Team:WHU-China/Engagement

    At the later period of our project, we tried to advertise it to the public, having more people evolved into the process of our project and be familiar to synthetic biology and iGEM.

Education

    In June 11th, we got a chance to propagandize iGEM and our project to children in community.

    After delivering a speech about microorganisms, we instructed them to make three types of halogenated phenol models by foam board and stick models, ortho-position, meta position and para position. We taught the children to cut the cystosepiment into regular hexagons. The hexagon represents benzene. The balls and sticks are inserted at hexagonal angles as halogen atoms and hydroxyl groups.

    Then they were divided into two groups, competed and played the role of our engineered dehalogenation bacteria— break the bonds between halogen atoms and phenols. After the volunteers stood away from the head of two queues with equal models, they handed one model to each child, and the child needed to pull the balls representing halogen atoms away from cystosepiment representing phenols, then they had to run back to tail of the queue and hand the separated models to volunteers waiting there. Because our dehalogenase can function and break para-position halogenated phenols firstly, then para-position and ortho-position halogenated phenols, the children can only take para-position halogenated phenols firstly. One team who used the least time to breakdown the models would win. In fact, everyone in both teams was awarded with a delicate toy and felt a lot of fun. At the same time ,we successfully made people be familiar to our project as soon as possible.

Presentation

    In June 2th, we gave a presentation in class and introduced microorganisms and our project to other students. After that, most of them told us they had a deeper understanding on microorganisms and what those microorganisms can do to improve our life.

    In August 5th, we hold a meet-and-greet for new students and expanded influence of iGEM to prepare for the recruitment next year. In this meeting, we briefly introduced our project and narrated our experiences of iGEM in detail. Trying our best to make others interested in staff we are engaged in is always so enjoyable. Many of the audience will take part in the recruitment of iGEM next year.

Chorus

    Many members of our iGEM team are also members of SKY chorus in Wuhan University, so we adapted a famous song Rock around the Clock to Rock around the iGEM. This funny new song includes propaganda of iGEM and the process of molecular cloning in our project.