Overview
Our team's education and outreach activities spanned across BNDS Junior High School, BNDS Senior School, and universities. Activities were explicitly curated for each learning stage. Our Education process breaks down into three steps:
We have held Bacteria culturing camp, taught advanced biology course, and attended the Club Fair publicity to propagandize and teach BNDS students synthetic biology concepts and its importance in changing the world. Our Education included an art exhibition to combine the aesthetic value to the innovation of technology; we designed an agar art exhibition within our school and showed the beauty of agar arts to the general public in our school, attracting more people to learn synthetic biology's versatility. We also presented the synthetic biology lecture to Beijing Institute of Technology (BIT) undergraduates and Beijing National Day School junior and senior high school students to introduce the principle of synthetic biology, iGEM, and our projects' designs. Moreover, we communicated with University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (UCAS) to learn about their projects and educational actions and give feedback to each other.
Bacteria culturing camp
Most students have learned basic biotechnology concepts in our school's biology classes. However, only a few students got the opportunity to participate in synthetic biology experiments like PCR personally. To meet students' interests and expand the influence of iGEM, our team organized a Bacteria culturing camp that teaches students basic operations in bacterial experiments with E. coli, such as sterilization, chemical transformation, liquid injection, and cell spreading. The camp has now become a long-term project that helped over 30 students, preparing them for their own scientific research and encouraging them to participate in iGEM the following year.
Figure 1. A G10 student doing experiment after our iGEM team member's teaching
Advanced course in biology
Many students are interested in participating in the Biology Olympics to test their knowledge and skills each year. Therefore, we cooperated with our school's biology competition club, “Biocamp,” and delivered lectures on DNA, gene expression, expression regulation, viruses, and biotechnology from February to April, helping students to be more prepared. We have received feedback suggesting that our courses to be incredibly beneficial in assisting students to tackle challenging questions. We expect to continue our cooperation and deepen the focus of our courses in synthetic biology themes.
Figure 2. Biocamp club activity
Club fair publicity
At the commencement of September, our team actively participated in the school's annual club fair, a pivotal event where we earnestly introduced the iGEM club to the newly-arrived Grade 10 students. Our approach was characterized by passionate introduction and a commitment to leaving a lasting impression on new students who were not familiar with iGEM before
Banners, displays, and materials were thoughtfully curated to effectively communicate the core values and objectives of the iGEM club. We ensured that our informational brochures were not only informative but also impeccably presented, reflective of the seriousness and dedication with which we embrace the field of synthetic biology.
Figure 3. Our iGEM team members introducing iGEM and synthetic biology
Agar Art Exhibition
Arts can be manifested in various ways, including using synthetic biology methods. Though transgenetic agricultural crops are prevalent in market, people might remain stereotypical safety concerns. To dispel the misunderstanding in bioengineering and promote the beauty of synthetic biology to students with limited biology background, we participated in our school's art club exhibition and created several agar artworks. Through the agar artwork we produced, fundamental biological concepts were illustrated. Appealing characters like Christmas trees and animal paw prints were shown. The various colors on artworks are produced by transforming plasmids that constitutively express colorful chromoprotein or fluorescent protein into E.coli BL21 (ED3).
Figure 4. Agar art plates inside the lab
Considering safety concerns, every plate was double-sealed and thoroughly cleaned with alcohol before being sent to the exhibition. A transparent plastic plate was placed over the artworks to prevent release. A fence separates visitors from the exhibits to maintain a 2-meter safe distance.
Members from our iGEM art department also created paintings on a traditional Chinese byobu, showcasing natural scenery and decorating our agar exhibition. The other side of this byobu is an interactive place for students to paint their own colors and express their love and passion for nature.
Figure 5. The byobu painted by our iGEM members and students in the art exhibition
The WeChat Official Account
Our team initiated the establishment of a WeChat official account dedicated to disseminating knowledge about synthetic biology and showcasing our past team projects, primarily from the years 2020, 2021, and 2022. As of October, according to the data, we could report that the articles published on our official account have garnered 1,000 views.
Figure 6. Published articles
Public lecture to Undergraduates
RDFZ-CHINA x BNDS-China at BIT
1. Lecture Outline and Educational Material Preparation
Our team (BNDS-China), RDFZ-China and BIT plan to hold a lecture at Beijing Institute of Technology (BIT) for undergraduate students. Compared to middle school students, undergraduates have completed a comprehensive study of biology in high school. Senior students majoring in biomedical engineering have also delved into subjects like molecular biology and cell biology. Therefore, they have a foundational knowledge base to understand the synthetic biology-related information presented in the lecture. Our lecture, organized by the three teams, is structured as follows:
In addition to carefully organizing lecture materials and content, to maintain audience engagement and prevent the lecture from becoming overly lengthy, the BIT Team has included breaks and interactive sessions between the third and fourth parts. This approach allows the audience to ask questions about the synthetic biology knowledge they've just heard, promoting real-time learning and enhancing collective learning efficiency.
2. Pre-Lecture Promotion
Prior to the lecture, the BIT Team contacted the Beijing Institute of Technology's Qiushi College and reserved an on-campus lecture hall. Additionally, one week before the lecture, they actively promoted the event on WeChat public platforms and encouraged widespread sharing to attract students from various years and majors to attend the lecture and learn about synthetic biology. The BIT Team also established a WeChat group chat before the lecture for ongoing communication during and after the event.
Considering the lecture's timing during the holiday season, the BIT Team also conducted a live broadcast of the lecture using Tencent Meeting to allow more on-campus students who couldn't attend in person due to time and location constraints to listen in.
3. Lecture at Beijing Institute of Technology
On the afternoon of September 30th, members of the RDFZ-CHINA, BNDS-China, and BIT teams held the lecture in a lecture hall on the Beijing Institute of Technology campus. Over 70 students from various colleges and different academic years participated in the event. During the lecture, team members from the three groups presented the pre-established lecture content and promotional materials, introducing synthetic biology and the iGEM competition to undergraduate students. They explained classical techniques in synthetic biology and showcased the sense of responsibility synthetic biology researchers have towards the community and society by discussing biosecurity and sustainability. The teams also presented their respective projects.
Figure 7. Three teams giving the lecture at BIT
Figure 8. Three iGEM teams taking a photo after the lecture
The lecture lasted for over an hour, during which the team members from the three teams engaged in extensive online and offline interactions with the undergraduate students in the audience. After the lecture, we uploaded the PowerPoint presentation and the recorded lecture video to video platforms such as Bilibili and YouTube.
Following the lecture, the three teams sent out surveys to the attending audience to gather feedback. RDFZ-CHINA, BNDS-China, and BIT teams also held a brief meet-up, where we exchanged experiences and insights on conducting Human Practice projects and organizing educational events. They also exchanged creative gifts that they had each produced. This strengthened the bond between the three teams and laid a solid foundation for future collaboration.
BIT x BNDS-China at BNDS
1. Lecture Outline and Educational Material Preparation
As audiences changed from undergraduates to high school and middle school students, more introduction and explanation should be given for the detailed terminologies, biotechnology tools, and experiments in synthetic biology. Therefore, we adjusted our content that the proportion of teaching basic ideas in genetic engineering and synthetic biology has increased. Vivid pictures illustrating concepts of DNA, complementary base pairing, and restriction enzymes were added to the lecture to ensure that students without deep knowledge in biology can understand too.
2. Lecture at Beijing National Day School
On the afternoon of October 11th, members of the BNDS-China and BIT teams held the lecture in Xunwan hall on the Beijing National Day School campus. As this activity was supported by our school and was openned to all students, we both had students registered to attend the lecture in-person and students attending online lecture by using Tencent Meeting. We gave the lecture to over 30 students who are interested in synthetic biology and iGEM. After introducing basic ideas of synthetic biology, fundamental knowledge of genetics, and our projects’ designs, students actively asked us several questions on the details of project design and our motivations. Their answers included the support of synthetic biology product after “evaluating the practicability myself” or “learning that synthetic biology is indeed very environment-friendly and efficient in producing proteins”. Besides, we have used questionnaire to gather students’ feedback on this hour-long synthetic biology lecture. Generally, scores evaluating PPT appearance and lively presentation with stories and similes are high in average (9.46/10). The content we prepared are relatively new compared to knowledge in textbooks yet presented in an easy way to understand, according to the results collected. This suggested that participated students generally have gained deeper understanding of synthetic biology, and we even attracted high school sophomore students to show interests in joining our iGEM team next year.
Figure 9. BIT iGEM team members (left 1 and left 2), BNDS-China team member (left 3), and BNDS student (left 4) taking a photo after the lecture
Figure 10. BIT students introducing their project design
Figure 11. Students listening in-person of the lecture at BNDS
Communication With Other School (BNDS x UCAS)
As BNDS and UCAS iGEM teams have established friendship relationship in past few years, this year UCAS iGEM team invited BNDS-China to visit UCAS and communicate each other's project. On September 23rd, our iGEM team members reached UCAS and was greeted by UCAS igemers. In the meeting, we first introduced our project design and gain valuable insights from UCAS suggestions as they were also doing quorum-sensing system this year. We discussed about the balance of gut microorganisms community and the function of quorum sensing system in different applications. They also recommended us to use hardware to mimic the intestinal environment and then test our project, however, we didn't achieve that due to technical challenges. After UCAS finished their project introduction, we learned from their ideas of applying the concept of threshold, designing a hardware in project design to measure data and give result to consumers directly, and organizing human practices and education events. In addition, we discussed about each other's iGEM's experiences and expectations for next year's team development. Last, UCAS iGEM team showed us their labs and exchanged the special gifts produced by each of the iGEM team.
Figure 12. UCAS and BNDS members discussing on BNDS's project design
Figure 13. BNDS members listening to UCAS's project introduction
Figure 14. BNDS-China team members Ziyue Lei (left 1) and Chujing Wu (left 2) and UCAS students (left 3-6)