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1. Hong Kong Summer Science Party (Every Sunday from 23/07 to 20/08)

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When we started our public engagement, we asked what would be the most challenging thing when we need to talk about synthetic biology to the public? Further idea that branches out is that how can we introduce synthetic biology to small kids? Indeed, in as more as we are absolved into scientific studies, we found ourselves hard to express something difficult like scientific terms to people who has very little background about biology. But nothing is impossible!

We had a blast in workshops introducing DNA models and DNA extraction which is arranged during the "Summer Science Party 2017" and organized by the Hong Kong Science Park. This activity aims to educate children about biology while acting as a platform to converse with parents regarding to their opinions towards synthetic biology.

With our target audience being children from the age of 4 to 12, we hold the believe that we can ignite the interest for biology to children at an early age through fun games. We therefore uses candies as a material to make into 3D DNA model which they can bring it back home afterwards. Unlike the minipreps that we do in our lab, the DNA extraction workshop also involves easy and accessible household objects such as meat tenderizer and ethanol so children can try out the same experiment with different fruits to compare their DNA amount, imprinting them with first impression and a growing interest for biology at the developmental age.

Throughout the workshops, we were able to receive instant feedbacks from parents regarding to their understanding of synthetic biology and genetically modified organisms. With more than 75 participants in the survey, 58% claimed to have knowledge about GMOs. Within this group of participants, 63% knows that genes inside the organism is changed, while an equal percent of participants also think that GMOs greatly affects the ecosystem. 54% of the people voiced GMO will negatively affect human health.

However, these responses contradicts to our research findings prior to the events. There is no valid proof that GM food is harmful to human health. Our team realized that this misconceptions and bias can be an important barrier to the advancement of synthetic biology, so we had tried to educate or event participants further throughout our project introduction and posted articles on synthetic biology on local science FaceBook page.

We also got feedbacks asking opinions about our project, which some parents were interested and spent time discussing with us at our booth.

From this feedbacks, we were able to draft out an idea how our future project would look like. We sought to interview with Prof. Terrence Lau who is knowledgeable about current GMOs situation in Hong Kong. It is also a surprise that GMO papaya is actually very common in Hong Kong, while our survey conveys that people know GMOs in a broad sense, but not the GMOs that surround them.

Throughout the interview, we sparked another similar idea that we can also tackle, which is the Genetic Containment Strategy, where we also care about preventing accidental release of the genetically engineered organisms, and we sought more in-depth detail about how to improve our construct to Prof. Matthew Bennett

2. Synthetic biology articles

From the Science Park, numbers of parents and kids liked and followed our Facebook, where we aimed to further use it as a platform to teach them more about synthetic biology.

We created an article tackling the misleading perception based on the results we got from Science Park survey. We wished to post on facebook where several followers are from Science Park events in hope that this article can more or less contributes to people’s well-thought point of view.

3. High School Workshop

We moved on from educating children mainly primary kids to high school students grade 11 from ___ school and UCCKE school. We used the same workshop which is the extraction of DNA as a medium of teaching the concepts of synthetic biology. materials for fruit DNA extraction experiments were given to groups of students to let them try out the implementation of scientific principles, and of course, have fun learning science!  Not only that, we added more background about synthetic biology by introducing them the Central Dogma, the Recombinant Biology and the Biobricks using minecraft as an analogy. Biosafety was also briefly discussed as it is our project’s main focus.

4. UCCKE Sharing Session: How to start an iGEM project

From the previous activities, our theme circumvents about synthetic biology and biosafety. This time was a bit different, we were invited to share our iGEM experience and general approach on how to design an iGEM project to high school students. We got feedback that only a few high school students plan to join the iGEM in future.

We introduced a “Top-down Design” which is a common and easy method for high school students to brainstorm a project idea. We used the example of planning our summer vacation as a parallel comparison with the “Top-down Design” topic - building a system at hierarchical level (from large to small). We also mentioned some important issues that they should pay attention to. For example, biosafety and fundamental knowledges of synthetic biology.

5. Synthetic Biology 1 Translation

Throughout our interaction with general public in Hong Kong, one obstacles we spot when communicating with them is the medium of instruction. While Hong Kong is a place where English is the secondary language, students especially from public high school are taught in Chinese. Interesting sources for learning synthetic biology with Chinese as a medium of instruction is also limited.

At the same time, we encountered Mr. Ariel Lindner who introduced us Synthetic Biology 1 page and invited us to collaborate in Chinese translation with Mr. Edwin Wintermute. We translated subtitles and voice-over for four videos shared by Synthetic Biology 1. Each video has both Cantonese and Mandarin versions. Our translated videos have been uploaded on bilibili website: https://space.bilibili.com/178821464/#!/ which is also accessible in China.

6. Inno-Carnival 2017

As Jamboree is coming, we prepared ourselves to share this year’s HKUST iGEM project to public in Hong Kong. Throughout this summer, we have encountered many challenges, and also gained experience from lab and human practices. It is our time to share what we know and have done so far to public.

We had an interview for InnoCarnival whom we can share our iGEM experience and the idea of our project. We set our booth with our handmade DNA showcases, and also showing an animated video made by ourselves about our construct design on TV screen for better visualization and understanding. We also set a stand to distribute our leaflet containing biosafety information and our written articles.

We value that our knowledge is not only acquired from laboratory experience and interview with particular focus groups, but also from all public sources. Inno-carnival is a good opportunity to raise awareness of biological safety issues.