Campus presentation
Purpose
Based on the knowledge of the synthetic biology, we prepared questions regarding the nucleic acid tests, especially that for the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), and invited the faculty and students of our university to take the survey. We believe that this survey can broaden their horizon of the background knowledge in the synthetic biology, cultivate their interest, stimulate their curiosity, and arouse their further discussion and thinking. The faculty and students with different majors and grades would have an comprehensive understanding of our project.
Targets
Young faculty and students of different majors and grades in Northeast Forestry University.
Why did we share the project with them?
①University campus flow is large and has high density. Once an outbreak of an infectious disease occurred, the detection and quarantine would be very difficult. Quick detection is crucial. However, detection time could be long, with high demand for technical staff and resources. Young faculty and students have strong ability to accept new things, so our virus detection method is very suitable for the scenarios in universities.
②In addition, college students have a reasonable level of basic knowledge in biology, which would help them to understand the concept of synthetic biology. We could communicate with the faculty and students to deliver the knowledge of synthetic biology. Meanwhile, the faculty and students could easily understand our project design and provide their feedbacks. This kind of introduction and communication played an important role in promoting our project.
③Young people have strong ability in learning, understanding and spreading new knowledge. Therefore, our interactions with them could help us to propagate our project and the concept of synthetic biology to their families and friends.
Preparation
We prepared simple test reagents and small gifts, as well as symbolic and delicate certificates, for the faculty and students who actively participated in the presentation. We wanted to let them experience the simple version of the testing process, understand the procedure of nucleic acid test, and extend their knowledge of synthetic biology to others.
Lecturer of the presentation
Shuhan Liu
Contents
First, Shuhan Liu introduced the current situation of the COVID-19 pandemic around the world. To date, there are accumulatively 96 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in our city, Harbin. All faculty and students need to take nucleic acid tests multiple times consecutively. Due to the large number of people, it is relatively slow to obtain the nucleic acid test results. Therefore, starting from the limitations of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) detection methods in our campus, Shuhan Liu described to the audiences the advantages of our approach, including its convenience and high sensitivity, compared with the currently used ones.
Second, from the perspective of synthetic biology, Shuhan Liu introduced the history and purpose of the iGEM, and presented the design of our project in detail. She described the principles of the selective amplification of recombinase polymerase amplification (RPA), chain cutting and chain replacement with the cooperation of two enzymes, nCas9 and Phi29, as well as the amplification of G-quadruplex by rolling circle amplification (RCA), employed in our nucleic acid detection method.
Third, the NEFU_China 2021 team members discussed the visual detection platform based on G-quadruplex with the faculty and students who participated in the presentation. Yang Liu, a student majoring in Biotechnology of the grade 2021, gave his opinion. He believed that the G-quadruplex-based visual detection platform was very suitable for large-scale rapid detection. If it can be put into use, it will bring considerable convenience for the detection of nucleic acid viruses in our country and even the whole world. He indicated that the lecture made him interested in synthetic biology, and hoped that he could conduct research in this direction in future and contribute to its development.
Finally, Shuhan Liu demonstrated a simple version of the detection process to the students attending the presentation, and let them try it by themselves. The NEFU_China 2021 team members provided certificates to the students who were actively involved in the presentation, and distributed souvenirs to the audiences.
End
Through this campus presentation, we delivered the knowledge of the synthetic biology and introduced the iGEM, which aroused the faculty and students' interest in the iGEM and synthetic biology. We also helped them establish the understanding of our project through this publicity activity, and collected a lot of valuable suggestions.
Kindergarten publicity
Purpose
①Children's resistance to different diseases is relatively weak and thus they are easy to be infected with various infectious diseases. If an outbreak of an infectious disease took place in kindergartens, the consequences would be very unpredictable. Therefore, both kindergarten staff and the parents need to timely monitor the health and physical conditions of the children. Our nucleic acid testing method can help kindergarten staff and the parents detect the health conditions of the children conveniently.
②As there were a number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in our province, the service of the Binquan Kindergarten in Harbin had been suspended. In order to protect children from the infection and improve parents' awareness of COVID-19 prevention, we held a joint online presentation in cooperation with the Binquan Kindergarten.
③During the online presentation, our team members used their knowledge of biology to bring the children into the scientific field. We introduced what viruses are, how to prevent from their infection, and how to detect them, especially the novel SARS-CoV-2. In addition, we also explained our project and the synthetic biology related to the parents.
Target
Binquan kindergarten children and their parents
Lecturer
Xiangxin Li
Content
At 16:00, October 3, 2021, the iGEM team from the College of Life Sciences, Northeast Forestry University, met the children from Binquan Kindergarten online to share scientific knowledge through the Tencent Conference platform.
First, Xiangxin Li used vivid pictures and essays to present the basic knowledge from what viruses are to how to prevent their infection, from outbreaks of new pneumonia to the suffering of the infected people, from the human and nature to the love and dedication. We hoped that the children could have general understanding of viruses and their imposed threats to our life through this special presentation.
Next, Xiangxin Li taught the children the correct way to wash their hands, the so-called "seven steps of washing technique". With our demonstration, the children actively followed us and also interacted with us. The children understood that washing hands could get rid of many harmful microorganisms, including viruses, and would like to develop a good habit of cleanliness and hygiene. Xiangxin Li described to the children regarding the novel Coronavirus, and explained its symptoms and detection methods. Xiangxin Li conveyed a lot of knowledge of the COVID-19 using her vivid language, so that the children could learn about the virus and become their own "health guards" through this relaxing and enjoyable online presentation.
Finally, Xiangxin Li introduced to the parents of the children about our project from the perspective of synthetic biology. A parent of a five-year-old child expressed great interest in our program. She said that with the availability of a convenient detection method, they could test their children at home for possible infection of most epidemic diseases, which would help the parents to know their children's physical condition in time. She looked forward to our program being put into use as soon as possible!
Painting Competition
The NEFU_China 2021 team sincerely invited all civilian artists to participate in our drawing competition, so as to contribute to the popularization of the synthetic biology and let more people know this relatively new research field. To let more people know about this event, we announced this painting competition to the public through the promotion of our team’s Official Accounts and online media, such as Facebook. In addition, we also carried out offline events for the students on our campus through poster presentations and other approaches.
Requirements
The event had a bright and distinct theme of synthetic biology with healthy contents and unlimited types of art.
Target
People from all levels of the society, mainly the college students
Conclusion
For this competition, we totally received 27 paintings, and selected one for the winner list to display. We also contacted the authors for their conceptions and designs of these paintings, and granted awards to them.
Publicity media
Reaching out to the public through social media platforms is an important part of our project. In addition to our usual public communications and campus publicity activities, we had also created several multimedia accounts to record the progress of our projects, increased our influence, and reported our activities. During the publicity, we continued to propagate the knowledge of the synthetic biology, which not only made our team members better understand our nucleic acid testing program, but also helped the readers or audiences have deep understanding of our program. A series of our tweets also made many of our partners more aware of our project development and the progress of our human practice. This year, we broadcasted our promotions mainly through the platforms of the Facebook, WeChat official account and bilibili. Media publicity was an effective way to promote synthetic biology and expand the scope of its publicity. The NEFU_China team will continue to innovate and expand our reach to bring synthetic biology to the forefront of biological research through heritage, now and in future.
This year,we used Facebook to spread the knowledge of synthetic biology and our project this year to the world in order to let more people know about synthetic biology and show more people the progress of our project.
WeChat official account
This year, we totally posted 34 articles through our team's Official WeChat account, including project introduction, basic knowledge of the synthetic biology, shared literature, lecture records, etc. Our articles have been viewed for 19,361 times.
bilibili
This year, we made a breakthrough by setting up a NEFU_China account on the bilibili, where we published our laboratory routine activities and our popular science videos. In addition, we also broadcasted popular science lectures live through our bilibili account, which have been visited by over 1,300 people.
