overview
A member of our team has a family member who suffers from myocardial infarction. She described to us how her grandfather's life and body had changed after suffering from myocardial infarction, which inspired us to design the project. In recent years, the incidence of myocardial infarction has been on the rise globally and the public suffering from myocardial infarction is getting younger and younger. In this crisis situation, our team brainstormed and proposed to combine the functions of colloidal gold technology, HCR thermostatic amplification technology and CRISPR reverses cleavage to establish a method for specific detection of infarction marker miRNA. In order to reach a wider public and gain the most direct insight into our programs, we conducted and analyzed surveys and went out into the community to conduct direct interviews with the public. We also did a lot of programme events. We interviewed experts in the field, communicated with other teams, and so on. Our programs have been perfected in all human practices and our programs are impacting parts of the world's public.
brainstorming session
In the month of March 2023, we started brainstorming for our project, we started by referring to literature and combining our hobbies in life, we have focused on the aspect of plant culture in our project research. After we participated in the CCiC online exchange, we heard other teams' explanations and experience analyses, and we found that the project research was ill-considered in many aspects. We decided after two team discussions to reverse everything we had done before, and our project idea hit a bottleneck. The following month we continued to develop the program and overturn the project, our team members have reviewed a large amount of literature in relation to the technical route and the research target of thyroid cancer. After several discussions and incorporating the experiences of our team members we finalized our research on myocardial infarction. With the help of CCiC and after a long period of brainstorming, we hope to use our power to help the world.
We-chat public number
As one of the world's most familiar chatting apps, we-chat now have 1.3 billion users, ranking third in the world. With the rapid development of we-chats, the influence of we-chat public number is also very significant, we-chat public number is a way of disseminating information. It has both media and social attributes. We chose to use this as one of the ways to output ideas, our team created We-chat public number "BPI iGEM". By default, we send surveys and a short description of the program to some new followers. Through these articles we tell the world about our team and our program, synthetic biology and our actions during the competition, our aim is to let the world know more about synthetic biology and more about our program so that the world can give us more and better feedback and then we can better improve our program and serve the world.
Fig.1 Display of our We-chat tweets
Project Scenario After brainstorming to determine our project, we were thinking of a way to make people understand myocardial infarction in a more precise and visual way. Our team members are a group of energetic, fun-loving, funny and dedicated young people. We came up with the idea of shooting a short film in the form of role-playing - with "Lao Wang" suddenly intense exercise caused by myocardial pain, and "Lao Wang" did not think so, "Xiao Wang" took out the reagent strips of our research for the "Lao Wang" for testing, and finally detected that "Lao Wang" did not suffer from a heart attack, and the results of the test for both of them to bring peace of mind. We posted the scenario online and received more than 500 hits, better promoting our program and making more people aware of heart attacks and the dangers they pose. We spoke to an audience member who said they were really looking forward to the "heart attack reagent strips" what we have developed. The launch of the sitcom gave us a better promotion of our project and gave us an idea of what the public expects from our product, which led us to change the shape and the price of "the test strips" we had developed.
Video of our project sitcom
Lectures on synthetic biology
In order to give the public a better understanding of the impact of synthetic biology in the world, we decided to organize lectures related to synthetic biology, but due to various reasons we were unable to invite people from different regions to attend, so we decided to hold offline lectures at our school, inviting members of the public from around the area as well as our tutors to attend. We also held an online communication meeting to explain synthetic biology. During the free discussion session, students discussed intensely and showed their wild imagination. We think the lecture was very successful and made the public have more understanding and interest in synthetic biology. Then in the future we hope more students will study synthetic biology and participate in iGEM competition. The online conference held turned out surprisingly well, something we didn't expect at the beginning, with everyone from elementary school students who didn't know anything about biology to college students interested in biology, as well as people from other industries participating. During the presentation, we used a lot of pictures and videos to attract their attention, they kept asking questions and expressing their opinions online, they were curious about the iGEM competition that we were participating in, they were curious about how we could detect myocardial infarction using synthetic biology, and our team members answered their confusion in detail, and at the same time, they also brought up a lot of things that we hadn't thought about at the same time, they also raised a lot of things that we hadn't considered, for example, about bio-security. For this reason, we decided to collect everyone's questions first and hold another lecture later to answer them better. Overall, the talk succeeded in stimulating people's interest in synthetic biology.
Bio-security Grand Lecture
After a lecture on synthetic biology, there is a lot of controversy among many people about the bio-safety issues and bio-security of synthetic biology. Since its birth, synthetic biology has been developing at a very fast speed. Like many high technologies, synthetic biology brings benefits but also inevitably brings some problems such as safety and ethical issues.One student said "Synthetic biology is like a sword, it can help people get what they want, but used incorrectly it can also harm the world and cause problems for the world. On top of this sword are we human beings, how to make use of this "sword" are how we make rules, so that there is a certain degree of standardization.
Our project with iGEM
At the same time as we were working on our project, there was a big event in our region and we were able to get the opportunity to share our project on stage with the organizers. We made a slide presentation explaining the significance and purpose of the iGEM competition, and then other members of our team went on stage to share the project we were working on, " A method for specific detection of infarction marker miRNA based on colloidal gold, HCR thermostatic amplification and CRISPR reverse transcription" . At the end, we did a recruitment for the nearly 1,000 people on stage, and we hope that they will join the iGEM competition in the time to come. This event allowed more people to learn about the iGEM competition, synthetic biology, and our program. Meanwhile, 117 people contacted us during this recruitment by scanning the QR code we provided, and they hope to participate in the iGEM competition next year or later.
Questionnaire
In order to have a more comprehensive and detailed understanding of the public's knowledge of heart attack, a health trivia questionnaire was distributed to the public.More than 300 people completed the questionnaires we distributed, of which more than half of the public had heard of the term myocardial infarction but did not understand it, and nearly half of those who completed the questionnaires had never had a heart checkup. Through the results of this questionnaire we realize that we are doing something meaningful, we can use our knowledge to help the public to maintain their health and reduce their risk of suffering from myocardial infarction.
Fig. The results of the questionnaire show that
Scan the QR code below to participate in our questionnaire
Fig. QR code of the questionnaire
Community interviews
In an effort to achieve a two-way dialogue between us and the world, to understand the public's understanding of myocardial infarction and the importance of preventing myocardial infarction, and to understand the real needs of the public so that we can better improve, refine, and implement our programs, we decided to go into the community and interview some of the residents. During the interviews, we heard different voices. Among the very few people who knew something about heart attacks, they shared their worries about suffering from them as well as they gave some tips on how to prevent them in their daily lives. In the course of the interview, Mr. Li told us, like people suffering from heart attacks should be accompanied by medication, heart attacks are not like other diseases it's very high suddenness, in daily life, your mood is best to calm some, in eating to be lighter, to go to exercise more sports, if you're suffering from a heart attack, rest is essential and then to be to take medication, and if the seriousness of you has to do the operation, not only on their own body, psychological damage, if long-term treatment on the family also adds a lot of economic pressure. During this community visit, we found that the public's awareness of heart attack prevention was not very high, and we are planning to hold a promotional activity on "Heart Attack Prevention" to enhance the public's awareness of heart attack prevention around us.
Promotional activities
In order to raise awareness of the importance of heart attack prevention, some of our team members make up the Cardiac Protection Squad and went to Beijing Plaza to promote our program. We set up a booth and in order to let people know more about our program and the importance of heart attack prevention, we placed some easy-openings in front of the booth, and we also prepared some pamphlets about our team to give to the public, and we also prepared some general knowledge about heart attack. We also prepared some general knowledge about heart attack for the public who were willing to take the challenge.Many members of the public stopped by our booth to look at our easy-to-use billboards, and there were many members of the public who came to challenge the heart attack trivia. The event came to a successful conclusion and our goal of preventing heart attacks was achieved.
Preparation in advocacy
After brainstorming and finalizing our project, we hope to use our ideas and research to provide new ideas for heart attack prevention. In order to let more people know the importance of heart attack prevention and the idea and purpose of our project, we prepared a lot of forms of publicity, such as project promotional brochures, key-chains and stickers in the shape of the mascot, pillows and fans with the shape of the mascot, puzzles of the mascot, and project publicity easy-openers.
