Introduction
Our project wants to use synthetic biology to predict the risk of dental caries and develop dental caries prevention products. Our goal is to detect the presence of Streptococcus mutans, which is the culprit of dental caries. At the same time, we will use antimicrobial peptide products to prevent the further occurrence of dental caries. We hope to achieve the purpose of early detection and early prevention, and reduce the suffering caused by dental caries.
As for scientific communication, we mainly focus on the concept of public understanding of science. We hope to spread scientific knowledge to the public through certain channels and means, and promote public understanding, support and participation in science. Affected by COVID-19,Our scientific communication activities are inevitably restricted. However, our team still hopes to diversify scientific knowledge , such as interacting more with the public, introducing our project and synthetic biology in an easy-to-understand way. Diversify our projects and synthetic biology, make it easy to understand and pave the way for the future of synthetic biology education. As we know, offline activities are usually more memorable for public. However, due to COVID-19, we can’t hold public activities to communicate with more people face to face. Fortunately, we can use online social media to induce the scientific knowledge related to our project. Of course, we will do our best to hold online activities as much as possible.
Target population of activity
Our education and public participation activities are mainly aimed at children and young people .They are the main stakeholders in our project and we have noticed that there are few relevant information to explain science to them. Otherwise, we also want to extend our knowledge to the wider audience and try to attract as many different groups as possible.
For children and young people ,We created a series of articles and videos, which were promoted through online social media and software, such as Snack video, bilibili, WeChat, ins, etc…Our team also hold lectures and applied other different channels to carry out our 2020 SZPT-CHINA of scientific communication. Our posters and product packaging are also more inclined to childlike style. The interesting children's illustrations and colorful patterns not only attract children's interest in the product, but also bring them the knowledge of synthetic biology. Of course,our packaging is also designed different styles according to different ages, hobbies and so on .
2020 Southern China Regional Meeting
On June 4,2020, we participated in the first stage of the fourth iGEM South China online Exchange organized by the iGEM Competition team of Shenzhen University. The video of our team displayed on the bilibili platform's official account. They collect videos, unified in Shenzhen University bilibili Station official account SZU-China.Here we discuss better solutions together, here we cooperate with more like-minded partners, and here we witness many incredible realizations! We and iGEMers from all over the world are discussing in this grand event of synthetic biology.
Through this online collection exchange meetup, our project can spread more widely, the information about our team to the other iGEMer all over the world .What’s more, make us find partners more quickly in the later stage , to achieve a major step in the project publicity.
CCiC
The 7th China Regional iGEMer Exchange Conference (CCiC) serves as an important platform for the exchange, cooperation and display of learning iGEM all participating teams in China, Held online from August 27 to 31,2020. A five-day meeting will include the opening ceremony, academic lectures, presentation of team reports, poster presentations, workshop, team discussions, closing ceremonies, Has invited the academic community, the industry heavy guest and some iGEM committee members to participate, Will be another rare exchange platform and knowledge feast! Of course we can't miss.
More than 70 iGEM teams from more than 60 colleges and universities in the CCiC have shared their research results and experience through team display and poster display in the online venue of the CCiC. This is the largest CCiC in history. Hope to get more communication opportunities in this feast.
At the round table, professionals from all walks of life discussed the road and future of synthetic biology industrialization, and venture capital professionals answered common questions in workshop. More in order to facilitate you to better understand the adjustment of this year's iGEM the organizers also invited human practice committee and safety committee to carry out different topics workshop for you to answer a variety of iGEM projects will encounter problems.
In this event, we got a lot of useful team information, more broadly to promote our project out.
Here are our Presentation&Poster contents
Professors
We also communicate with experts, and in the process of communicating with experts, we not only help to improve our experiments, but also make our project more clear. Importantly, we have learned a lot about synthetic biology from these experts.
Social media
In order to share our projects and advances in synthetic biology as much as possible with the public, we recognized that we need to promote our project using different social media platforms. To this end, we have adopted the following app for our scientific dissemination.
Snack video app:
In early May, British royal society of chemistry (rsc) launched a video contest. The topic was "Public Safety and Health" and the role of chemistry in this field.It was hoped that the public and professionals, including graduate students, could use can use their knowledge in the form of videos to spread more scientific knowledge to people. On 24 June, our team participated in this event .The video of our project was widely disseminated, and We took this opportunity to have a lot of discussions about dental health with netizens.
Bilibili app：
In order to better promote the knowledge of synthetic biology, we have made a series of short videos with the theme of "presenting iGEM to new iGEMer”. These videos have all been placed on bilibili App for netizens to click and watch.
Ins:
Instagram,which has more than 1 billion user, is one of the communication platforms of the iGEM team this year. For the purpose of introducing our project to other teams, we also use this platform to promote our project and hope more iGEMer to work with us to solve scientific problems! Furthermore, we learn about other iGEM team projects and actively communicate with many teams through the platform.
Web Articles - WeChat Offical Account
we created our WeChat official account SZPT iGEM and published articles on our experimental activities, human practice records,teamwork, and synthetic biology. we also shared the official account and the knowledge of synthetic biology with SZU-China iGEM、HZAU-China iGEM and other teams, which made the communication between teams more extensive.
Lectures - Education:
①Lecture 1
Our work aims to spread synthetic biology scientifically and open a new way for synthetic biology education and its impact on the world. One of our public and educational participation process activities is to organize and hold lectures related to synthetic biology and iGEM. On September 30,2020,250 students from the School of Applied Chemistry and Biotechnology of Shenzhen Vocational and Technical College were invited to attend and preach. And invited the iGEM team of Huazhong Agricultural University. After this lecture ,90% of students expressed their interest in synthetic biology and iGEM competition, which not only achieved the purpose of publicity, but also demonstrated our project. Among them, we explain what the iGEM is, what tasks you need to complete to participate in the competition, and of course, what our project includes, and the results of the experiment until then. During the speech, we conducted a survey to ask the audience if rapid detection of dental caries is acceptable.
②Lecture 2
On october 17,2020, the lecture invited 300 students from the College of Applied Chemistry and Biotechnology of Shenzhen Vocational and Technical College to attend and preach, and the iGEM team of Northwest University. The theme of this lecture is popular science antimicrobial peptides, we want to through the lecture to spread the knowledge of synthetic biology.
Present iGEM to Future iGEMer:
①senior high school student：
Biology is an important course in high school.In order to stimulate high school student passion for iGEM, we contacted teacher Ye Xiuyao of No .1 Middle School in Dianbai District of Maoming City. After watching videos about our project , high school students expressed their interest in the experimental operation part of the video and had a first understanding of the iGEM competition.
② Junior middle school student
For junior high school students, we contacted teacher Fang Bohao of Kaiping No.7 Middle School, explained our ideas to him, and wanted to share the scientific communication video of our project with the students in his class. He was very willing to help us. After the video was broadcast, the students liked it and they were interested in synthetic biology
③Primary school students
For the promotion of primary school students, we contacted Li Hua, the sixth grade teacher of Qijing Central Primary School in Maoming City. We told her our intention that was to share the scientific communication video of our project with the students in her class. She was very willing to spread the video to different grades of primary school students. We want more people to know more about iGEM and synthetic biology.
Promotion of synthetic biology
To attract a wide audience of family, friends, scientists and non-scientists adults, our team also thought of making synthetic biology understood through small gifts such as posters, postcards, fans, product packaging, and so on.
① Postcards：
During the lecture on synthetic biology education, we had set up a question and answer session on synthetic biology types, during which successful friends have gotten a set of exquisite postcards. Not only has aroused the attention to the synthetic biology, but also has spread the knowledge imperceptibly
②Fans:
We want to use the advantage of summer to print the QR code of our social software on a fan and make our propaganda more scientific by giving it to primary, junior, high, and interested audiences in iGEM and synthetic biology.
③Posters：
Many of our activities have been restrained because of 2019-nCoV.But we still want more people to understand synthetic biology and discover its charm and power. In addition to the above activities, we have designed several posters to let people understand and experience by synthetic biology in an easy way around the China.
Oral Association
One of our public and educational engagement process activities is to cooperate with the school dental association. On October 14, 2020, the school dental association training room will be used to apply fluoride to children. Fluoride is currently a common type of dentistry. The effective way to prevent dental caries is to check the child’s mouth first, let them rinse their mouths, and then apply fluoride to the teeth. During the process of applying fluoride to the child, we show him the pamphlet on the treatment of dental caries and show them us. The video made in bilibili allows children to increase their interest in brushing and caring for their teeth.
Oral Association Photo Source: Media Centre, Xinglin College, Shenzhen Vocational and Technical College
Thoughts
We want to transform science into technology that can serve society. It is important that Synthetic biology is understood in an easy-to-understand way and paving the way for the future of synthetic biology education is essential. We are SZPT-CHINA team, we will do our best to improve understanding of synthetic biology with different social groups by taking various ways.