Education
Overview
Team KEYSTONE has taken proactive steps to further promote synthetic biology, advocate of our team's project, and raise awareness on the SDGs. We organized a series of events with the objective of helping more individuals understand the purpose of iGEM and the potential contributions of synthetic biology to our future. These events were tailored to different age groups, providing both online and offline opportunities for participation and learning. Thus, by implementing these initiatives, we aim to educate and inspire wider audiences in terms of synthetic biology, sustainability, and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
Projects
Social Platform
We define our project’s audience as the general public since every global citizen has the potential to make a difference towards sustainable development by adopting our novel sealant product for construction. In order to educate the wide public about the importance of sustainable shelter, it is necessary for us to take advantage of today’s social platforms, which can amplify a message to millions of audiences and generate a huge response. Social platforms are a great tool to educate the public on the SDGs and promote shared action towards sustainable development. In our project, we regularly posted a series of educational articles related to our project and SDGs on a range of social platforms, both in China and across the globe.
WeChat is a popular social media platform used in our home country, China. In July, we posted our first educational article, "Bacteria-based buildings? Meet Team Keystone 2023!” on our WeChat official account (english version & chinese version), in which we briefly discussed our team makeup and project idea. In the following articles—published about twice a month—we talked about various aspects of our project, with background information on the related biology knowledge and how that might influence our approach to sustainable development.
In the article “Cellular ‘Border Customs’: Understanding Membrane Proteins” (english version & chinese version), we got to explain the mechanism of membrane transport proteins to our audience and hence illustrate the need for our project to install an enzyme surface display system. With an effective enzyme surface display system, our sealant product can work efficiently to induce calcium carbonate precipitation, becoming a reliable innovation targeted toward SDG 9 (Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure), 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities), and 13 (Climate Action).
In a later-published article, we discussed the engineering of such an enzyme surface display system in detail and educated our audience on the potential of this type of biological innovation and research advances (english version & chinese version).
In August, we published an article named “Wait What? Bacterial Photosynthesis exists?!” (english version & chinese version) As its name suggests, we talked about the innate photosynthetic ability of our chassis organism
In October, we got to post an article that summarizes all of our effort to achieve the SDGs through our biomineralization project (english version & chinese version). We discussed our project’s accomplishment of some key outcomes in sustainable development and its potential to transform the industry, establishing a new model for future materials. Meanwhile, our audience gets to learn about our targeted SDGs in detail.
These articles are some examples of what we have been doing on social platforms to educate our public audience on the SDGs and our effort to achieve them. And we are not just posting these educational resources on WeChat—in fact, we registered official accounts on many social media platforms both in China and across the globe, including , Youtube, Instagram, etc. The use of multiple social platforms allows us to expand our coverage and educate a larger audience on what we are doing and how they should contribute to a shared sustainable future.
Light & Love Lecture
On September 20th and 21st, we had the privilege of delivering a captivating lecture to the enthusiastic grade 4-6 students at "Light and Love" school, a charity school in our local community. These students face challenging circumstances and lack parental support. They don't have access to resources that would enable them to explore innovative fields of study and global issues.
Our goal was to introduce the captivating world of synthetic biology, our Biostone project, and the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in a dynamic and engaging manner. We ignited their curiosity by explaining how we engineered cyanobacteria to produce bio-concrete and how this innovation can contribute to the SDGs. The Biostone project demonstrates how our sustainable building material directly contributes to creating sustainable cities and reducing the impact of climate change.
Through interactive coloring and puzzle activities, we enhanced their understanding of synthetic biology and the SDGs. The students actively participated, expressing their creativity and problem-solving abilities while reinforcing their comprehension of the lecture's key concepts. As a result, we received extremely positive feedback, including comments such as "very interesting lecture," beautiful drawings, well-solved puzzles, and most importantly, big smiles from the students.
Charity Sale
To promote synthetic biology and iGEM, Team Keystone hosted a charity sale on September 25th within our school, Keystone Academy. We sold our coloring book which educates children and teenagers on biology, iGEM, and our project. Other merchandise also include keychains with printed bacteria and our project logo on, and mugs printed with our project logo. The coloring book has a main function as to educate and spread knowledge of biology and our work. While the other two merchandise mainly serve the function of emphasizing our team and the reason we create our project to the people. The merchandises’ cute appearance help attract more people and educate them on iGEM and the impacts synthetic biology can bring to the world.
During the event, we encountered many teachers who were happy to purchase the coloring books for their children or their students. Younger students in middle school were also eager to buy our coloring books. Whereas, the keychains and mugs reached a broader audience. During the sale, many students and teachers asked us what iGEM was, and what the purpose of our sale was. We were able to explain first what iGEM was and its purpose, as well as our project and its advantages. The feedback we got were fully positive. Most students and teachers were also surprised at the level of depth our project has gone, and the progress we’ve made. Many students even came up to us and asked us how to enter the competition, proving the sale to be a great success with educating students.
With the money we receive, we donated to the United Nations crisis relief of the Türkiye-Syria Earthquake , our original motivation to start the project. We made a total of 978 RMB and donated all amount to the United Nations. Informing this news to our audience also helped motivate them to buy our products.
Coloring Book
To promote biology, iGEM, and Team Keystone’s project, we created a coloring book targeting children and teenagers. This coloring book has lined drawings of bacteria, cells, and other biology related subjects, so children can fill in the colors and have fun. Next to each drawing is content fully written by our iGEM team members and another iGEM team, iBowu. We intend for our audiences to learn more about biology, synthetic biology, and SDGs.
The coloring book has in total six chapters: Eukaryotic Cell & Organelles, Prokaryotic Cell, More on Synbio, Equipment and BioSafety, Our Project, and SDGs. On the last page, our team’s WeChat official accounts are attached, making it convenient for the audience to follow more content on synthetic biology.