Nowadays many Chinese don't know what is transgenic technology, and some rumors from the Internet convince them that transgenosis is extremely harmful to human. As many Chinese don't have an objective understanding about transgenic technology, we think it's our duty to publicize correct concepts about it. It's also a good chance to popularize the definition of synthetic biology and gather resource from West China. Coming up with this idea when communicating with SCU_WestChina that hold a scientific exhibition, iGEM team SCU_WestChina contacted other teams involving SCU-China and UESTC_China to make an exhibition together about transgenic technology. We aimed to make the visitors understand what is transgenic technology and get some advice about our project from the visitors.
Eventually, SCU_WestChina got in touch with Chengdu Library successfully. Chengdu Library is a leading city center library in west China, receiving 1,010 million readers in 2016. After several conferences with other three teams, we chose "genetic modification and health" as the theme of the exhibition. And then we discussed the content of this exhibition and designed the posters together. The exhibition was composed of four parts: disease treatment, biopharmaceuticals, disease detection, and environmental management. Each team was responsible for one part. And teams from Sichuan University and team from the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China completed forewords and conclusion respectively. We printed the posters a week ahead of the exhibition, and laid them out in Chengdu Library one day in advance. The exhibition lasted for 7 days. On the first day, the four teams went to the library early to distribute leaflets and small gifts to the public in the rest areas and outside the library. We introduced our theme to those readers, answered their questions, had discussions with them on genetic modification, and collected suggestions from them. The audience was very absorbed, and many said they had a more objective and comprehensive understanding about genetic modification, which makes us feel very rewarding. The four teams worked on the maintenance, publicity and explanation of the exhibition for the following days, and removed the posters and cleared the exhibition hall together on the last day.