Team:SUSTech Shenzhen/HP/Silver

Human Practice

HP

1.Neuroimaging Lecture with SZU

Fig 4 Nueroimaging Lecture Group Photo

In our project, we planed to use GEM-geco to indicate the logical circuit of neurons. Therefore,we contacted an neuron imaging professor Li in SZU and held a seminar, aiming to communicate about nueroimaging.

During the seminar, professor Li and us exchanged our ideas and knowledge concerning our project. Except for the neuroimaging technology we used, professor Li was more impressed by our project design based on optogenetics. Optogenetics, a neuromodulation method that combines optics and genetics methods to control and monitor the activities of individual neurons in living tissue, was recently seen as a competent therapy to treat brain disease.

This seminar served as a platform to allow interdisciplinary collision and communication. Though the seminar, two different fields of nueroimaing-- fundamental research and clinical application found common ground, which was of great value and might someday change the world. After the seminar, our team also invited professor Li to give a neuroimaging science lecture in SUSTech. In the lecture, we mainly focused on fundamental research and clinical application. Firstly, professor Li gave an introduction about the traditional brain imaging method and talked about his major research direction.

Fig 1 Brain imaging part of interdisciplinary lecture

Fig 2 Prof. Li interacts with the audience

Later on, our team gave a presentation to introduce our project.In order to explore the logic relationship of neuron network in C. elegans, we used the optogenetics method. We displayed how to apply the optogenetics in the real scientific research using our project as an example.

Fig 3 iGEM project introduction in interdisciplinary lecture

In a word, by holding some lectures like this, we can not only taught the audience some knowledge about neuroimaging and optogenetics, but also promote the collision of disciplines in different fields and spark new idea.

2.Engagement in Sichuan’s junior high school education program

To propagate basic ideas of synthetic biology and iGEM, we gave a presentation about synthetic biology and opened our lab to the junior school students from SiChuan province. About 30 students visited our lab and learned the knowledge about the synthetic biology. In the first part of our presentation, our PI Wei Huang delivered a lecture about the history and the application of synthetic biology.

Fig 6 Synthetic biology introduction

In the latter part of presentation, our team member Yuan Dingdong introduced our project. He mainly talked about some knowledge about optogenetics and serval innovative studies including DragonflEye and the hybrid stingray which was made by Harvard University. This activity not only gave these junior students some new knowledge about synthetic biology and iGEM, but also expanded their horizons which can help them develop an interest in biology and the colorful world. Besides, we also introduced some classical ethological and psychological experiments including Pavlov's dog and Skinner box that inspired our experiments.

Fig 5 Education program of Sichuan's junior high school

During the break, we gave them a chance to use the microscope to observe living C. elegans.

Fig 7 C.elegans observation

This activity not only gave these junior students some new knowledge about synthetic biology and iGEM, but also expanded their horizons which can help them develop an interest in biology and the colorful world.

References

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