Outreach Activities
Internet
With technological advancement, Internet has become one of the most efficient ways for people to get
information. However, Internet users are a complex group of people. While many users like a vivid form of
broadcast, such as video, others like reading serious articles. Therefore, we use a variety of approaches to
introduce synthetic biology and iGEM competition on Internet. Notably, social media has also evolved into an
important platform of communication, and we carried out attractive and educational activities with social media
as well.
Science video on Bilibili
We made a video to introduce iGEM competition on Bilibili. In this video, we featured our mascot “Breddy” as
the main character that explained the history, context and requirement of iGEM competition. There were both
Chinese and English subtitles to cater the needs of audience from different countries. Our mascot was cute, and
our video’s context was easy to understand. Being the first original animation to introduce the iGEM
competition, our video has received 1421 views, 66 likes, 93 coins and 32 favorites!
Wechat Official Account
WeChat is a social media platform with huge Internet traffic, broad coverage and strong communication
influence. To promote synthetic biology to a wide range of audience, we created our own Wechat Official Account.
Through our attentive planning and discussion, the first article, “What is Synthetic Biology” was published in
May. We were happy that this post had received a good number of views and likes. Totally, we published ten
articles on our Wechat Official Account, mainly about synthetic biology, our projects, and the education
activities that we conducted this year. We also recorded some of our presentations, and put them on our Wechat
Official Account. In that way, we can let more people hear our thoughts and join the family of iGEM!
The establishment of our Wechat Official Account has been contributing substantially to the education of
synthetic biology, introduction of our iGEM project and promoting the awareness of breast cancer.
Public
Online communication cannot totally replace the actual interaction with real people, as it lacks human touch.
Therefore, we carried out multiple street activities, such as street interviews and handing out questionnaire
and brochure.
CRISPR/Cas System Brochure
In order to help students understand techniques that are commonly used in synthetic biology, we decided to
start with the CRISPR/Cas system. To achieve this, we made a brochure to distribute during our education
campaigns. We discussed with other teams, including Tongji-Software, SMBU-China, WHU-China, on how to write this
brochure during online meetings. In order to make it easier for the community to read and understand, the
brochure was written in Chinese. Below is a pdf file of the brochure, and it is also available online. Together,
we made a remarkable achievement. Our brochure has been widely distributed, and plenty of people like it!
Synthetic Biology Fun Quiz
To encourage critical thinking, we had some interesting Q&A about synthetic biology for students. Also, to make
some complicated concepts easy to understand, we related them with examples in our daily lives. A set of
synthetic biology fun quiz was designed, which covered the application of synthetic biology in agriculture and
medicine. This aroused widespread public interest in synthetic biology. People were very surprised to know that
synthetic biology was very close to their daily life. For example, many people didn 't know that yeast was a
commonly used organism in synthetic biology. During the whole process of our education activities, we respected
the participants and treated their privacy seriously. The respondents were told that they had the right to
refuse to answer our questions at the beginning of the quiz, and their identities and answer were always kept
confidential.
