According to the World Health Organization, cancer is the biggest cause of death globally. To give patients more specialized therapy options, new focused medication development is urgently required. In our effort, we used E. coli to construct a human hippo signaling pathway to design a pharmacological screening system to identify potential treatment options that can restore healthy hippo signaling. This will increase the accuracy of tumor medications, aid in the development of pharmaceuticals that target the hippo pathway and lessen patient suffering.
Our team has launched several public awareness initiatives on the subjects of "synthetic biology" and "cancer" this year to increase knowledge of these issues, as well as to prevent cancer as soon as possible.
1 Project Topic Advocacy - Drug Screening
2 Internet-based synthetic biology education campaign
3 “Women in STEM” online public announcements
4 Synthetic Biology Offline Presentation on Cancer Cells
5 Nursing Home Public Announcement - How to prevent common life illnesses
6 Comic book about preventing cancer
We took part in a science fair on May 20 in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province. Our team was there to promote the project along with Hangzhou-SDG, Shanghai-SDG, Nanjing-SDG, Hangzhou-BioX, and Nanjing-BioX. We created some posters and printed the project introduction of our team on them. We distributed booklets to all who attended the exhibition along with an explanation of the history of our endeavor. Additionally, there were two kid-friendly activities. Building a model of DNA was the first task, and drawing the numerous plant cells they observed under a microscope was the second. After reading the pamphlets, several of them inquired about the project, and each team carefully responded to inquiries from the public regarding its project topics. Our team was able to get some feedback from the audience's questions during this activity, which was useful in helping us improve the project. It also helped us get the word out about the project to the public.
During the iGEM event, the Hangzhou-SDG team, Shanghai-SDG team, Guangzhou MedX-team, Shanghai-MedX team, Hangzhou-BioX team, Nanjing-BioX team, Shanghai-BioX team, and Nanjing-SDG team held a joint promotional event on their WeChat video accounts. After our careful pre-promotion, more than 2000 audience members listened to our presentations. As on our promotional posters, the content of each team's presentation was different.
First, the Hangzhou-SDG team will introduce what synthetic biology is. Secondly, it was divided into several modules on the following topics: environmental protection, biopharmaceuticals, food, and nutrition, biomanufacturing, and energy. Each team gave their presentations in the order mentioned above. Our Shanghai-MedX team promoted knowledge of biopharmaceuticals, including research and analysis of drugs for rectal cancer. Some of our audience members endorsed our live broadcast. This event was also aimed at further introducing synthetic biology to everyone and promoting our iGEM activity in the field of biology.
Participants from the AIS-China, BS-United-China, DUT_China, RDFZ-CHINA, ZJFH-Nanjing, and Shanghai-MedX teams brought the subjects they were working on to the Women in Science and Technology event. On July 29, they gave a presentation online regarding their initiatives to convey the organization's topic of eliminating discrimination against women in scientific research. The teams utilized the occasion to promote their initiatives. The Shanghai-MedX team members focused on colorectal cancer, thus they presented information about their colorectal cancer drug screening method using PowerPoint. They specifically described how to choose signaling pathways, how to use the Alpha screening method, and how to test the effects. Finally, "Women in Science and Technology" demonstrates that women, as represented by the term "science and technology," may have an impact in the domains of science, technology, engineering, math, etc. This event will raise awareness of our project and the role of biopharmaceuticals in synthetic biology, in addition to highlighting the issue of women in science and technology.
A public outreach event was held at Mars Cell Labs (MCL) on August 3rd by our Shanghai-MedX team, Shanghai-BioX team, and Shanghai-SDG team. As a result, we extended an invitation to the event to persons. The Shanghai-BioX team described how they modified sweet potatoes with CRISPR-Cas to enhance the starch's quality. A heavy metal detection technique based on the observation of transgenic fruit flies was presented by the Shanghai-SDG team. Our group presented information on common malignancies and current methods of prevention. Each team began by introducing their respective promotional expertise before launching into their unique game session to further the public's understanding of synthetic biology. To help people comprehend the structure of cancer cells, our team showed them how cancer cells are made and invited them to participate in a drawing activity.
This event's goals were to highlight our ongoing bio-innovation, introduce the public to our initiative, and make synthetic biology more understandable to non-biology majors.
We wanted to make the subject of synthetic biology more accessible to older people, and we decided to go into their lives and explain something about synthetic biology from the beginning. To promote our program, a lot of organizations visited a community center. We educated the elderly on a few common illnesses and the harm they may do to aging bodies, like osteoporosis and coronary heart disease. In the interim, we offered them advice on how to shield themselves from those illnesses. Along with that, we briefly discussed facts on iGEM and introduced our program's idea. We also developed a leaflet for each person and a modest gift bearing our team's emblem. They might gain a clearer and more direct understanding of our initiative as a result. We played a finger gymnastics video for about five minutes after the activity was finished, which helped promote their overall wellness.
This initiative aimed to increase elder's understanding of scientific research and their knowledge of various ailments. Additionally, we were successful in spreading the idea of making science research and synthetic biology more accessible to the general people.
Considering the wide range and simplicity of ways to disseminate knowledge about synthetic biology, we are going to start with the familiar knowledge around us, and we have drawn a comic booklet for our project. We are starting to pay more attention to our health in our daily lives and plan to keep up the practice of getting routine exams. But we feel helpless when we learn of a tumor or cancer. Because of this, our team creates a brochure to spread awareness of the positive behaviors that must be maintained in everyday life in order to prevent cancer in order to reduce the likelihood of undesirable events. To make the pamphlet easier to read and comprehend for everyone, we turned it into a series of cartoons. This way, more people will be able to learn about cancer, alter their bad behaviors, and take proactive steps to prevent the disease. Many high school students were informed about cancer thanks to the distribution of our booklets to numerous schools. From the knowledge of cancer, more people gradually understand synthetic biology.
