Team:TPR China/Science Communication
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CCIC
Overview
On August 28, 2020, TPR-CHINA participated in the 7th CCIC Online Summit as one of the teams focused on locusts. The final presentation was simulated in the form of lecture, poster, presentation and workshop, and our project design and results were initially displayed.
What is CCIC?
CCIC is a national summit spontaneously formed by my country's IGEM participating teams. It aims to provide a platform for resource sharing among participating IGEM teams and promote mutual learning and communication. The CCIC Summit was guided by the Synthetic Biology Professional Committee of the Chinese Society of Bioengineering, and hosted by the Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Shenzhen Institute of Synthetic Biology Innovation. It brought a series of wonderful expert lectures to IGEMer across the country online. The online meeting format completes the communication and sharing process of the regular summit.
What did we Do?
During this CCIC participation, we made a complete video of the project introduction: the logic of our project was connected in the form of video; in addition, we made the corresponding poster for the first time, and we found out the shortcomings in design of poster through comparison with other teams , hope to make improvements in the subsequent project process. In the course of the conference, our self-directed and self-performed videos were highly praised, and we also had exchanges ideas with many other teams on related video production styles.
In particular, this summit divided all teams related to locust research into the same display period and designed a workshop session. With this, we learned about the solutions proposed by other teams in the face of the locust plague problem and contacted the CAU-China team, hoping to reach cooperation in the future.
Acknowledgment
We appreciate the organizer of this online community CCIC (conference of China IGEMer community) for providing us the precious chance to participate and display ourselves in such a prestigious meeting. The experience of this conference would be really useful for the improvement of our project.
Tong Yi Qi Yuan
Why did we conduct this on-line seminar?
With theCOVID-19 epidemic sweeping the world, the topic of epidemiology and public health has entered our lives on a wider scale and has become a popular topic in life science research. In this context, TPR-CHINA participated in and co-organized the online lectures released by TongYiQiYuan and invited the academician Gao Fu to give a lecture on "A Brief History of Humans and Hospital Microbes",This lecture emphasized the importance of synthetic biology.
The important role of disease prevention and treatment. Our primary goal is to attract more young scholars to join the research of life science and synthetic biology. At the same time we would like to point out the problems in the face of the development of life science. With the foundation of this online lecture, we initially attracted more than 100 scholars and researchers of different stages to join the community to learn synthetic biology and life science knowledge from each other or together. From now on we hope to have more activities in the future and more exchanges in ideas within this group.
What is this Seminar About?
As an important subject of modern biology, synthetic biology has played a pivotal role in interdisciplinary fields. For example, epidemiology currently uses a large number of synthetic biology as a tool. Nowadays, all mankind is making every effort to develop a COVID-19 vaccine, and it has demonstrated its vitality while trying to strengthen the prevention and control of infectious diseases. From the perspective of Mr. Gao as an expert in the field of virus structural biology, synthetic biology, as a representative of the third life science revolution, as a tool discipline for human manipulation of genes and proteins, will surely become an important part of the coordinated development of humans and microorganisms in the 21st century.
Through Mr. Gao’s explanation, using synthetic biology, we can go deeper into the pathogenic mechanism of hospital microorganisms and modify our vaccines according to its characteristics. The same method is not only applicable to epidemics, but in the future, we will use the powerful capabilities of synthetic biology. Finding a treatment plan for an incurable disease, even further, we can even manage to solve famine and promote social development.
Further Discussion
However, the strength of synthetic biology is destined to be a double-edged sword. As a high school student, previously we had a very simple understanding of its potential dangers. However, biological health has become an increasingly important topic with the development of synthetic biology: Whether the transformation of life meets the requirements of health and harmony has become a question we need to ask ourselves. Once this technology is abused, it may be the stagnation of agricultural development, global biological disasters, social unrest, and various The extinction of species and even humans. The potential behind these synthetic biology enlighten us to go out of the laboratory and look forward to the infinite possibilities that life sciences bring to mankind, while taking the supreme principle of life safety into our hearts.
After all, the future is destined to belong to us, young scholars. The rudder of the development of life sciences, is destined to be in our hands. Through this lecture activity, we have gained the attention of 107 online audiences, interpreting the relationship between the COVID-19 epidemic and synthetic biology, and actively appealing More young scholars like us have joined the research of synthetic biology, and initially established such an online community with expert lectures and cooperation and exchanges as the link. The online form of the community is well adapted to the current epidemic situation. This style of office work also provides more convenience for resource sharing.
We plan to use this community to extensively explore the use of life sciences in the face of the epidemic, from the science of self-protection to the science of synthetic biology in vaccine development. Specific applications, and hope to attract more people to join in the study and contribute to the joint prevention and control of the epidemic.
Finally, this online lecture has been compiled by the TongYiQiYuan and published as a public article. Till the completion of these words, more than 261 people have read it. We are now looking forward to the next such expert lecture or community exchange to a greater degree Attract scholars to join.
Linked Article
Acknowledgement
We appreciate the main organizer: TongYiQiYuan for its full present of support on TPR_China and the huge effort it made in order to accomplish this activity successfully.
Education
Overview
On July 30th, we held a one-hour online educational lecture. Three of our team members popularized synthetic biology knowledge, introduced the purpose and values of the iGEM competition, and promoted TPR_China and our Locust Master project. They carefully prepared the speech, and the lecture went on smoothly as scheduled.
What is this Online Sharing About?
Taking into account the audience’s general understanding of synthetic biology, Lidong Lin first introduced the definition of synthetic biology and what synthetic biology can do from the perspective of a high school student in plain language. He also introduced some goals of synthetic biology and some synthetic biotechnology breakthroughs from a professional perspective.
Next, Duyuan Fang introduced to the audience the top competition in the field of synthetic biology-iGEM which we currently enroll in. He discussed what we are able to learn from the experience of iGEM. For example, we can participate in real scientific research through iGEM competition, which involves design research topics, conducting experiments, constructing wiki, and modeling, It requires us to have a deeper understanding of relevant knowledge. Fang Duyuan also used the 2018 project of GreatBay_China which was a previous excellent team as an example to let the audience better understand what the iGEM competition is like.
Finally, Manli Liu introduced our team TPR_China and our locust project. She mentioned that the inspiration for our project came from the worst locust disaster in East Africa in 70 years at the beginning of this year, with 360 billion locusts. The locust plague is one of the devastating disasters to mankind and the environment today. But the main method of controlling locust plagues is spraying insecticides in the air, which costs a lot and destroys the diversity of the biosphere. So we planned to degrade PAN and finally attract locusts by chemical means to avoid the formation of locust plagues. She concisely summarized the goals, design, advantages, and characteristics of our project.
Reflection: pros and cons
The audience came from different schools, different areas, and even different age groups. In the Q&A session, we interacted very well with the audience. We answered various questions from the audience and gave the questioner a satisfactory answer from a professional perspective as much as possible. So we finally won unanimous praise and great feedback from the audience.But the only shortcoming is that the number of the audience attending the publicity lecture did not meet our expectations, so we summarized several things that we can improve:
1.The topic of the lecture is professional.
People are not familiar with the new field "synthetic biology". So we can start with the professional vocabulary that most people know. For instance, as introducing the definition of synthetic biology, we can say like "synthetic biology is doing the work of putting DNA and protein parts together to form biological circuits in a manner analogous to making electrical circuits from transformers, capacitors, and the like". Also, more use of analogies and other techniques enable people to better understand the concepts.
2.The content and format of the lectures can be improved
Since the Q&A session of this event is more prominent, we decided to focus more on cooperation and communication in the future. We invited Academician Gao Fu for the next activity and successfully held an online event with the basis of expert lecture and cooperation, further expanding our influence and widening our appeal.
Improvements
To let people better know about our project and pay attention to the locust plague next time, we launched an online questionnaire about people’s awareness of the locust plague. Meanwhile, we carried out the project publicity and activities for the popularization of knowledge about locust plague. We also designed posters and business cards to invite more people to learn about our team and projects.