Teenagers are the next generation of scientists, and the field of synthetic biology is rarely touched upon in the curriculum for senior high school students. We took a strong approach towards education to train talents for synthetic biology. We successfully held a summer camp about synthetic biology, in which senior high school students from two cities, Fuzhou and Quanzhou participated. At the beginning of summer camp, we firstly introduce what iGEM is and what we were doing this year, during which we raised some questions to encourage them to think and had a heated discussion on it. And then not only did we lead them to do some basic experiments such as extracting plasmid, agarose gel electrophoresis, and so on, but also we taught some technical knowledge of drawing plasmid map and document retrieval, in order that they can have a better command of experimental skills and useful knowledge about synthetic biology. In addition, we led them to have a visit on our laboratory, showing them a wide variety of experimental apparatus and their uses and operation methods.

At the end of the summer camp, they all expressed big interest in synthetic biology and long to have the chance to take part in the 2019 iGEM. To our most impressive, a girl among students participating in the camp said that though the summer camp is short, she gained a lot outside classrooms and felt a different fascination of biology. She had a big desire in experiencing iGEM by herself. Meanwhile, Chinese newspaper reported our summer camp activity and gave us a good evaluation.

Our “2-Pleasant” handbook

From the feedback of questionnaires in the early period, we realized that the majority of people did not know about harmful bacteria in our daily life and how to prevent them, also they are unfamiliar with synthetic biology. This result inspired the idea of producing a handbook about prevention of harmful bacteria, which covers basic knowledge of bacteria around us, tips for preventing bacteria and our innovate solution with synthetic biology. To make it easier for people to read, we use both Chinese and English in our handbook. More interestingly, aiming to attract more attention and make our handbook more colorful, we add two stereo pages by hand to better demonstrate the dangers of bacteria and function of our PLA and 2-PE.

For a broader publicity, carrying our dream and hope, “2-Pleasant” handbooks traveled all over the world. We showed our handbook in our public activities and set up good communication with other teams. Also, we have distributed it to Korea, Japan, Brazil, etc. More and more people have a better understanding of how to prevent harmful microbes and feel the magic and possibilities of synthetic biology. They said that our handbook is good-looking and promote popular science in a more interesting and attractive form. We hope to pass on our motivation and let more people know about us and our project through it.

Giving an academic lecture

Opening science to a broad public is our major goal in human practice. To trigger the interest of people to learn more about synthetic biology and enter into a dialogue about its potential, we invited Pro. Zhang to give a lecture about synthetic biology, who focuses on the study of microbial physiology and metabolism, application of environmental microbes and synthetic biology. Being a speaker, this highly intriguing topic and he, attracted 280 students and researchers with various different backgrounds. We hoped that more people could be exposed to synthetic biology through education.

The “smell game”

To integrate public opinions and concerns into the scientific process is increasingly important as new biological inventions could influence the humanity as a whole, the environment and our coexistence with nature. In our project, we encountered a problem, it is not clear what the most favorable concentration of 2-PE. To seek answer and integrate people’s opinions into our project, we designed the “smell game” to get the public involved, which we prepared different concentration of 2-PE, 3M2H and some other substances to let people smell and knew about their feelings. From the feedback, we found the majority of people think 10mmol/L of 2-PE is the most pleasant, and which guided us to improve our experiment. (More details on our Integrated HP page)

Public Activity

During the 110th anniversary of our school

In 2017, we welcomed our school’s 110th anniversary, when tens of thousands of people from all over the world came to our school to celebrate 110th birthday of FJNU (Fujian Normal University) together. It was the most lively and biggest gathering in our school, and we seized the opportunity to hold a public activity, engaging the public in showing the possibilities of synthetic biology and getting more people to know about iGEM. We made some posters about previous excellent projects for exhibition and designed some interesting games to introduce iGEM and synthetic biology. Our activity finally turned out to be a great success, more people learned about what iGEM is and what we can do with synthetic biology.

Calling for environmental protection

In the process of conducting our project, we found that the unpleasant smell and environment of garbage can surrounding us is not paid much attention, but that does have an influence on people’s lives. We organized a public activity in cooperation with volunteer association, to popularize knowledge of waste sorting and appeal to the public to try their best to protect the environment, which we prepared intriguing games and propaganda posters.

Events & Communication

the first iGEM Eurasian meetup 2018

We participated in the first iGEM Eurasian meetup 2018 in Shenzhen, where we firstly presented our project on a more formal occasion. As the team representing our school to participate in iGEM for the first time, we constantly communicate with obvious experienced iGEMers and sought advice from experts during the conference. There had we also a collision of ideas with other teams.

the 5th CCiC

We took part in the 5th CCiC (Conference of China iGEMer Community) in Shanghai, which is the biggest gathering of iGEMers in China, aiming to promote the development of synthetic biology and improve the connectivity and communication of nationwide iGEM teams. On the conference, we made a preview and experienced the atmosphere of Giant Jamboree in advance. Also we established good friendship with other teams and got lots of useful advice to improve our project.

Communicate with other teams

It is of great importance to share experience and exchange ideas with others, which makes iGEM more wonderful and helps us find out our shortcomings. This year, we communicated and collaborated with many teams. (More details on our Collaborations page)

Team:FJNU-China/Public Engagement

Engagement&Public Education

Public engagement & education