We held a fantastic workshop, whose theme was “deciphering life”, in the dinosaur square of China Science and Technology Museum (CSTM) for three days during our national days. The workshop attracted thousands of audience, including lots of children and their parents, who showed great interest in biology. iGEM as well as synthetic biology was also introduced in our exhibition. The workshop consisted of five sections, including the display board exhibition, DNA model building, E.coli DIY workshop, E.coli war and bacteria art exhibition. What’s more, we eventually formed long-standing cooperative relationship with CSTM, which will be a public educational base for later Tsinghua-A teams’ human practice.

     This section was meant for adults and teenagers. We made 12 display boards in total, which articulate and connect fundamental ideas in genetics, synthetic biology and iGEM without technical vocabulary and dense detail. Parents whose children was engaged with our other activities can come and listen. We got great feedback from them. They asked many questions and learned a lot in this section.

     In this section, we taught the children to build a paper DNA double-helix model, provided by China Science and Technology Museum. Before starting to make the model, we introduced the knowledge of DNA to let them make sense of what DNA is and what function it has. Children participated in the activity in great passion and enjoyed the process. Everyone involved took home a wonderful model and our exquisite souvenirs.

     The purpose of this section was to develop ideas of synthetic biology in children’s mind using their imagination. We introduced how the scientists manipulate the gene in microbes to help them solve problems. Then we let the children design bacteria with a possible application using color pens in their hands. In the workshop, we were surprised by children’s creative thoughts from time to time. Some of their fascinating ideas are listed below:
    “My bacteria can produce enormous ozones so that it can repair the damaged ozone layer for us.”
    “My bacteria can absorb PM2.5 and refresh our air without sunlight!”
    “I want to creat a group of bacterium that can sing songs for me when I go to sleep!”
——“I will design a kind of bacteria that can make me sick if I wanted it to…”
——“Why? Because I can stay at home when my friends go to school and have exams.”

     As we mentioned in our project, we created a game based on liquid and solid culture medium. In this section, we presented our games on iPad. The games attracted a large amount of both children and adult players, who not only enjoyed the game, but also learned the way bacteria talks. What's more, they even give us more possibility in considering spatial effects on results of population interactions. See more at Game Discovery.

     Except the interactive sections mentioned above, we also set a section just for exhibition. We drew some beautiful painting using bacteria with florescence on the solid culture medium in the lab, and presented them in our exhibition. In addition, we introduced the principle of these paintings to the audience.

     To impose a greater influence on our younger community members, we further revised our two web games by visiting one of the China’s biggest internet entertainment giants “Perfect World” where we got a lot of useful advice on our games and work. Click here for more details about our games.

    During the visit, we had a deep communication with the company’s staff. First the company’s HR gave a brief introduction to the company. Then we talked to a senior game designer. He gave us some advice on how to make a game more playable. Next, we visited the art design group and they taught us how to design beautiful game characters in a limited time.
    In the end, we provided our first version of games to the company’s employees and proposed issue about games’ balance between playability and authenticity. If we focus too much on authenticity, the playability of the game decreases. In a similar way, if we focus too much on the playability, the games will lose their authenticity and scientific meaning.
    After listening to their advice, we made some changes to our game.First, players can choose whatever characters when initializing but can only initial 10 characters.Besides, one side wins when the amount of this side surly surpasses the other.(A minor advantage is not cinsidered a defeat if we take fluctuation into account) These improvements will help our web game playable while remaining its authenticity.