Team:Nanjing-China/Education
Education
"Leading the Destiny of Life " online theme preaching activity
Synthetic biology is similar to modern integrated construction engineering. It applies engineering principles and methods to biotechnology fields such as genetic engineering and cell engineering. Through targeted design, transformation and even resynthesis of life processes or organisms, it is expected to solve the problem of biomedicine, environmental energy, biomaterials and other issues. Bright as its future shows, the public currently knows little about them. In addition, offline activities are restricted due to the epidemic this year. Therefore, we adopted an online conference and held a public event with the theme of "Leading the Destiny of Life " to popularize relevant knowledge in the field of life sciences, including the application prospects of synthetic biology.
On April 17th, five students from the HP group of our team used the Nanjing University undergraduate admissions Little Blue Whale platform, through the "Fall in Love with NTU, Sharing with Seniors" column, launched A preaching activity called "Leading the Destiny of Life " with students who are about to take the college entrance examination and interested in applying for Nanjing University as the audience. The event was launched on the ZOOM online conference platform, and was simultaneously broadcast live on platforms such as Bilibili, Douyin, Toutiao and iQiyi, with a large number of participants.
The preaching revolves around a clue of "fate". From the perspective of the storyteller Hanze Liu, four tour guides explore the four journeys of life, namely the "guided journey" and "guard journey", "Hand in hand Journey" and "Dream Building Journey".
Mingchang Wang’s journey of fate guidance, from the perspective of life sciences, introduces many ways to prepare for the college entrance examination from the perspective of life sciences, and guides students to use life science knowledge to adjust to a positive state and the right direction in the process of preparing for the exam. To make the right efforts.
Beginning with the epidemic of coronal virus, Zhongqi Xu’s journey looks back on the human history and discusses how life science protect the human species and allow their civilization to flourish.
Targeting at those students who want to take life science as their major in university or who want to have a deeper understanding of Life Science department of Nanjing Univeristy, Shijie Li’s Hand in hand Journey help build a solid bond between the students and their future.
Using Dream Building Journey as an opportunity, Yifei Bian mainly talks about how we could use synthetic biology to benefit the nature, including the application of synthetic biology in real life.
After the event, our HP members interact with the audience actively through the Little Blue Whale platform, productive conversations indicating a very joyful atmosphere.
‘voice of life: Interview with researches’ : an online interview with renowned professors
At 9:00-9:45 a.m. Beijing time, initiated by our team and jointly organized by Fudan, NJU China and ZJU China, the ‘voice of life: Interview with researches’ was held on hopin platform and broadcast live at Bilibili at the same time, gaining great popularity among the public. The event was hosted by Ziyang Xu (Nanjing-China), Yiyang Yao (Fudan), Yingfan Liu (NJU China) and Mingxiao Wei (ZJU). The participants included Professor Zhong Jiang from Fudan University, Professor Chen Xi from Nanjing University and Professor Chen Ming from Zhejiang University. Through online discussion, the charm of synthetic biology is spread to the public.
The first interviewee is Professor Zhong Jiang, who mainly talks about how his research area relates to synthetic biology, which microorganisms are potentially useful in Genetic Engineering and what role microorganisms play in synthetic biology. Professor Zhong states that the understanding and applications of his research area, which is majorly about virus, are all largely boosted by synthetic biology. Under the premise of biology safety, the applications of virus research can expand from the prevention of disease to the control of pests in agriculture. In the facet of protein production, apart from the traditional E.coli and Pichia pastoris, virus is also widely used when the production of special host proteins is required. What Professor Zhong also mentions is that despite that microorganisms are neglected during the early stage of the development of molecular biology, they have already been indispensable with the development of CRISPR-Cas9 technology. Professor Zhong expresses with great confidence that microorganisms will provide people with more resources and surprise in the future.
The second professor who take interviews is Professor Chen Xi. Professor Chen starts straightforwardly with the relationship between cell signal transduction and exosomes. He believes that in current researches, it is feasible to increase the production of exosomes or construct more efficient manmade exosomes to serve as BioBricks in the project of iGEM. While professor Chen concerns that the perplex mechanisms about exosomes are not well illustrated, he believes that the future of exosome is bright. Professor Chen also concludes about the work he has done for instructing the iGEM teams for many years, and he believes that besides the research ability of the students have been improved through the event, students also gain a sense of motivation and practice their socializing skills. Professor Chen additionally advocates that the audience who are watching this event should stress about the students’ dexterity and the practicality of the project, better imparting the core idea of synthetic biology.
The last professor is Professor Chen Ming. As an experienced instructor of the iGEM team, he witnesses the growth of the whole competition. He mentions that the highly ordered competitions have witnessed changes both in places and judges. Under the current special circumstance, the rules are likely to change, so it is imperative for every teams to be fully prepared and overcome any potential obstacles. At last, the professor pulls for all the iGEM team, depicting a bright future where synthetic biology is the basis for a plethora of researches and applications.
