The "legacy" we left for the newcomers
02 Oct,2021
After we decided on researching and investigating the topic of the recycled and regenerated paper, we hoped that students and even the whole society could pay attention to this issue of paper recycling, for the fact that paper has been largely wasted in many countries around the world. Therefore, we represented all members of the Bio Constructors Club, which was created last year specifically targeting for iGEM competition each year with many other synthetic biology-related competitions, to spread our ideas and findings to the public with all the resources given to the club.
Before we start to develop and advertise our project, we need to find the targeting audiences to whom we would teach be able to teach and share our ideas. After discussion, we believe that the freshmen of the school are the best at accepting and even passing on our project. We attended the club fair held by the school to find those passionate students who are interested in synthetic biology and the iGEM competition. In order to make our club more attractive during the recruitment, we designed logos and posters to advertise for the competition and our project. During the club fair, we gave a short lecture to all freshmen students who participated in the fair, and we published the QR code of the WeChat group chat of the club and the leader of the team.
After those who are interested in either the project or synthetic biology joined the club, we held the first meeting in the form of a lecture, which was prepared since the start of the recruitment. We see this lecture as a great chance to establish the credit of the club among the students and the public, which would be beneficial for our future development of the project. In the lecture, we first introduced the iGEM competition to the freshmen and the 11th graders who didn't participate in the competition. As a highly attractive and authorized competition for biology, we wanted to use the competition to make the public notice the club and the project that we are working on. From starting a team to Attending the Giant Jamboree, we covered all the sections of this competition.
After briefly introducing the competition that we are participating in, we moved on to the fundamental biology knowledge that is necessary for the club, of which the most important part that we focused on during the lecture would be the transcription and translation of from DNA to proteins and the formation of such molecules. With a few of the example projects given as complementary information and cases, the results and findings that we had reached so far were listed on the screen, representing the work that we have done for the regenerated paper. By a chart that shows the density and flexibility of the paper with different percentages of sericin and chitosan in the paper pulp, we clearly demonstrated the credibility of the club on the topic that we want to elaborate on.
For the next part of the presentation, we posted some pictures of the team members doing experiments and having meetings online and offline. Also, we posted the picture of the team attending the 2021 iGEM North China Meetup held in Tsinghua University High School to show our effort in making collaborations with the audiences. Lastly, we introduced each of the team members to the audiences and illustrated the job and positions that each of us is responsible for and the two groups that we are divided into, the experimental group and the human practice group. After the lecture, a few questions were asked by the freshmen on many perspectives, and we answered them each carefully, which marks the end of the first club meeting that the team hold this year and also the first step that we've taken to spread our ideas and the topic of recycled paper to the public.
Besides the club activities organized on campus, we have also contracted with another primary school so that we could teach younger kids about paper recycling methods and make them aware of their importance. We got in touch with Beijing Haidian Experimental Primary School to further elaborate our idea to the public. By teaching them about the history of paper-making and comparing the paper-making process of the ancient ones with the current mechanics, we introduced the advantages and how does recycled paper benefit society and the environment that we are living in. Before the lecture began, we designed some award-winning quizzes about waste recycling to lead to the topic that we were going to talk about. From Cai Lun who initially developed and improved paper-making methods in China, to the environmental damages that the paper industry is making, we aimed to let more kids get involved in the promotion and the spread of the usage of recycled paper.
At the end of the lecture, we summarized the entire process of our project of producing recycled paper into four brief steps that are easy to operate even for kids at home with their parents. Firstly, we let them cut the paper into small pieces in a filter, which could be as simple as a piece of fishnet, filled with water so that the substances of the paper could be dissolved and separated. Secondly, the soaked fragments of the paper would be scooped out and added into a blender with a ratio of 1:2 with water. After the paper is blended, pour the paper pulp into a pot and add water to dilute it. Finally, the mold would be added into the pulp that is concentrated uniformly and shakes until the pulp on the surface is flat, and we could get recycled paper when the mixture of water and pulp dries out. By talking about such a method, we want the kids to get interested in the topic and realized that it would be easy to recycle the paper and make new ones for better environmental protection.
After giving the lecture for Beijing Haidian Experimental Primary School, we would not stop making influences about the topic and efforts that we are producing. With further experimental results and researches, we would teach more students and people in the public for paper usage that we want to emphasize. Our efforts on educations about environmental protection should not be stopped, and would not be stopped.
