Team:AHUT China/Engagement
Child's public class:
We held a child's public welfare class for children from primary schools. Brother Monkey introduced biology and knowledge of plants, animals, microorganisms, viruses and so on to the children via pictures and videos.
We introduced the structure and principle of DNA, and we worked together to make an model of it. We watched onion slices demonstration video.
We replaced of iodine with red ink. First we dropped a few drops of water on the slides, and taught the children to remove small pieces of onion from the inside of the onion skin. Some of them torn off the epidermises, and some got the curl of the epidermis so that they can not be flattened on the slide. However, they never discouraged and always started again if they failed and finally succeeded. After that, we dropped a piece of red ink at one end of the slide, tilted the slide, and used the paper to absorb water at the other end to ink the onion epidermis completely. After many attempts, the children all succeeded in making an onion-slicing specimen.
Teach-in:
1 IN ANHUI UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY
In view of the lack of knowledge of synthetic biology among many students, we held an intramural teach-in at the University Student Activity Center on September 18th.
Before the teach-in, we put up posters on campus. It attracted many students to come to inquire. We introduced iGEM to the students and it aroused the strong interest of them and the venue was packed that day.
The content is divided into three parts. First of all, we introduced the iGEM competition to the students who attended the lecture. And then we introduced the competition history of team AHUT_China and the teacher team. Finally, we focused on introducing our team and the project this year, including team work, cooperation, project background, project introduction and experimental process. We used a lot of experimental pictures to let the students have a more intuitive understanding of our experimental process, and to add a little bit of fun to the relatively boring principle. After the lecture, the team members answered questions for the students. They replied to the question of how to participate in our competition and what knowledge and skills they need to master.
MEETING ROOM
south gate
north gate
TALKING ABOUT OUR PROJECT
GROUP PHOTO IN NAU
With Nanjing Agricultural University
The iGEM team of Nanjing Agricultural University is extremely excellent. We were honored to have visited the beautiful campus and have organized an exchange meeting with their team. We introduce ourselves and the developmental history of our school and our team, and also presented the background, inspiration source and brief introduction of our project.
To Wuwei Middle School
We talked with the leaders in the school meeting room and briefly introduced iGEM competition and its impact to them. They showed great interest in the competition and sought professional help from us. We proposed to help them in building teams and following up the project next year and to provide them with laboratory and teacher assistance.
We visited the creative classroom of Wuwei Middle School. The headmaster introduced the outstanding creations of the students and the patent awards to us, and highlighted the content of one of the students ' international awards.
We gave the lecture to the freshmen of Wuwei Middle School in their assembly hall. Before the lecture, we distributed questionnaires and played the relevant videos to the students. And then Professor Xiangrong Xu introduced what is iGEM, what is synthetic biology and our school’s projects in last few years and the outstanding projects of high School group. Our team members introduced this year's project to the students and finally, our leader introduced the American tour to the students. After the lecture, the students asked members about the details of the project. Some students asked Professor Xu for his autograph.
iGEM Questionnaire Survey:
We had a slight understanding on the biological knowledge level of students from Wuwei Middle School. Before we gave the senior students questionnaires, then after the talk, we recycled these questionnaires and made the statistical summary as follows:
1. How much do you know about biology?
A I don’t know anything about it.
B I know a little bit, at least I know what it is.
C I know a lot about what it is.
D I know exactly what it has to do.
Conclusion: Most high school students can be seen to have some understanding of biology, including plants such as algae plants, ferns, human aspects such as human respiratory system, digestive system, as well as the ecological system, the food chain, the knowledge of nature reserves, etc.
2. If you were to design a DNA computer (A biological type of computer that encodes DNA sequences as objects and solves complex mathematical problems through molecular computation. It can be seen as a very fast computing machine), what kind of problem would you like to solve?
A Related to life
B Related to commerce
C Related to academic
D Others
Conclusion:
For high school students, business and academic may be a little strange, and most of them prefer to use biological knowledge to solve the problems at the aspect of life, just like what we saw in an middle school classroom, the students have a lot of for the small invention creation to solve the daily problem There are also a handful of other alternatives - political or military. Of course, the students are not very clear about the concept of the DNA computer, so in the process of preaching, we gave them a detailed introduction about the DNA computer and the actual function. We believe that they would have a better understanding of the use of DNA computers.
3. What do you think is the most important thing about PCR (polymerase chain reaction, which can be regarded as a special DNA replication in vitro) experiment?
A Temperature
B Raw material selection
C Experimental operation
D Precision of the instrument
E I don’t know
Conclusion:
We want to examine whether the students are aware of the core technologies used in our experiment. The students who participated in the questionnaire just learned the superficial knowledge about PCR, and we showed them the principles and operation of the PCR experiment in our project. This makes them have more intuitive understanding of knowledge, it also inspires students to our iGEM competitions.
4. If you're looking for a specific DNA sequence, which of the following is the best method?
A Screening by Gene Library
B By limiting enzyme cutting
C Find in nature
D Artificial synthesis
E Design a special primer to amplify
Conclusion:
Students hold different ideas on how to find out the specific DNA sequence.
5.If you were to do a synthetic biology experiment, what would be your most interesting part?
A Primer design
B PCR
C Gel electrophoresis
D Cell transformation
E Genetic engineering
Conclusion:
What is synthetic biology? Professor Xiangrong Xu explained and gave examples for his classmates. We are happy to see that students have such a great interest in synthetic biology. Interestingly, after the meeting, the students gathered around professor Xu and asked him about he contents of synthetic biology and asked the professor to sign on their notes.
Video-based collaboration:
We have filmed China's bio-safety education video with Shanghai University of Science and Technology and 11 other universities. We undertook the part of design and shooting of the eighth episode, laboratory reagent leakage treatment.
1.Background
We were connected by Shanghai University of Science and Technology. The lack of teaching materials in the field of bio-safety education in China, the obsolete of the laboratory-safe instructional videos and the disconnection between the content and the actual work of today's laboratories caused us making some educational videos. We aimed to strengthen students' bio-safety awareness and correct students’ operation which do not conform to safety standards. We hope to improve the level of bio-safety education in China and the safety awareness of people with the help of the Yale Laboratory Safety Handbook and other foreign bio-safety education materials.
2.Timeline
September 22nd
Shanghai University of Science and Technology and Anhui University, together with 11 other colleges and universities's iGEM team held a conference call. During that call, we confirmed the theme, scheduled time.
September 23rd -September 26th
Writing scripts, confirming the actors and actress, shooting location, props, shooting time and so on.
3.Overview
We choose "reagent leak treatment" as the theme and narrated a story through the form of melodrama. Two students missed he teacher's teaching because they were late in experiment class. They accidentally overturned the test tube containing ether, while dropping the ether. Being panic, they opened the doors and windows immediately and asked the teacher for help. After the teacher handled the accident, he educated the students and mentioned what had happened before: solid reagent leakage treatment (take the case of sodium bromide leakage as an example) and the leakage treatment of ultra clean workbench medium.
4. Results
We've uploaded these videos to YouTube and Bilibili, and we've got a lot of browsing and clicks. We've got compliments, criticisms and suggestions. We will humbly accept the proposal and always make efforts to improve the safety awareness of people!
Click here to watch our videos!
YouTube and Bilibili, a popular Chinese video-sharing website.
Teams participated the production:
- ShanghaiTech University
- University of Chinese Academy of Science
- Tianjin University
- Tianjin University of Science & Technology
- University of Electronic Science and Technology of China
- Beijing Normal University
- Wuhan University
- Huazhong Agricultural University
- Anhui University of Technology
- Nanjing Agricultural University
- Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University
Creative Classroom:
We participated in a lecture of School of Art and Design of Anhui University of Technology, which is a lecture full of art and innovation. Students sat in the classroom in twos and three and designed and exchanged ideas in the large sheet of white paper. As a result, we were impressed by their creative passion. In the lecture, we introduced ourselves and learned from each other. After that, we briefly introduced our project and the synthetic biology knowledge in order to let them learn more about our it. Then we showed the logo of of the Maze, which is our theme. Finally we put forward our request of designing a poster according to the maze and our project content. During the process of designing, the team members answered their questions about the content of the project. Finally the students showed us their wonderful works. We listened to their designing ideas, put forward our suggestions, and finally accepted their suggestions and took photos together.
Social Media:
We think of social media as a way for more people to understand synthetic biology. We have created the WeChat public site of iGEM, and pushed articles on that. We also put the creative works of video and art creative class on the home page of the public number. We then uploaded security video on YOUTUBE. In this way, we not only promote the knowledge of synthetic biology to the public through social media, but also improve ourselves through interactions.
