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[Cola Project X iGEM] 2020 Summer Science Education Activity

In 2020 summer, SJTU-BioX-Shanghai, iGEM team of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, cooperated with the school’s public welfare association TECC to conduct social practice activities. Our project aimed to popularize science among teenagers in simple terms and strived to inspire their interests in synthetic biology.

After months of preparation, during which we recruited volunteers, designed syllabus, and handouts, recorded videotapes, set up games and selected prizes, the online courses were successfully delivered in three primary schools countrywide. The students of Wangwai Primary School in Hainan Province and the support team finally meet each other in such a special way on July 23.

One week later, the video we made, along with other popular science materials was sent to Dapo Primary school, also in Hainan Province.

In August, we prepared our second course, and students of Jishicun Primary School in Guangxi Province had their video classes on September 1.

In this pilot project, students in only three primary schools took our courses. Unfortunately, we were unable to come face to face with these students due to the coronavirus, however, since the courses were delivered in the form of videotapes, it allows for the possibility that more schools than we initially planned could take our courses as well.

A warm-up game

We designed a warm-up game before class. It’s a simplified version of the game ‘Telephone’, where students played the roles of ‘DNA’, ‘RNA’, and ‘Protein’. A word is given to ‘DNA’, he is then asked to act it out to ‘RNA’. When the information is finally passed to ‘Protein’, all three kids will win if ‘Protein’ correctly guesses the word. They’ll lose if any of the three parts go wrong. We hope that kids enjoyed themselves and learned the information flow from the game.

Main subject

We briefly explained how DNA, RNA, and protein function to maintain vitality before introducing the basic idea of synthetic biology. Organisms in the natural state obey specific laws for the continuation of life, while synthetic biology expects to artificially simulate biological systems and even change or improve them, for the treatment and prevention of diseases.

This year, our team tried to optimize an existing gene-editing technology, CRISPR-Cas9. We introduced the concept of gene editing to the children. Its technical methods, existing defects, clinical significance, and feasibility are all worth exploring.

What is coronavirus?

Primary school students experienced the coronavirus epidemic just as we experienced the SARS outbreak at their age. Learning some basic knowledge at a younger age could help them understand something about this catastrophe, the whole world and protect themselves better.

The primary schools we chose to deliver our courses are all rural schools in remote areas. In this form of popular science summer camp, we tried our best to introduce the science world to students there and to help them have some understanding of all living creatures. While we got to know more about children’s lives in these rural schools, we felt obliged to show them that the outside world cares much about their bringing-ups, and we hope to arouse public concern on their education.

Dapo Primary school, Hainan Province, 2020.

Young Adults

Science Communication: High school affiliated to Shanghai JiaoTong University

Further development and promotion of synthetic biology among the young is one of the core spirits of iGEM. Our team has been committed to helping high school students develop theoretical understanding and experimental practice in synthetic biology all the time.

This year, we assisted students from High School Affiliated to Shanghai Jiao Tong University and helped them complete a project design about transcription activation of CRISPR-Cas9 system, which is by chance, a little similar to our project LUCAS. They finally chose to observe the ω-subunit transcriptional activation effect of the CRISPR-Cas9 system. With the spread of Covid-19 pandemic being more and more controlled in China, we shared our laboratory with them and helped review their experimental design. While working in the laboratory together, we demonstrated certain experiments and shared with them some operating skills.

Moreover, we have set a lecture about synthetic biology and iGEM to another group of students from High School Affiliated to Shanghai Jiao Tong University, who initially planned to set up a new iGEM team this year but had to postpone the plan due to the impact of the epidemic. We put them at ease by promising to help these students when they prepare their project next year, and we will share with them our experience of studying synthetic biology as well.

A lecture: High school affiliated to Fudan University

Thanks to those who were kind enough to fill out our questionnaire, we were happy to learn that from 2019 to 2020, people of all ages in China seemed to gain a bit more knowledge of gene-editing techniques such as CRISPR-Cas9.

Public’s rising awareness of gene-editing concepts

Click here to view our questionnaire.

However, since the questionnaire was put on the internet before the team’s solution design, we were unable to investigate public awareness of directed evolution, a brilliant biochemistry technique we used in our project LUCAS.

According to Tong Xiajing, professor and researcher at Shanghai University of Science and Technology, though ‘evolution’ might be a familiar concept to many, but mechanisms underlying directed evolution is not popularized.

Click here to view the full interview with Professor Tong.

That’s why we wanted to work with one or two other iGEM teams to carry out education of popular science, specifically on directed evolution. Luckily, SYSU-CHINA iGEM team had the same intention. A discussion group was built under this circumstance, we carried on academic buzz and shared project progress with one another from time to time.

We then worked together to write a joint proposal. We planned to hold two lectures, one in High School Affiliated to Fudan University in Shanghai, and one in Guangdong Experimental High School. Our team was mainly in charge of the lecture in Shanghai, and we planned to do it face to face with high school students who were interested in biology.

The day we went to High School Affiliated to Fudan University to submit our proposal

After a rather brief introduction of iGEM and synthetic biology, the history and development of directed evolution will be delivered by a concise narrative of such facts. The Nobel Prize award-winning technology ‘Directed Evolution of Enzymes’ is our main focus. Its concept, mechanisms, common techniques, and application prospects will be discussed in detail. We will also share the planning and thought train of LUCAS design, as well as our current result.

We hoped that by delivering the offline lecture in a relaxed and interesting way, high school students would have a deeper understanding of cutting-edge research and technology in biology. By introducing the iGEM competition to them, we also hoped they might participate in iGEM someday.

However, to our greatest regret, due to another Covid-19 outbreak in Qingdao, it violates the rule to gather that many students in a closed space, especially in high school. The lecture we have been long prepared for had to be postponed again and again. We might be delivering the lecture weeks after the competition is over.

We did participate in Guangdong’s online lecture though, it was a great experience and we were more than happy to stir up students’ interest in synthetic biology and iGEM.

Online lecture with students from Guangdong Experimental High School and SYSU-China team members, 2020.10.

Future Researchers and Bio-geeks

Reading science publications is one most important yet challenging tasks for young researchers. It takes an incredible investment of time and energy to merely understand what the authors were doing, let researchers alone to repeat their experiments. What’s more frustrating is that even after someone reads through a publication, before long he will forget all about it and have to read it again!

Despite all difficulties, it goes without saying that reading literature is essential. Different from textbooks, science publications show results along with how it was discovered. We not only learn the knowledge, but we also learn how to ponder on scientific issues and carry out experiments. While trying to push our own project, wildly researching relative publications helped us a lot.

It is how we arrived at the idea of setting up a column in our WeChat blog. We shared some articles, the works of which we all considered had been brilliantly conducted. All the sharing was in Chinese; the results were introduced in the simplest possible way. In this manner, we tried to make it friendly to young researchers in China.

The special column of ours covered many aspects of synthetic biology, including genetic engineering vector, protein optimization technology, gene editing tools, and newest modeling approaches. Most of the articles we shared are highly related to our team project. To be more specific, we shared engineered bacteria used in a diagnostic system, evolved Cas9 variants, controlling of genome editing, directed evolution tools, and machine-learning-guided directed evolution for protein engineering.