Overview
We attach great importance to publicizing synthetic biology, energy and the environment among different populations and places. Therefore, we have not only promoted it in different types of schools in various cities at different times, but also included going into museums, science and technology centers, communities and other places.
In particular, we learned from the questionnaire that people are more concerned about whether the newly developed biofuels have enough potential to solve the energy problem. Therefore, while expanding the scope of our outreach, we will also communicate and discuss with people about how synthetic biology can solve social problems and the merits of butyl butyrate as a new biofuel.
During the competition, we held 6 offline promotional events, 2 online live events, as well as produced 2 cartoon type promotional brochures to be distributed in schools in nearly 20 cities.
The following is a detailed description of our work.
1. Science Popularization Activity
1.1 Understanding Cells and DNA
On May 20th, the China Hangzhou Low Carbon Science and Technology Museum hosted a powerful educational event that attracted many organizations and schools. Knowing that most of the visitors to this event were parents and children, we felt that young people and children were an important target for our outreach activities as they have more choices for their future, so our team signed up for the event.
Together with other iGEM teams, we prepared DNA puzzles, microscopes, and some drawing games for these young people, and through these devices and games, we conveyed to them the knowledge about synthetic biology such as genetic engineering, and introduced to these participants our topic and the content related to renewable energy, energy crisis, and so on, in order to arouse and deepen their curiosity and understanding of sustainable development. The visitors were obviously very interested in the equipment and games and remained highly enthusiastic throughout the program, and through these interesting interactions, we could clearly see that they also developed a certain level of fascination with our topic, butyl butyrate.
1.2Introducing the Competition and Project
On June 20th two team members of our team briefly introduced iGEM and details of our project with PPT to the new-coming students in Hefei No.1 High School. We showed them our project from brain storming to real actions，and they were attracted to the richness of the iGEM competition.Then, we talked something about synthetic biology，as well as our project on bioenergy . Although the academical part for the new students is a little bit hard, they still interest in our final mission and hope us can achieve soon. We believe that it’s not only a great opportunity to learn about the iGEM competition, but also a great chance to inspire and encourage students to protect environment with their own actions.
1.3 A Novel Biofuel—Butyl Butyrate
On July 16th, our team organized a public outreach event with 2023iGEM Nanjing-BioX at the Nanjing Museum.
We explained our project "Novel Biofuels through Synthetic Biology" to the visitors who were taking a break and provided them with our leaflets and fans so that they could follow our social accounts for detailed information at any time. Many of the visitors showed great interest and discussed with us what new sources of energy could help protect the environment and alleviate the energy crisis, and were even surprised and impressed to learn that we were high school students while accomplishing such a socially valuable project.
1.4 Synthetic Biology Quiz Challenge
On July 23rd, our team and 2023iGEM Nanjing-BioX held a science popularization activity in Jiangsu Science and Technology Museum. We prepared three test papers of different difficulty about the basics of biology, and each difficulty corresponded to a small prize. We found that almost everyone who filled out the test papers got good scores, which indicated that they were at a certain level of biology.In this way, we attracted many interested people to talk to us in depth.
Among them were students, teachers, and even museum staff, who discussed with us the current environment of the Earth and the efforts that society as a whole is making to protect it. Some of the younger children were not aware of such topics, but the staff of the museum and other visitors to the museum, such as teachers, who were aware of such topics, talked with us for a long time.
1.5 Genetic Engineering & Synthetic Biology meetup
The experimental team members' experimental period at Nanjing Tech University coincided with the Biology Exploration Camp that was conducting activities at the same campus.
Between August 14th and August 18th, our team led these students, who were not much background in biology but interested, to explore their interest in biological sustainability in both experiments and theories.
In the classroom, we organized class discussions. We explored issues such as the UN goals, environmental pollution, and climate change.Through a week shared learning and exchange,they provided us with many ideas for research and development and some key points that we had not thought about in the topic.
In the lab, our lab crew led them through the instruments using for molecular biology.By the end of the program, many of the students had confirmed their love for biology, and a few of them were even interested in the iGEM competition that we participated in.
1.6 Children Learning in Games
The summer care center is a special program organized by the Nanjing Municipal Government. We learned that the children in the care center would learn some extracurricular science courses, so we contacted a care class in Xuanwu District to bring a biology course to the children.
On August 16th two of our team member and Nanjing-Biox showed the children age from 6 to 10 what is synthetic biology and introduce our experiment. We considered that those children were too young to totally understand what is synthetic biology. Therefore we organized many little games for them to learned the synthetic biology better.We have led the children through videos and teaching aids to learn about cell structure, know DNA, and complete base pair pairing.
It was obvious to us that the children were thinking during these games and some of them have even decided that they want to be a biologist when they grow up.
All of us and our students enjoyed this afternoon, also we hope that during this class the children can realized that the synthetic biology is a very important subject not only in school but also in the whole society.
2.Online education
2.1“Synthetic Biology” Lecture
On July 15th, our team hold an online streaming collaborated with Nanjing-BioX, Hangzhou-SDG, Hangzhou-BioX, Shanghai-BioX, Shanghai-MedX, Shanghai-SDG, Guangzhou-MedX. During the meeting, two members from our team gave the speech, including Energy and Sustainable Development Goals, current situation of energy problem with the increasing depletion of traditional energy sources, our project background(what is biofuel, clostridium tyrobutyricum and butyl butyrate）and our research ideas.
After our speech, some audience asked about some related questions to our project and our members gave the clear answers to respond them.
The live event attracted a total of more than 1,800 viewers, which was within our expectations.Through this online meeting, we hope more people can realize the importance to improve the production of biofuel and we need to do some meaningful things to reach the sustainable development goals.
2.2“Sustainable Development”Live Streaming
On August 17th our team and Nanjing-BioX held an living-streaming on the Tiktok. During the whole online video we got a total of 17,000 likes.
Through the living-streaming we mainly discussed the current state of the energy issues and the original purpose of our project, which is to develop new biofuels and increase the production of biofuels in the hope of helping to solve the cost problem in biofuel production.
Then, we introduced the content of sustainable development with the Nanjing-BioX team, popularized the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, and called on people to practice the concept of sustainable development in more practical actions.
3 Promotional Brochure
1.1“The Road to Environmental Protection - Synthetic Biology”
Considering that our team, Hangzhou-SDG and Shanghai-SDG are working on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), we decided to collaborate and create a comic booklet on "Sustainable Development" to be publicized in high school campuses in order to let more high school students know about sustainable development and synthetic biology. We decided to work together to create a comic booklet about "Sustainability" and promote it on high school campuses in order to educate more high school students about sustainability and synthetic biology.
During the school year in September, we conducted a wide range of promotional activities on high school and college campuses, using after-school study time, club recruitment time, etc. to find interested students and introduce our comic booklet to them; many students were very curious about our team composition and subject matter, and even took the initiative to join our promotional team. The event involved six schools in five cities: Hefei, Nanjing, Chongqing, Guangzhou and Shenzhen.
Download 环保之路-合成生物学
1.2“Our Butyl Butyrate”
In order to make it easier for elementary school students or lower secondary school students to understand the environmentally friendly characteristics of butyl butyrate, our team wrote a story that describes a scenario in which butyl butyrate has become a universal fuel and is used in the future. The story was presented in the form of a cartoon.
Together with the Nanjing-BioX team, we sent the comic story booklet to middle schools and elementary schools 15 cities in 3 provinces. These students were led by their teachers and our team members to read and understand it carefully. In particular, students were encouraged to understand the content conveyed in the brochure in ways that they were comfortable with, for example, we saw some students use drawings to show scenarios where they thought butyl butyrate could be used in the future.
We believe that through this experience, they not only gained an interesting reading, but more importantly, the seeds of "synthetic biology"and “biofuel” have been planted in their hearts.
Download 我们的“丁酸丁酯”
4 self-media
Through the network can expand the scope of publicity, so we opened in China more popular media platforms, there are small red book, bilibili. according to the different characteristics of these platforms, for example, small red book, mainly learning class graphic platform, we will be related to the popularization of science content into the form of pictures released. Moreover, we printed the QR code of these self media platforms on leaflets and fans, and distributed them to the public when doing offline promotional activities, in order to achieve a wider dissemination.
