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Silver

The value of foundational advance projects always lies in their application, whereas there's still a long way to go from lab experiments to fully functional products. For instance, it's the researchers' responsibility to consider the safety issues raised by the interaction between the application and the human society. Considering the possible application of our project, we decided to conduct an investigation on the perception of average customers held towards the biosafety issues on common biological enzyme preparation. Besides, we participated in a series of academic conferences, during which we exchanged our ideas with other participants and sought out for chances of collaboration.

Investigation

During the CCiC conference, we were inspired by the wide-ranging examination on biosafety issue team Peking presented. Considering the possible application of our system, we’ve decided to conduct an investigation on the perception of average customers held towards the biosafety issues on daily-life-related enzyme containing products.

We independently designed an online questionnaire, collected 451 responses and analyzed the data using SOJUMP. The analysis is as follows.

Demographic Variables

1. Gender and Age

The male-female ratio of respondents was not the ideal 1:1. This result might be caused by the imbalanced gender composition of our school, but we don’t think this imbalance have a major impact on the overall outcomes. Other than that, this is a interesting character of our school. The respondents were of all ages, whereas the majority population (78%) were young people between 18 to 29 years old.

Gender and age composition

2. Occupation

The respondents were from all sorts of fields with a majority make-up of students (84%), owing to our educational surroundings.

Ocupation

3. Education Qualification

In the sample population, the educational qualification of majority was undergraduate degree or above, accounting for 77.17% of all respondents.

Education qualification

General Awareness

Most of the respondents had heard of biological enzyme preparation. 23% had a certain understanding of the it. Only 18% had no idea of this concept.

General awareness

Application Fields

Almost all of the respondents knew that there ewre enzymes in food and medicine. In addition, quite a few people knew the enzymes could be used in environmental protection due to the risen attention paid to this area.

Application fields known by the participants

Advantages

In most people's opinion, the advantages of biological enzymes were the high efficiency of the production process and the high purity of the product.

Advantages of biological enzyme preparation known by the participants

Products

Survey results showed that the common product as detergent, beer, yogurt and medicine had received more attention in daily life.

Biological enzyme preparation products known by the participants

Safety Consideration

Nearly half chose to believe in the safety of biological enzyme preparations. While the other half said it depended on the situation, and only a tiny minority did not believe in the safety of the enzyme preparation.

Safety consideration of the biological enzyme preparation

According the survey, most of the respondents who didn’t fully believe in the safety of biological enzyme preparation were lack of the knowledge and understanding of it.

Reasons for concerns over biological enzyme production

Therefore, we believed that we could increase the public's awareness of biology enzyme preparation by promoting the knowledge of biological enzymes. So that people could gradually trust the safety of enzyme preparation.

Cross analysis between safety consideration and general awareness

Acceptance Degree

This question is based on the question ‘Do you believe that the biology enzyme preparation is safe and reliable’. If the respondents didn’t take a skeptical attitude towards the biology enzyme preparation, we would raise the question to know more about whether the respondents were really willing to accept and use the products of enzyme preparation. According the survey, we found that more than half of the respondents would like to accept the products, the other said it still depends on the situation. We think the result is quite reasonable and acceptable.

Distribution of degree of acceptance

Impacts on daily life

Only 9% of the respondents hold the view that the biology enzyme preparation has nothing to do with their life. Most of the respondents believed that biological enzymes had a certain effect on their lives. This suggests that the majority of respondents' opinions on this questionnaire are valid and worthy of reference.

Impacts on daily life

To view the original questionnaire, please click here.

Conferences

CCiC

During Aug. 25 - 28, 2017, CCiC conference was organized and held by Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University in Fuzhou, China. Our team, BNU-China, had the chance to attend the event. During the conference, we introduced our project to other teams.

Photo of all participants at CciC

Our iGEMer explaining our project to other iGEMers

Our iGEMer explaining our project to other iGEMers

In the conference, in-depth communication and ideas exchange occurred between each team. The attendees reaped substantial benefits from the inspiring sparks collided by thoughts and innovation among teams. After fast-paced preparation, we dissected our project into following parts, background, project, design, modeling and human practice. Meantime, we also held an open attitude towards the suggestions and comments from other teams.

In the conference, not only did we strengthen the collaboration with FAFU-CHINA, but we established new bonds with other teams as well. And the communication and mutual learning among the teams provided us with the opportunity to broaden our horizon and help us acquaint more people with our project.

Other Conferences

Other than the CCiC conferences, we’ve also participated in some other academic events, including 2017 National Academic Conference for Cell Biology(Chinese Society For Cell Biology, CSCB), 2017 Synthetic Biology Summer Camp(Center for Synthetic Biology Engineering Research, CSynBER), BTGEM Summit(University of Chinese Academy of Sciences), meet-up with Team Tsinghua and Team Tsinghua-A .We took every chance to have our project scrutinized by experts, researchers, and other iGEMers. At the same time, we’ve deepened our understandings on synthetic biology and areas related to our project.

Our iGEMer at 2017 Synthetic Biology Summer Camp:Center for Synthetic Biology Engineering Research, CSynBER

Our iGEMer at 2017 National Academic Conference for Cell Biology:Chinese Society For Cell Biology, CSCB

Meet-up with Team Tsinghua & Team Tsinghua-A