Difference between revisions of "Team:Yonsei Korea/Education"

    The Yonsei team is a novice in iGEM. Our whole journey beginning with the registration process and up until now has been a roller coaster ride. Taking the initiative to start a new opportunity in a place where almost everyone is unaware of the world wide synthetic biology competition was very challenging. Our challenging moments were not only about finding research advisors and funding opportunities but also trying to transform the school ecosystem into the one that embraces search for new opportunities such as iGEM. To accomplish this we employed several approaches to propagate the ideas behind synthetic biology as well as iGEM within the school environment and beyond.

One of the most accessible tools that would allow us to spread the word was the establishment of our solid presence on the internet. We created our own Instagram page and started sharing our daily journey with fellow iGEMers and local people. This was the best medium that granted us the opportunity to quickly inform people about the hurdles we tackled and progresses we made. We believe that we were able to convey the main purpose of iGEM and synthetic biology research.

Around 3.5 billion people, or half the world’s population rely on rice for at least 20% of their caloric intake. This high dependence on rice plants both worldwide and in our home country of Korea was the motivation for our research. Rice production accounts for a large portion of Korea’s agriculture and is therefore a large economic factor in our society as well. The biggest threat rice farmers face according to our background research was Magnaporthe grisea, more commonly known as the rice blast disease. We discovered local agricultural organizations were tirelessly working with farmers every year in battling rice blast as Korea’s monsoon season made it particularly susceptible to this fungal infection. Yet, despite their best efforts farmers were still facing a 10-30% loss in production annually. In severe cases, fields infected with Rice Blast were forced to eradicate 100% of their yields, devastating affected farmers and communities.