Team:HK SSC/Communication


To strengthen the communication between our iGEM team and the public, we designed a board game named the ‘BioBoard’ for the public so that they could have a platform to learn more about synthetic biology while engaging in our project. In the ‘BioBoard’, we’ve included question cards for players to answer in order to proceed to win the game. The questions cover a variety of synthetic biology related knowledge and different laboratory techniques, such as “What is the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) used for?”, “What differentiates RNA from DNA?”, “What is something that must be worn in the laboratory?”. We hope that players can learn about the concepts and methodology of synthetic biology while enjoying leisure. We’ve also included the difficulties that we have encountered during the project in the gameplay, hoping to showcase the ups and downs we’ve been through. A few junior form students were invited to test the board game, their response was that the board game is a welcoming way to introduce synthetic biology to newbies as they could learn new facts while playing a rather simple yet interesting game.


Figure 3, "BioBoard" Gamerules

At our school’s annual harvest day, we operated a booth where we’ve put up posters about our project. The booth provided a platform for students to ask questions about iGEM and synthetic biology in general. Worksheets with simple questions about our project were handed out, stimulating students to understand our work. Our team members were there to answer students’ questions as well as to promote iGEM to the junior form students to encourage them to participate in the workshops we host so that they would be able to join the iGEM competition in the coming years. Throughout the entire Harvest day, many students dropped by our booth, which shows they are interested in lab work and have a large interest in biology.

Figure 4, Students visiting our poster on Harvest Day

To further promote synthetic biology and encourage more students to learn, our team continued what has been stared long ago and hosted a long-term program that revolves around Biology. Despite the pandemic, we’ve hosted a series of online workshops which were open to all students interested in science. Regardless of the topic of our project each year, team members gave out lectures on the basic concepts of biology as well as chemistry, hoping to enhance and develop students’ interest in relevant fields. Besides general knowledge, we also introduce them to synthetic biology as it is the focus of iGEM. Through teaching more specialized content on synthetic biology, we wish to recruit students who have a keen interest in our field of study to become a team member in the upcoming years. During the online workshops this year, many students actively participated in in-class discussions and often raised meaningful questions about the content we’ve covered, which made it a great learning experience for both our team and the students.

Figure 5, Online Biology workshop for students'

Moreover, as our project would last over the span of 2 years and COVID-19 social distancing measures have lifted, our team plans to host a series of wet lab workshops for students interested in lab work. With the resumption of whole-day school soon, we would regain full access to labs for hosting such workshops and students would have the chance to join lab sessions and experience how to perform labs in person. Our wet lab workshop aims to teach practical lab skills like how to perform gel electrophoresis and how to clone DNA fragments with PCR so that we could develop students’ interest in synthetic biology.