Human Practices

We know deeply that our experiment and design is interrelated to the community. In fact, our purpose of this project is to provide a cheaper, faster yet a more specific and precise method for diagnosis of H3N2 virus. Therefore, apart from the experimental and designing work, we put much effort on human practices as well. These human practices categorized as local competition, workshops, idea exchange and public engagement. Details are shown in below and Idea Exchange and Public Engagement page.

Local Competition

To fully equip and prepare for designing our DNA nanotechnology manipulation skills, six of our members were participated in Hong Kong Youth Science & Technology Innovation Competition 2016-2017 , a major local science competition for high school students. In this competition, our team members designed a nano-device to detect the presence and concentration of E. coli in our body. They also showed and explained their progress to thousands of public in an exhibition. The visitors included professors from various aspects in science, professions in science era as well as many lecturers, teachers and students from different universities and high schools.

This activity serve as an important channel for us to present the usage of the latest nanotechnology to the public. Overall, public showed immense interest nanotechnology because firstly, this is a rather new era in diagnostic aspect. Also,this technology still has infinite possibilities in future usage. Hence, we are pleased to introduce the prosperous future for this kind of nanotechnology.

This kind of idea exchange is also exceptionally important to our project in the way that we could listen to others what we could do to enhance our works. All opinions are so valuable that we might have omitted before, boosting our confidence in designing our nano-cube for iGEM competition.

Workshops

First visit of team from University of Hong Kong (HKU) to our school

20 members from both teams were gathered in this workshop.

Member from Team HKU delivered an inspiring lecture regarding nanotechnology to our team.

Member from Team HKU exchange ideas with our team members.

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In early March, seven members from team HKU visited our school. In the workshop, our team members introduced our previous project relating to nanotechnology to them. We shared how we are inspired to design a nano-device to detect E.coli. We showed the structure of our nano-device and how specific it was to work with E. coli. On the other hand, as a returning iGEM participant, team HKU shared their valuable experience in participating previous iGEM competition, as well as gave us useful advice participating in this competition.

Since the project from team HKU last year was about nanotechnology as well, they briefly introduced their works last year. We were deeply impressed by their creativity in designing a complex tetrahedral structure, which is much more difficult than our 2D nano-device used in our previous project. Looking back, as building up a nano-cube rely heavily on imagination; their precious sharing on their previous works had inspired us a lot.

Second visit of team HKU to our school

Three members from Team HKU introduced the worldwide actual research era in DNA nanotechnology to us.

A laboratory activity is conducted to demonstrate how we can extract our own DNA.

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Second visit took place at our school in early-April. Three of HKU team members came to our school and gave us an extensive lecture relating to synthetic biology. They taught us some advance and recent DNA nanotechnology, ranging from some basic ideas such as the fundamental unit of DNA, to the application of using nanotechnology to tackle molecular medical issue. All these have enriched our DNA engineering knowledge beyond our biology textbook, connecting us to the worldwide actual research era nowadays.

Plus, they demonstrated to us how to extract DNA in our saliva in a small laboratory activity. This demonstration is utterly useful in the way that it provided us a tool to educate public what DNA actually is and how we can demonstrate the “visibility” of DNA to the public, so as to arouse their interest towards DNA technology.

iGEM Asia Team Leader’s Workshop

On 17^th June, we participated in iGEM Asia Team Leader’s workshop organized by Professor King Chow from HKUST. In this workshop, several successful teams in previous iGEM competition came and shared with us their valuable experience. Plus, members from iGEM Safety Committee delivered very useful safety guidelines to us so as to leading us to go through our competition safely.