Team:SCAU-China/Public Engagement
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 (our team was established in 2016), 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.
Next we will divide into two parts: Public Engagement and Education to showcase our work.
- The Lab Open Day is a traditional activity of our school. In the lab open days of 2017 and 2018, we opened our iGEM-specific laboratory. There we talked with high school students, college students, teachers, parents (...) who explained what iGEM is and what is synthetic biology. In addition, we also show what our project is trying to achieve, and its practical application and show our work in the lab. Many of the people we have contacted are very interested in our projects, iGEM, and synthetic biology. We have also left our contact information and some of them have a deeper discussion. We like to raise and answer questions with the public. Sharing our projects in this way is a very rewarding experience.
- In order to promote our project, we have drawn our graffiti wall in the culvert of a person coming and going. Dedicated to our wonderful vision of our project, this art work creates an oasis in the desert with the words “Painting the Desert”.In order to better publicize our project and let people who come and go know us better, we also attached our social media - the QR code of the public number.
- Our PI Professor Wang also participated in our drawing activities. Although it took two days to adjust the patterns and colors, we all liked it. I hope that we can let more and more people pay attention to us and understand us in this wonderful way.
- We were invited to SYSU to join the Biology Festival of Sun Yat-Sen University, and promote the synthetic biology knowledge. When we arrived at our destination, we set up posters and the students around us came to our stall. We prepared a lot of funny games, so did the others stall .We had a great time. In this event, we presented our team to students from different universities in the first time.
- The Bauhinia Festival of Science, Technology and Culture is one of the biggest festival In our university, which will attract thousands of citizens in Guangzhou of all age. gather together in SCAU to enjoy the beautiful flower of bauhinia and new research in our university . we seized this opportunity to showed the visitors the interesting biology .We showed the usage of microscope ,prepared the Jigsaw puzzle and Riddle about biology ,gave out some beautiful postcards about SCAU or iGEM.Through this activity, more people of different ages have learned about iGEM and have a deeper understanding of life.
In 2017 (when our project was not yet formed), we promoted iGEM and explained synthetic biology at our booth. We have designed some small games, such as building blocks to symbolize biobrick, to help ordinary people understand our work.
In 2018, we designed posters to explain our projects, iGEM and synthetic biology. At our booth, we also designed a desert puzzle game to explain the status quo of desertification. In addition, we also distributed 300 questionnaires on “Public Cognition Survey on Desertification and Our Projects” to the public. (The results and analysis of these questionnaires can be found on our Human Practices-Silver page)
- The affiliated primary school of South China Agricultural University holds a science festival every year, and we take this opportunity to contact and communicate with primary school students. In the morning, we came to the playground and set up a booth to showcase our project. After the opening ceremony, the students began to flood in and visit the booth. This time we have prepared some games for them to expect to explain synthetic biology to primary school students in a simpler way. (For example, we have prepared a game of building blocks to explain the concept of biobrick)
In this activity, we were infected by the children, as if we were back to childhood, and we also led the children to have a preliminary understanding of life sciences.
Our team updated 29 articles (total pageviews reached 5700+) on the WeChat public account (a social media commonly used in China) . The content of these articles includes our current situation, project introduction, introduction of iGEM, introduction of synthetic biology. Our team member Ken has launched a column on mathematical modeling, and his articles have been updated on the public number and his personal account number.
Our WeChat public number: 华农iGEM
- Together with SYSU-Software (2017), we held a seminar on synthetic biology. In this talk, we explained the basics of synthetic biology to students at South China Agricultural University and tried to explain how our projects work. In addition, we and SYSU-Software also demonstrated the project and answered some related questions. (We also have some other exchanges with SYSU-Software 2017, details can be found on our Collaborations page)
- Due to the lack of laboratory equipment, the affiliated primary school of South China Agricultural University did not even have the opportunity to conduct a very simple experiment. With this in mind, we have prepared interesting experiments such as "The Changing Color of Anthocyanin with the Change of PH". We also take this opportunity to give pupils a biological science in order to develop their interest in synthetic biology.
- Guangdong Country Garden School is the first IBC international school in China, and the school encourage sthents to participate international competition such as iGEM.Last year ,some studennt in it took part in the 2017 Guangdong iGEM High School United and achieve sucess.This year our team communicate closely with the class majored in economic and biology.We introduce the theoretical knowledge about synthetic biology to them, and help them to conduct the simple basic molecular manipulation.We wish to stimulate their interest in Synthetic biology and instill new life for the next iGEM competition.And after this,they aslo do the public education and investigation according what they have learned from this activity to give the public a deeper impression on transgene.
This course includes:
1.Explain basic synthetic biology concepts
2.Teaching basic molecular experiment skills
·Explain the principle of experiment
·Experimental operation guidance and practice
·Extracting red fluorescent protein particles
·Prepare agarose gel & verify
·Hot hit conversion
·Flat line
·Result observation and analysis
3.Project content and team building experience exchange
School's name:SCAU
Member's name:SCAU
Designed by:SCAU