Team:BUCT-China/Education
This year, we are committed to achieving the goal of educational communication of iGEM. We have participated in or carried out relevant activities successively
In this year's project, we have strengthened our contact with other iGEM teams and carried out our cooperation activities through the network or offline. In the process of communication, we got a lot of satisfactory results and enjoyed the atmosphere of communication. We hope that through communication and cooperation, we can share our project with other teams and spread the project concept of environmental protection. We hope that more people can understand the harm of plastic waste, and at the same time, we can apply synthetic biology technology to solve the problem. Of course, in the process of cooperation and exchange, we also learned a lot, saw many excellent teams and their creative ideas.
August
8.1 Lectures on iGEM exchange meeting in Beijing
8.10 Suggestions from environmental experts
8.15 WeChat Subscription
8.30 KEYSTONE lecture by Professor Liu Luo
8.10 Suggestions from environmental experts
8.15 WeChat Subscription
8.30 KEYSTONE lecture by Professor Liu Luo
September & October
9.28 Offline communication
10.14 Bilibili live broadcast
10.15 Synbio fair
10.14 Bilibili live broadcast
10.15 Synbio fair
| Communication and learning |
On August 1st, we participated in the iGEM sharing meeting held locally. We introduced our project and proposed to more people to protect the environment and pay attention to the problem of plastic waste.Besides,to gain a better understanding of the current state of ocean plastic pollution, we contacted some environmentalists over the world. They included the Balinese environmental experts Sally Silverstone and Dr. Halldórsdóttir, the President of the Beijing Waste Recycling Association Yang Xue. Through the conversations with them, we were impressed by the fact that it is urgent to find an effective solution to the problem of marine plastic waste.
| Public platform |
On August 15th, we set up our WeChat public platform "Beihua iGEM". The main purpose of this platform is to create a free and open public communication platform. To assist our team in propaganda like spread synthetic biology and environmental protection knowledge to the public. At first, the audience of the WeChat platform was mainly college students, as the number of followers gradually increased, the group of followers also expanded from college students to the general public. In two months, we have pushed eight biology-related articles, which were forwarded by the college and inter-campus communication. Now the total number of readings reached 3723, the maximum number of reading in a single day reached 1122, and the maximum number of reads in an hour could reach 444! It's all the result of our teamwork. Our team members actively spread scientific and synthetic biology knowledge through many WeChat information dissemination functions such as moment sharing and "Watching".
The content of our tweets mainly includes two aspects, synthetic biology knowledge popularization and our research on marine plastic pollution.
We start from the hot environmental issues- Marine microplastics pollution. To solve such an increasingly serious environmental problem, we introduced our project to the public. It is to design a genetically modified E. coli bacterium to achieve the degradation of plastic synthetic polymers, plastic pollutants into treasure. We then pushed two articles about the plastic family from the angle of people's perspective, leading people to understand the plastics around them as well as the current status of plastic waste and how to deal with it. The response was good, with 400+ hits each.
To spread the knowledge of synthetic biology and let more people understand synthetic biology and iGEM, we have set up a specific unit "Synthetic Biology Lecture". We regularly send some articles to introduce some basic content of synthetic biology to the public as well as some hot issues that synthetic biology is solving in the 21st century.
The content of our tweets mainly includes two aspects, synthetic biology knowledge popularization and our research on marine plastic pollution.
We start from the hot environmental issues- Marine microplastics pollution. To solve such an increasingly serious environmental problem, we introduced our project to the public. It is to design a genetically modified E. coli bacterium to achieve the degradation of plastic synthetic polymers, plastic pollutants into treasure. We then pushed two articles about the plastic family from the angle of people's perspective, leading people to understand the plastics around them as well as the current status of plastic waste and how to deal with it. The response was good, with 400+ hits each.
To spread the knowledge of synthetic biology and let more people understand synthetic biology and iGEM, we have set up a specific unit "Synthetic Biology Lecture". We regularly send some articles to introduce some basic content of synthetic biology to the public as well as some hot issues that synthetic biology is solving in the 21st century.
| Professor Liu's lecture |
Our primary PI, Professor Luo Liu, is an expert in the field of plastic biodegradation. He provided important information for hardware facilities and gave suggestions for further experimental plans to students in Keystone High School. The topic they discussed includes PET degradation methods, PET degradation condition, the use ad recycling method of LCC. He also gave advice to the students of Jingshi High School on how to develop a business plan for the products of the experiment. This presentation increased the interactions between the the Keystone and our team and gave the students of Keystone a better understanding of the project we are working on.
| Experience sharing |
We made a presentation at Keystone High School to introduce our program to the students of Keystone High School on Sep 28. Discussing with the students of Keystone High School, We made a primarily conclusion about how to improve the enzyme activity in PET degradation. The advice we gave was mostly about the physicochemical conditions of the reaction, the pretreatment of raw PET, and the modification of enzymes. We also shared some of the difficulties we have been though and experience we gained during these those process, which enables us to keep a close connection and had many online communications afterwards.
| Live broadcast on bilibili platform |
On October 14, we broadcasted a live on bilibili about the background and the main experiment of the project, which attracted more than 500 viewers. From the current situation of plastic pollution, we introduced our intentions for this project. The biological techniques used in the project were introduced in layman's terms. Audience from different majors and educational backgrounds were able to gain a better understanding of the subject of synthetic biology, which also inspired people to contemplate the pollution of marine plastic litter.
| Synbio fair |
We shared our experience with students from Tsinghua Middle School, Keystone High School, and Beijing 101 High School. From basic biological textbook knowledge to the current development of development of biology, we introduced the basics of synthetic biology, related experimental knowledge and molecular biology experimental procedures to the students.We also gave some advice to the high school students about their experiments, and shared with them our experience in making posters and wikis.The participating teams include (including online): Tsinghua igem-2020; BNDS-China; JNFLS-China; NFLS-China; RDFZ-China; KEYSTONE; BHSF-China; QHFZ-China.
