Synthetic biology applies the concepts used in engineering to the field of biotechnology. It uses genes, cells, etc. as materials to design and transform organisms. It plays an important role in biomedicine, biomaterials, environmental energy and many other fields. Unfortunately, there’s a general lack of knowledge about the discipline among the general public. In addition, from the results of the questionnaire made at the beginning of our project, we learned that many people still don't know much about IBD and intestinal flora, which is closely related to our daily life, health and disease. Therefore, our team hopes to present current scientific understandings about synthetic biology and intestinal related diseases through our education.
Affected by the COVID-19 epidemic, the education program of our project was divided into two parts: online and offline. For the offline part, we got in touch with the local middle school and the community, designed different courses for three different types of audiences: children, middle school students, and the elderly, introducing them to synthetic biology and the intestinal flora and IBD related to our project. In addition, on the World IBD Day, we did an exhibition about IBD in school, which attracted many undergraduate, graduate and even doctoral students. In the online part, we produced a great deal of exquisite public science tweets and an introduction video about synthetic biology science video suitable for middle school students. In addition, we used the the "Fall in Love with Nanjing University" column in the Little Blue Whale platform, which mainly works for undergraduate admissions, to introduce the synthetic biology program to candidates who are interested in Nanjing University. We also presented some preparation methods for the subject exam for biology and promoted the iGEM competition on the platform.
In addition, we are deeply concerned about the topic of sustainable development and inclusiveness. We cooperated with the school’s teaching support team from schools located in Guizhou, Yunnan and many other places that are less economically developed in China to give lessons to children from minority schools with an average age of 7. Together with the kids, we made fans with cartoon animals on them, hoping to make this event an opportunity for the children to find their love for the lovely creatures and biology.
Offline Education
1.1 World IBD Day presentation
On May 19, 2021, the World IBD Day, three students from the Nanjing-China team set up a presentation panel about the World IBD day and scientific understandings about IBD on the first floor of the school’s school of life sciences. The origin, significance, causes of IBD, pathogenesis of the disease, prevention and treatment methods were presented to everyone that enters the building. We held lectures at the spot and did a presentation for the students and teachers from the School of Life Sciences, which attracted the attention of many passing college students, graduate students and professors.
1.2 Lectures in middle school campus
On May 17, we held a lecture about synthetic biology and our project for the students of the second year of Nanjing Foreign Language School. We used many very interesting examples and metaphors throughout the lecture, hoping to help junior school students understand the concept of synthetic biology. Our students asked a lot of questions about intestinal flora and synthetic biology in class and from their reactions, we could tell that they were very interested in our lectures. At the end of the course, we also gave each of the students bookmarks and sticky notes we designed by ourselves, and told them to feel free to reach us and have further discussions on the materials we covered in class and biology. I am very happy that we have received a lot of praise, and some students even said that because of our courses, we have strengthened their determination to engage in biological research in the future. We are very happy to see that through our own efforts, we have promoted synthetic biology to everyone and stimulated the interest for synthetic biology among middle school students.
1.3 Lectures in off-campus societies
Being aware of the fact that the demand for biological knowledge of the elderly and children are different from those of middle school students and college students, on July 6, we re-adjusted our courses to focus more on the introduction of biology and the intestinal flora, the concept and prevention of IBD. We went to the Yao'an Village community with a brand-new offline lecture targeting the local children with an average age of 7 who participated in the summer school and the elderly who lived with them. During the lecture, the children interacted actively with our lecturers. After the course, we discussed with the elderly people to learn about their concern related to intestinal health, and ease their confusions regarding to how to adjust the intestinal health. We are very glad that we can take this opportunity to attract children's interest in biology and bring a healthy lifestyle to more people. In addition, in order to attract children’s attention to the subject of biology and inspire their love for biology, our team members prepared fans with cartoon animal images, and together with the kids we drew on the fans. The fans not only bring a little bit of coolness for the summer, but brought happiness and laughter for the children.
Online education
2.1 'Falling in Love with NJU' experience sharing session
Offline activities have been restricted this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, on April 17th, a member of our team used the Nanjing University undergraduate admissions platform, "Fall in Love with Nanjing University · Seniors Sharing" column, to reach the high school students who are about to take the college entrance examination and interested in learning about Nanjing University. The event was launched on the ZOOM online conference platform, and was simultaneously broadcasted live on social media platforms such as Bilibili. In the meeting, we shared about the charm of life sciences during college with prospective candidates and promoted the iGEM competition. We hope that more students can pay attention to this competition, and even participate in this competition in the future. During the event, our team members also actively interacted with the audience, stimulating engaging discussion with our audience in the comment section.
2.2 Spread knowledge through public account articles
Concerned with the relatively low audience variety for online or offline courses, we also created our own WeChat official account, and have produced tweets to introduce the iGEM competition, the background of our team project, our experiment designs and the concept of synthetic biology to whoever reads the article.
2.3 Online courses for areas with education deficits
Our team members have always paid great attention to sustainable development and the inclusiveness of our project. Through interviews with various teaching groups of Nanjing University and online information retrieval, we learned that basic education in ethical minority areas in western my country needs more attention. Among all the teachers for different subjects, the biology teachers are in high demand. Therefore, we hope that through our own efforts, we could participate in the development of basic education in the minority areas in the western part of our country and bring interesting biology-related knowledge to local children.
Unfortunately, due to the impact of the pandemic, we were unable to reach the local area to have face-to-face classes with local children. Therefore, we gave lectures through Tencent meetings and recorded lessons to students in Yunnan and Guizhou with the help of the support teaching team who stayed there to launch our online education program and introduce them to synthetic biology, promote the iGEM competition, and introduce the background of our project to them. After the course, we answered questions from the local children. We are very happy that they were full of interest during our courses, which makes us even more determined to continue paying attention to basic education in the future, and actively participate in education support, science education and other activities for the welfare of these students.
Communication
In the course of our project, we also had multifarious communications with other teams who have the same goal as us to promote iGEM, spread synthetic biology and create a better world. We formed the Nanjing iGEM association with NJU-China, NAU-China, CPU-China, NJMU-China, NJTech-China and NNU-China, and held Offline Nanjing iGEM Association Meetup and Online Mid-term Nanjing iGEM Association Meetup with these teams. We also attended 8th Conference of China iGEMer Community to have a deeper communication with iGEM teams of Chinese university students. At various communications, we discussed experimental and model-related issues together, getting suggestions from others and providing advice back as well.
Moreover, we held Intestinal Congress with teams focusing on the gut, and jointly compiled the 2021 Intestinal Program Reference Manual. In the Intestinal Congress, we explored how to connect synthetic biology with the gut healthy together, and create a standard about experimental ethics, application of engineering bacteria in vivo and so on, hoping that following iGEM terms can get support from this manual.
