https://2018.igem.org/Team:McMaster/Collaboration
Lithuanian version translated by Vilnius-Lithuania
Click here to see their wiki https://2018.igem.org/Team:Vilnius-Lithuania/Collaborations
Turkish version translated by Bilkent-UNAMBG
Click here to see their wiki https://2018.igem.org/Team:Bilkent-UNAMBG

Social influence

Having translated into 13 languages, we took comic book E.coli spaceship to some local educational bases. Children like our comic book very much and we printed some to send them as gifts. It worth mentioning that many iGEMers thought it a great science education textbook, so they contacted us and hoped to use our comic book to do science education at local. We were proud of it and glad to provide them with different versions of comic book according to their needs.

Fig5 Meagan Lizarazo appreciates our comic book in CCiC

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Fig6 Teams that collaborated with us to do science education using our comic book

Feedback

These children love our comic book very much. It is a welcome idea to display synthetic biology in the form of colorful pictures supplemented with texts. Here are the summaries of our science education.
Fig7 Feedback of these Teams （小乔在做这个图）

Future

According to their feedback, we will continue to improve our comic book and expends the contents of this book. At the same time, we hope more iGEM teams will join us and popularize synthetic biology, making synthetic biology a household word rather than an obscure concept. Furthermore, there are some minor flaws in the book that need to be found and revised.