Synthetic biology is an emerging subject in the biological field at the beginning of 21st century. People design and construct new biological systems with specific physiological functions, so as to product medicine, functional materials or energy substitutes. Actually, synthetic biology establishes a biological manufacturing pathway. Therefore, more and more attention has been paid to synthetic biology.
In mid-May, we held the Opening Weekend Festival with Nanjing-China, FDU and ZJU-China. After publicity and self-promotion, we asked the professors online about the content and development prospects of the research on synthetic biology and other biological research fields. We also asked doctors who are on the front line of medical care to understand the difficulties of cancer treatment during the outbreak. We carefully organized and concluded the interview, and realized the challenges and opportunities for the current cancer treatments. We know that the patients urgently need a more convenient way to cure the cancer. This is the original intention of our project.
In order to promote our project, we adapted the popular cartoon, SpongeBob SquarePants. We chose Krusty Krab to stand for the cancer cell in the lung, and Mr.Krabs represents for the Protooncogene. Mr.Krabs wanted to expand his Krusty Krab all over the bikini beach. However, the members from NJU-China helped SpongeBob SquarePants and his friends beat out the Cancer. Through this way, we intend that the audience who have non-biological background can understand our project easily.
We pushed our cartoon on Wechat Official Account for the first step. From June 17th to September 30th, We have made nine comic issues to tell the whole story, and the reading quantity has added up to 1278. Apart from the Chinese version, we also translated the cartoon in English, and have pushed it onto the twitter and ins in order to get in touch with the audience overseas. It's very exciting that we have been getting a lot of attention.
On the 27th of September, we gave a lecture about our project to the students from Jinling High School. We mainly introduced the concept of synthetic biology and the general idea of our whole project. As before, we used the SpongeBob Squarepants story as an entry point for easy-understanding. They asked a lot of questions about the new treatment for cancer, and paid much attention on the story told by the cartoon. Some of them were confused by the ethical issues in cancer treatment protocols, so we held a debate to delve into the question.
What is more, on October 11st, we attended the publicity activity for university associations in Nanjing university. We made a brochure out of our cartoons for the students who are interested in our project to read. It turned out that they were fascinated by the story and willing to learn more about our project and synthetic biology.
And then we designed three games to promote the idea of synthetic biology. The first one is to connect words into a meaningful sentence. The second one is to make a “plasmid” out of a Rubik's cube. And the last one is that in a region which represents for the lung, we use the gobang motivates the battle between cancer and the immune system. obviously, we attracted a lot of Nanjing University’s students to take part in our games and Learn about the rules of synthetic biology.
In addition to the brochure and the three games, we also invited students to air their views on the question “Can you accept treating cancer in a way that changes the genes of one organ?”. Most students chose the sticker of smiling face to show the positive attitude to the question. They think the advantages of this technique outweigh the disadvantages. Nevertheless, some of them are worried about the impact of genetic changes on the human body, and they fear that genetic change will affect the gene pool.
In response to this, we interviewed the staff from Genscript and the professor in Nanjing university who work on scientific ethics about what the limits, requirements and expectations of ethics on scientific technology are. According to the consensus we have reached, our team made corresponding improvements to the project. Overall, the new strategy of changing genes to treat cancer is promising and wait for further researching.
