Education
2023 SDU-CHINA
Overview
Synthetic Biology and iGEM Advocacy
Special Children
Taking middle school students into the world of synthetic biology
Next iGEMer Recruitment
iGEM Competition System Preaching
ICII popular science propaganda
Plastic Pollution Status and Science of Degradable Plastics
Kindergarten
Primary School
Middle School
High School
University and graduate students
Society at large
Education is a tree shaking a tree, a cloud to promote a cloud, a soul awaken another soul. ---- Jaspers "What is Education"
This year, our project has invested a lot of time and energy in education, we believe in the power of knowledge, and believe that although we are not strong, we can still contribute to the promotion of synthetic biology and environmental protection concepts.
The goal of our EDUCATION program is divided into two parts: one is to let more people know what synthetic biology and iGEM are; the other is to enhance the public's understanding of the current situation of plastics and how to reduce plastic pollution. For the first part, we target high school students, college students and graduate students; it is everyone's responsibility to protect the environment, so for the second part, we extend our target audience to all ages, including kindergarten, elementary school, middle school, high school, college students, and the whole society.
We participated in the drawing work of synthetic biology picture book organized by OUC-CHINA, and drew the special stories of bacterial babies and bacterial mothers belonging to our project, and brought them to exceptional children with Down syndrome, autism etc. for coloring. Through this activity, the children can preliminarily understand what synthetic biology is, and plant a small seed of hope for them.
After researching the secondary school community's understanding of synthetic biology, we found that only 1 in 1000 people in China have a simple understanding of synthetic biology. We found that only 1 in 1000 people in China have a simple understanding of synthetic biology. After concluding that the lack of knowledge about synthetic biology is due to the lack of channels to popularize synthetic biology, we have launched a series of popularization courses to help secondary school students understand synthetic biology from theory to practice.
As iGEMers, we not only work tirelessly in our labs to discover the mysteries of synthetic biology, but we are also committed to enabling more people to join the synthetic biology industry in the future, adding more colors to the future of synthetic biology. We brought a team of middle school students from Jinan, China into the synthetic biology lab to see what we do in our daily life.
After the event, we received a thank-you notes from a female student who said that she had never known about synthetic biology before, and after we led him to witness the magic of synthetic biology, she expressed her ambition to join the synthetic biology industry for further study.
We not only focus on the present, we also focus on keeping the legacy for the future, while we are conducting this year's competition, we also want to show the direction for the students who will participate in next year's competition. iGEM Team leader, Lu Suiru, made a recruitment speech to the students who are interested in joining the team and introduced the situation of the 2023 iGEM teams. The introduction included project description, 2023 iGEM schedule, team composition, and award criteria. Through this presentation, students got a concrete understanding of the iGEM teams, enriched their knowledge and broadened their thinking. It also deepened some students' interest in iGEM and joining the iGEM family.
We have invited Prof. Liang Quanfeng, the gold medal instructor of the 2018 and 2019 iGEM competitions, to give an in-depth introduction of iGEM to the recruited iGEMers. Starting from the questions of "why synthetic biology should introduce the concept of engineering" and "why synthetic biology and artificial intelligence go in the same direction", he analyzed the specific meaning and competition of "International Genetically Engineered Machine Competition". "We analyze the specific meaning and content of the International Genetically Engineered Machine Competition (IGEMC). He pointed out the way forward for the next level of iGEMers and strengthened our determination and confidence to participate in the competition.
We have joined the ICII activities organized by NAU-CHINA, and our ICII this year will be publicized to the general public through the science website platform, aiming at letting the Chinese public better understand synthetic biology, and also letting the public witness our participation in iGEM.
"Education starts at an early age", our environment is closely related to all of us, regardless of age, we want to realize the full coverage of the scope of our publicity for people of all ages, so we designed a fun and easy-to-understand classroom for kindergarten children. We used a plastic sorting and sticking game along with a knowledge talk. We first talked about plastics in our lives, the convenience and pollution they bring, and how to reduce plastic pollution. After that, we played the plastic sorting game, and through the feedback of the children's completion of the situation, we got a good grasp of the effect, and in the plastic to reduce the use of the sharing, the children are active in contributing to say what they can do to reduce plastic pollution.
Nowadays, with the good results of the promotion of the plastic limit, we can see degradable plastics everywhere in the city as a substitute for traditional plastics, such as straws, shopping bags, etc. However, in remote and backward areas, the proportion of non-degradable plastics is still relatively high compared to the cities. However, in the remote and backward areas, the proportion of non-degradable plastics is still relatively high compared to the cities. So we went into a primary school of the poor and backward villages to bring the fire of knowledge there, hoping that our spark can have a prairie fire.
Degradable plastics have permeated every aspect of our lives, and there are many types of them, but many people may not have a concrete understanding of PHB. We want more people to understand PHB and how it is produced, so we led middle school students into our lab and used Nile Red staining to reveal PHB from the engineered bacteria that produce it. Nile Red (also known as Nile Blue Oxazinone) is a lipophilic dye that is very sensitive to its environment. Nile Red fluoresces strongly in lipid-rich environments and very weakly in water-mediated environments. It is a very superior in vivo dye for the detection of intracellular lipids by fluorescence microscopy and flow cytometry. Nile Red stains intracellular liposomes red and has better selectivity for liposomes in the cytoplasm. Thus, it can specifically show the PHB particles produced within the bacteria.
We invited associate researcher Zhiyong Cui to bring the high school students participating in the Program of Excellence a session on how to carry out the transformation from theory to production, so that they can join us in experiencing the wonders and marvels of science and at the same time witnessing the magic and creativity generated by technology.
Together with the SDU Environmental Action of Shandong University's School of Environment, we organized online science activities, which played a great role in popularizing the hazards of microplastics and the measures to deal with them.
Online
In addition, we also focus on popularizing science to the general public, we created a new media public number to expand our influence to the whole country by using the power of the Internet, we regularly publish science and technology about degradable plastics and PHB on our public number, aiming to raise the awareness of degradable plastics to the public.
Offline
We went into the community open market to promote the knowledge about biodegradable plastics to old citizens, to enhance their awareness of environmental protection, so that people of all age can make a contribution in environmental protection.
