Class for High School---Wastewater Treatment with Microalgae

Introduction

An important and accessible platform to increase public scientific knowledge is to educate school-aged children, so this year, our team conducted a "Speak with Algea" campaign to high school students from Fuzhou Jinshan Middle School in August this year.the two-hour lecture allowed us to fully communicate with students. Their response was impressive and we had a long and very interesting discussion with them during the preaching. We demonstrate that synthetic biology is an accessible field that all current students should be able to pursue.

Introduction to Synthetic Biology

Our preaching is aimed at 16-17 year olds learning STEM subjects, and we have worked hard to design activities that appeal to younger audiences and make them as interactive as possible. The structure of our course program includes a brief introduction to synthetic biology where we discuss the biomolecules that make up cells and the ethical issues associated with synthetic biology.

We also introduced the content of iGEM to them, the multidisciplinary nature of the iGEM project, and how iGEM can facilitate advances in synthetic biology. Additionally, we introduced the process of the iGEM competition to them, covering all aspects of the project such as team building, funding, collaboration, human practice and competition timeframe, and introduced various aspects of our project to the audience, during the presentaion, a student asked, "Did you get the sewage mentioned in the project from the factory? Does it need to be sterilized? However, the physical and chemical properties of the water will definitely change after sterilization. I guess you configured the simulated sewage by yourself. Is this the case?”, this classmate’s speech surprised us, because what it said was indeed what our project was applying, and we could really feel that they were thinking and really understood what we said. The quesion she asked hit us, so we answered them very enthusiastically. We also help them to understand how various disciplines such as physics, mathematics, biology and social sciences are integrated in the project development process. And our project microalgae treatment sewage technology can help to solve the problem of ocean eutrophication, microalgae carbon fixation can alleviate the problem of ocean acidification.

Finally, we mentioned the importance of human practice of iGEM, and a question that surprised us appeared on the scene. A student asked how we could incorporate iGEM values ​into our project. We explain to them how we have incorporated the iGEM philosophy by giving some examples of events we have held.

Then we held a series of activities about askeing students to draw on the stage what microalgae looked like in their minds, and finally showed them the composition and function of microalgae. We believe it is important to demonstrate the range of tasks involved in synthetic biology and iGEM. The students were very proactive throughout the course and shared some of their creative ideas with us. In the interactive session, about 70 students actively participated in the discussion and jointly explored ways to protect marine ecology. We affirmed, praised and encouraged the students who showed positive performance and good ideas, and called on the students to follow the guidelines for protecting the ocean and build a beautiful and clean environment. sea world.

Reflect and Further Improve

We believe that promoting the idea of scientific knowledge is as important as science itself. It can help spark curiosity and build a community with a scientifically literate atmosphere. Through this presentation, we found that even the 16-or so-year-old student group lacks understanding of synthetic biology. We hope they will understand how synthetic biology can be used to solve societal challenges and how various disciplines intersect and overlap during project development. We believe that we provide synthetic biology enthusiasts with detailed information and access to the iGEM competition.

“OCEAN REBIRTH”Clothing Design and Display

Unexpected Effect

Marine pollution and fashion aesthetics, two seemingly unrelated things, collided in a wonderful way. Starting from a bold idea, we unexpectedly found that a fashion show with elements of marine pollution prevention could be a novel and more noticeable way to raise awareness among the public.

Publicity of Marine Protection:

We found through the survey that most of the public do not know much about marine ecology, marine economy, marine science and technology, marine livelihood and other fields of knowledge, nor do they know much about the current series of crises facing marine ecology. In such a situation science education work is particularlyimportant. We believe that if we can make the public know the ocean and care about it, we can further promote the formation of a good social atmosphere for all people to care for the marine environment. With this in mind, we contacted the DAMO Dandelion organization to promote the success of this event.

Children and Fashion Shows

Most children do not like to be taught recondite science knowledge, instead, some fun and innovative activities incorporate knowledge that they can remember and reflect in real life. This is the basis for the collision of "children" and "fashion shows". Most people in the world do not have a knowledge base, but it is necessary to make them aware of it.If the majority of the world's population is fully aware of the ecological crisis the oceans are facing, some of them will take action, which will add a strong force for ocean conservation in the world and will greatly improve the current state of the marine environment! And children are the group that is forming the conceptual consciousness, education during this period can make them develop the consciousness of of "children" and "fashion shows". Most people in the world do not have a knowledge base, but it is necessary to make them aware of it.If the majority of the world's population is fully aware of the ecological crisis the oceans are facing, some of them will take action, which will add a strong force for ocean conservation in the world and will greatly improve the current state of the marine environment! And children are the group that is forming the conceptual consciousness, education during this period can make them develop the consciousness of protecting the marine ecology and caring the earth's environment at an early age, and may lead them to the path of protecting the earth's environment in the future!

Carefully Prepared Activities

A number of mannequins were set up in the studio where the materials for making the costumes were prepared. The children expressed their sense of the sea by drawing pictures, and the professional costume makers then made the finished clothes according to the elements designed by the children and their figures. The stage was decorated to imitate the simplicity of a fashion show, and a carpet was set up in the middle to give the children a chance to express themselves. This preparation was a great success, and the audience was deeply impressed by the children's designs, and there was a constant roar of approval from the audience.

Adequate Communication

During the children's design process, we talked to them about some basic information about the ocean, including plastic pollution, the endangerment of some marine species, the serious pollution of the marine environment by human waste, etc., to help them better understand the theme of marine pollution, and then let the children design more meaningful works based on this background knowledge. An unexpected surprise: in the clothing design class, the children were more serious about designing clothing patterns, fabrics, etc. than originally expected - the work created by the children was very creative, flexible and vivid.

Wonderful Fashion Show

We have been thinking that the way of promoting marine conservation should not just be limited to the listening format of knowledge lectures and mass communication sessions. We adopted a brainstorming approach and finally settled on a new plan: to hold a special, interesting and innovative fashion show! We contacted the organization Daimo Dandelion to co-organize a fashion show with the theme of ocean conservation.The participants of the fashion show were mainly children, who brought out the unique childishness and creativity of this age group, and finally presented a wonderful fashion show stage! Ocean pollution is a heavy topic, and this event perfectly solved the difficulty of spreading knowledge and brought children to think about ocean pollution in a visual and more impressive way.

Parents' Appreciation and Insight

Most of the parents didn't expect their children to be so creative, and they were shocked by how wonderful the fashion show was! During our conversations with parents, we told them how smart and creative children are. We also saw the children's parents as the target audience and we distributed pamphlets about ocean conservation to them. We told the parents that the ocean ecosystem is one of the most important ecosystems in the world, affecting the stability and security of the global ecosystem, and that human survival and its economic, political, cultural and social development are closely linked to the ocean. This reversed some of the parents' previous misconceptions that the ocean has inexhaustible treasures, and many others said they realized they did not know enough about the ocean before and would pay more attention to it in the future.

Marine Litter Theme Performances in Damo Theater

Introduction

Da Mo Theater is a parent-child interactive theater located in Fuzhou City, mainly for children. Unlike traditional theatres, this theatre is characterized by the ability to guide children to read scripts and interpret them according to their own understanding, thus learning new knowledge and acquiring new learning skills. From the introduction of the Da Mo Theater, we learn that there is a wide variety of scripts to choose from, and that the themes can be developed by the children themselves. In order to expand the practice among the children and to make this activity more educational, we decided to work with the theater organizers to incorporate the topic of water conservation into the plays so that the children could learn about the importance of protecting the environment. Thus, a theme was born - children need to do ocean conservation.

Background of the Design

We learned from the organizer that it is summer vacation and in order to let the children's interests fully develop, the theater opened a painting and drama camp to encourage the children to exercise themselves in the drama camp and to learn more about painting and acting and inspire them to learn through sharing their own paintings, interpreting plays and creating plays. Here, parents and children can choose a theme of interest together and be guided by the teacher to complete their own work. When we explained the purpose of the trip, the teacher helped us design a play that was interesting to children and easy to interpret - Ocean Conservation.

Interesting Interpretation

After developing the theme, we invited many of the children's parents to help create the script together, and the parents were happy to agree to the invitation, and even invited experts who are good at writing to participate in the activity. The creation of the script started with understanding the background of marine pollution. In order to highlight the importance of protecting the environment and to bring our project to the public, we gave the parents information about the increasing pollution of the ocean and showed more details about our project's biological approach to water pollution. Finally, the parents defined the main content of the script for the event - how a young child who is passionate about protecting the environment, especially living by the sea, witnessed the pollution of the sea and eventually communicated with people to get more people involved in the important project of treating sewage and restoring the environment. On the day, we handed out the script to the children and popularized the science of the dangers that ocean pollution poses to the global environment and encouraged them to think about solutions. The children were very happy to see the script and were assigned roles, brought into the scenario, practiced expressions with their respective parents, and at the same time learned about the important background behind the script - the protection of the ecological environment. Infected by the science propaganda, many children were eager to play the leading role and accomplish the goal of removing marine garbage and restoring the environment. What impressed us was how one child behaved during the role selection. When he saw our script, he showed great enthusiasm and curiosity. He happily told us that he wanted to play an important role on stage, and that such an idea came from what he had actually seen. His hometown is close to the sea, and the presence of a large amount of garbage generated by human activities on the beach has made the local environment more and more harsh. Therefore, the realization of the plan to protect the marine environment in our script is his most urgent idea at the moment. We were amazed at his forward-thinking conservation awareness and sense of responsibility and assigned the role to him. In the end, the children who participated did a great job interpreting and learning practices to protect the environment, and had some sharing and communication with the adults. For example, you can't leave trash at the beach, etc. This interpretation illustrated very well the creativity and fun of drama, and also taught the children how to solve problems and have empathy.

Reflection and Further Improvement

The theater performances allowed us to further extend the educational significance of our project, while expanding the audience and allowing for impact. However, such ideal fun-filled educational venues and resources are more limited. The experience of the play has allowed team members to think about and judge educational activities for children, and we have all been able to build on these valuable experiences to launch more detailed research and discussion for our next educational activities. Our practical activities are getting richer and richer!

Online Teaching with Elementary School in Guangxi

Our Purpose

On October 9th of this year，We carried out a small class to support teaching to children in remote mountainous areas at Guangxi Laibin City Wuxuan County Experimental Junior High School , explaining to them the basic content and knowledge about synthetic biology, giving them an initial enlightenment about biology, which has a significant and far-reaching impact.

Process and Development

We took this opportunity to go into the mountain village and learn about the lack and scarcity of educational resources for the children in the mountainous area, and we also learned that the environment and conditions are very backward due to the geographical location and transportation. After understanding the situation, we wanted to help them learn more with our own power. So we started our teaching activities here. In the process, we educated the children about synthetic biology and briefly about our project. We not only talked about the origin of life, the cell, but also taught them about the life of a cell and that people are made of cells, and the children were very interested. At the same time, we showed them the hand-drawn book that we designed and drew ourselves and introduced them to our topic of microalgae through the hand-drawn book. The children were very curious about the biological knowledge and asked us questions, and we answered them patiently.

Good Wishes

After the popularization of science, we took a group photo with the children to record their thirsty faces for biological knowledge. At the same time, we also asked them what they wanted to know so that we could do the science fair next time. We to protect the water resources, advocate garbage classification as a starting point, hope can for high school students to preach about sewage treatment technology, the prevention of water pollution, garbage classification and so on, so as to make students form and strengthen the consciousness of environmental protection and garbage classification and form a relatively complete system of environmental protection and the related method, the important thought of the promotion of green environmental protection, Make garbage sorting and water resources protection a good trend and conscious action for more people.

Association with the Blind

Introduction

  According to the World Health Organization, at least 2.2 billion people around the world today suffer from near or distance vision impairment. At least 1 billion of them (almost half) have vision impairment that could have been prevented or to be addressed. We know that vision impairment creates a lot of inconvenience for individuals. Because they are a special group, we can't carry out activities in the same way as before. In the end, our team held several meetings and decided to cooperate with the Fujian Association for the Blind to hold a volunteer activity themed of walking with the blind in Fuzhou Forest Park in August this year. Through this exchange, we hope to provide care to the blind and explore the impact of our project on special groups. iGEM is an inclusive organization, and we also want to create a more inclusive space that facilitates dialogue between the iGEM team and the entire iGEM community, opening doors for special groups.

Accompany the Blind on Their Walks

  At first, we were unable to get in touch with any blind people in the field of synthetic biology, which also emphasised the lack of participation of blind people in the field. We have previously recognized that even in fast-developing regions, there are deficiencies in the construction of safeguards for the blind. We further searched for blind groups to promote synthetic biology knowledge, and finally contacted the Provincial Association for the Blind to hold this event together.

 To see how much the blind community knows about synthetic biology, two members of our iGEM team accompanied the two blind men on a walk. They asked us questions like what color is our badge? What shape is our logo? We all describe to them as vividly as possible. Through this question, they also told us about the difficulties they encountered in their daily lives, such as they are regrettable that it was difficult for them to read books independently. We approach them in the most respectful and responsible way, hoping to give them care and help.

Start a Conversation

 The best way to find out what's wrong is to have a conversation. To help the blind community understand synthetic biology, learn about our project. We should make all scientific data accessible to them. The scientific community's awareness of the blind is important for making science inclusive for this large segment of society. That's why we host this event. We talked to them a lot while walking with them.

  Synthetic biology is developing rapidly, and we believe that genetic engineering may be used to treat eye-related diseases in the future, bringing good news to solve vision-related problems. We shared with them about the idea, and they were very excited about the vision. In addition, one of our team members was accompanied by a man in his 30s. When we talked about disseminating synthetic biology knowledge in the form of hand-drawn books and popular science books, he was very interested. He says that while he doesn't feel the books, it must be a very interesting and effective method. Through communication with him, we determined the feasibility of our publicity approach and ignited our idea of making a Braille version of the popular science material. After the event, we send them home.

Reflect and Further Improve

  We are very grateful to the Fujian Association for the Blind for giving us this opportunity to communicate with the blind community. It was a rewarding experience that made us understand that our project advocacy is not very complete for special groups. And it affects all igemers involved, which is what iGEM embodies: a diverse community whose goal is to become more it is good.

Blue Carbon Economy, "Resources" Promote The Future Theme Academic Conference

Introduction

The "Paris Agreement" proposes to limit global warming to within 2°C above the industrialized level, and strive to keep it within 1.5°C. June 5th and June 8th are World Environment Day and World Oceans Day respectively. In response to the 2022 United Nations Ocean Conference and the 2022 United Nations Conference to Support the Implementation of Sustainable Development Goal 14, we decided to organize and planning the academic exchange activity of "Blue Carbon Economy, 'Source' Drives the Future". We invited the NFLS team of Nanjing Foreign Language School to cooperate and preach, and they explained their iGEM project in layman’s terms.. We also invited the president of Minjiang College, Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University Doctoral supervisor Prof. Zonghua Wang, Dean of the School of Life Sciences Prof. Yuan Qin ,Prof. Wenxiong Lin of Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University, Prof. Chao Zhao of Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University, Associate Researcher Jin Zhou of Tsinghua University, Associate Professor Yi Tao of Tsinghua University and Researcher Wei Xiangying of Minjiang University with us.They are all proficient in the field of synthetic biology and provided students with real examples of thesynthetic biology use, using their personal experiences to guide. The conference basically provides participants with the basic knowledge of synthetic biology and guidance on how to effectively read scientific literature. We hope that through the academic exchanges of this conference, our experimental scheme will be further improved, and at the same time, the public awareness of marine protection will be raised. As an additional support, we have also organised several ad hoc sessions by which members of our team come together to check in and ask the experts any additional questions related to the content of the lectures, applicable to both universities and synthetic biology. During this meeting, we are looking for schools and partners, mainly for application venues and publicity platforms.

Lecture Content

Due to the limited number of participants in our conferences due to the the epidemic, our conference have not only offline participants but also online participants. On-site participants included more than 120 students from Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University, members of the 2022 CHINA-FAFU team, and online participants included teachers and students from Minjiang University, and members of the Nanjing_NFLS team. During the course of this session, we were able to interact with the audience, and online participants were asked to mute and encouraged to turn off their cameras and interact with us via the chat box to ensure our discussions were moderated and their privacy kept safe.

On the afternoon of June 5th, we held the following lectures in the lecture hall of Boxue Building, Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University.

Professor Wenxiong Lin of Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University's report title:Agricultural ecological transformation and its path under the background of ecological civilization,

Jin Zhou, associate researcher of Tsinghua University, reported title: Degradation mechanism of phycomelanin by microbial quorum sensing signals,Yi Tao, associate professor of Tsinghua University,gave a presentation title: Microalgae Biotechnology Coupling Sewage Denitrification and Carbon Neutralization

The title of Researcher Xiangying Wei's report from Minjiang University: Exploration of the three-dimensional ecological aquaculture model of Penaeus vannamei in seawater NFLS team report title of Nanjing Foreign Language School: Microcystin Terminator: Combination of mlrA withcross-membrane protein to degrade cyanotoxin.

Professor Chao Zhao from Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University's report title: High-value utilization of seaweed resources and research on carbon sink function in aquaculture

And the technical representative of our partner Yisheng Biotechnology Co., Ltd. carried out solutions for the mining and transformation of plastic depolymerases.

Lecture Scene

Based on the knowledge of synthetic biology, we heard the academic discussion on how microbial populations degrade phycomelanin proposed by Jin Zhou , associate researcher of Tsinghua University. His remark caused our team to think about the safety of microbial population degradation technology. Indeed, as he said, we have encountered the safety problem of microbial population degradation technology. We have been aware of this problem before. Through the discussion of associate researcher Jin Zhou , we have confirmed that the microbial degradation technology repairs the POPs polluted environment or has no secondary pollution. , low cost, quick and easy and other advantages, has a wide range of application prospects. The students listened to the sharing of various experts, and also gained more knowledge in the field of synthetic biology, and had a deeper understanding of the original intention of the Ocean Day activities and the ocean carbon sink.

Yi Tao, associate professor of Tsinghua University, proposed a discussion on the microalgae biotechnology that couples sewage denitrification and carbon neutralization. Through his report, we discussed the interaction mechanism between microalgae technology and PPCPs in wastewater, especially the microalgae under the action of complex pollutants. A deeper understanding of the response mechanism. This reminds us that we should further develop efficient, low-cost and easy-to-operate microalgae harvesting and recycling processes.

For the algae mentioned by Professor Chao Zhao of Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University, there are many potential minerals, and we also have doubts as he thinks about the environmental problems caused by the arrogant growth of algae. This is one of the most challenging planning parts. Therefore, we put forward at the meeting: eutrophication of water often causes algae to grow wildly. For this problem, whether we can turn environmental problems into a resource to use, such as algal fertilizer, diatom mud and other questions. Professor Chao Zhao also answered us, he believes that not only that, but seaweed farming is a perfect solution for these programs, as the demand for seaweed in the food and industrial sectors is increasing. We believe that by growing seaweed, we can save many of the world's water bodies facing the eutrophication crisis, and even turn this crisis into an opportunity.

Finally, we also shared our project to transform Phaeodactylum tricornutum through genetic engineering technology, expecting to realize the increase of high economic value by-products such as carbon fixation, lipid accumulation and fucoxanthin of Phaeodactylum tricornutum, and explained the improvement of microalgae. The idea of ​​algae's ability to absorb nitrogen, phosphorus, heavy metals and other elements in water body, we also discussed the use of microalgae and synthetic biology technology to promote sewage recycling, biomass energy project ideas, and how our projects can be used to deal with carbon peaks and carbon neutrality goals.

At the same time, there are entertainment activities such as lottery draws, questionnaires, and prize distribution, which make the atmosphere of the scene relaxed and happy, and the team's visual effects team records wonderful moments. We received an overwhelming response from the live attendees, and we were delighted to hear their appreciation for the concepts of synthetic biology and wastewater treatment.We received an overwhelming response from the live attendees, and we were delighted to hear their appreciation for the concepts of synthetic biology and wastewater treatment.

Reflect and Further Improve

We are very grateful to have this opportunity to hold the blue carbon energy, "source" to move the future theme academic conference. This meeting greatly broadened the students' knowledge, cultivated the students' awareness of protecting environmental benefits and maintaining the development of the marine ecological chain, and also promoted the further development of the experimental part of our project, and further promoted the formation of a good social atmosphere for the whole people to care for the marine environment.

Marine Conservation Theme Environmental Craft Class

Introduction

2022 CHINA-FAFU iGEM "Handmade What We Love" environmental Handmade class Nature is not just a "playground" for outdoor enthusiasts，and human survival is also completely dependent on the health of the natural environment.We know that a large number of non-biodegradable plastic products enter the ocean every year, trapping and killing Marine animals. And this situation is a threat to human beings.Most of us have not thought about how plastic will affect us genuinely...With this thought in mind, we and the College of Life Science, Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University jointly held the "Hand-making What We Love" public welfare and environmental protection handicraft class on June 3 this year.

Work Together to Turn Waste into Treasure

In the activity， the students learned to transform the waste paperbags, graffiti them, and design both beautiful and practical environmentally friendly storage bags. At the same time, the students also designed a string of imaginative”Egg Fish” by cutting and doodling the discarded egg carton. Through the design and transformation of discarded items，the students improved their innovation ability, cultivated their awareness of ecological protection and waste utilization, and cultivated their artistic sentiment. The activity scene was full of laughter. Then，we popularize the knowledge about environmental protection in the process of making handmade to the students，introducing we also use microalgae high-value byproduct of output techniques and the idea of microalgae purifying sewage，they showed understanding and recognition,and understand our idea,put forward the approval opinions and views.

Plant the Seeds of Environmental Protection Together

This activity is faced to all the teachers and students of Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University.Through experiencing the reuse of old things， students added their own environmental protection creativity and design inspiration to design a variety of environmental protection crafts,to stimulate students' innovation consciousness, practical ability and teamwork ability，in order to awaken students' love for the ocean and environmental protection. We took a group photo with the students who participated in the activity to record this meaningful moment after the activity. Finally, we looked forward to the future of environmental protection together.

Wishes and Prospects

Through holding the public environmental protection manual class,we hope to cultivate students the consciousness of the maintenance of Marine ecosystem，promote Marine ecological civilization，create a good Marine culture atmosphere on campus,so as to comprehensively promote Marine strategy，maritime rights and interests， Marine ecology，Marine economy，Marine science and technology，Marine and other fields of knowledge science education work of the people's livelihood, and enrich the students' after-school life.

Educational Lectures

Lecture Description

On April 15 this year, CHINA-FAFU iGEM team invited Professor Wenxiong Lin to conduct an educational lecture at the Innovation Building of Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University, which had a remarkable impact and was successfully completed. Through this lecture team members gained a deeper understanding of the knowledge related to the project.

Rigorous Science and Intense Talk

Prof. Wenxiong Lin conducted an entrepreneurial science talk to the team members around the extraction of high economic value products, Fucoxanthin, EPA, biodiesel and the feasibility of using them for wastewater treatment, and fully affirmed the team's innovative awareness in this area. At the same time, Prof. Wenxiong Lin asked the members present about the and asked them to think about the research prospect of the project. The members then had a heated discussion and together they popularized that microalgae is one of the most photosynthetically efficient primitive plants, and its yield per unit area can be tens of times higher compared to agricultural crops. Microalgae biodiesel technology first includes the screening and cultivation of microalgae to obtain algae species with excellent traits and high oil content, and then absorb sunlight, CO₂, etc. in a photobioreactor to generate microalgae. Finally, after harvesting and processing, it is transformed into microalgae biodiesel. Some people think that microalgae production biodiesel has been the latest 'green' fuel technology, although the technology has matured, the production of microalgae fuel production system still needs time. To make ordinary transportation "drink" on microalgae Biodiesel The first is cost. The industrial chain of microalgae fuel project is very long, the cost of algae culture is very high, the price of manufactured products is many times the price of oil; second, microalgae biodiesel project to put into production, the scale must be very large to do, and the production scale of various research institutions are very small; again, it is difficult to find a suitable production site. In algae culture, the density of algae can only go to 1%~2%, if it is too dense algae cannot absorb sunlight. The high requirement of sunlight and water for microalgae growth determines the need for large sites. Professor Wenxiong Lin explained.

Then, it was mentioned that Miri Koberg, Moshe Cohen et al. have proposed a method for the direct conversion of micro-green algal biomass into biodiesel using two completely new technologies, a unique biotechnology-based environmental system that directly utilizes the waste gases from coal burning in the power industry. One of these methods is the direct transesterification of micro-green algal biomass to biodiesel, which uses microwave and hyperbiotic radiation technology with strontium oxide as a catalyst. The team used marine Eustigmatophyte microgreen chlorella and first mixed crude microgreen chlorella with methanolic chloroform organic solvent for lipid extraction, and then performed two different extraction methods separately. However, this technique persists and is a reference that the team needs to continuously improve and enhance.

Affirmation from Prof. Wenxiong Lin

After the activity, the team invited Prof. Wenxiong Lin for a group photo and asked him for his opinion on the team's research direction. Prof. Lin fully affirmed the creativity, innovation and feasibility of the team after understanding. Microalgae is a bioenergy with great potential, but scale and cost are the two bottlenecks in developing microalgae, so we should take microalgae biodiesel technology as a long-term business and pay attention to the program and route selection, he explained.

Reactions and Reflections

hrough this innovation and entrepreneurship course, team members’ innovation and entrepreneurship thinking is also changing subconsciously and gradually improving, and their thinking becomes clearer and innovation points are searched more cleverly when they are involved in relevant projects in the laboratory. Having a certain developmental thinking is a requirement for a high level of personal development of comprehensive abilities and a requirement for us in addition to our professional qualities. It may be a challenge for us in itself, so we need to face all kinds of pressure and difficulties and learn the theoretical knowledge of innovation and entrepreneurship well in order to have this ability.

Lectures on Innovation and Entrepreneurship

Presentation

On April 24th, China-FAFU iGEM team invited outstanding senior students of Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University to explain the innovation and entrepreneurship knowledge of college students to team members in the conference room on the 4th floor of College of Life Sciences.During this period, the outstanding graduating class students discussed a series of topics with the prospect of biology and future development direction as the starting point. The event had a remarkable impact, not only improving the insights of the team members, but also providing relevant thoughts for the future development direction of the team.

Intense Explanation and Discussion

During the meeting, the outstanding final year students explained to the team and other students that the employment situation in today's society is very severe and the that contemporary college students have difficulties in employment is a social phenomenon. However, facing such situation, contemporary college students should be more innovative and entrepreneurial on their own. During the event, some students asked the outstanding graduates questions about the development direction and entrepreneurial space of the team project - microalgae. They answered: "In the development of science and technology, more and more important values of microalgae are revealed one by one, such as in functional food, food additives, agricultural farming, environmental protection and other fields are active. And the main biological sources currently utilized in synthetic biology include E. coli, yeast and microalgae. Microalgae, with their diversity of species and products, efficient photosynthesis and carbon sequestration capacity, have become a highly regarded base-class biological substrate in the field of synthetic biology."

Importantly, they stressed that the international also emphasized the need for the development of the bioeconomy, clearly exhibiting the importance of the four key areas of biomedicine, bioagriculture, biomass substitution and biosecurity. At the same time, team members also raised questions related to the direction and methods of team development, "The development of innovative entrepreneurial teams is more accompanied by opportunities and challenges. Unfortunately, university students' entrepreneurship is currently encountering a lot of difficulties that require rational judgment and decisions." They answered. The key point is that the success of college students' entrepreneurship will not only save them from asking for jobs from the society, instead these people will become job providers, which can also greatly alleviate the employment difficulties of the whole society. In fact, college students need to make career planning for themselves, not only need to clarify whether they are suitable for entrepreneurship whether they have the basic qualities that entrepreneurs should have but also need accurate positioning, clear goals and reasonable channels to ensure the orderly development of entrepreneurship on the established track.

Persistence and Affirmation

After the lecture, the team organized the outstanding seniors to take a group photo with the team to record the success of this lecture. At the same time, the team popularized the project development direction to the outstanding graduates, , who listened carefully and fully affirmed the innovation, entrepreneurship and feasibility of the team's project, and encouraged the team members to work hard towards the goal. They said that ideas need to be implemented if we want to succeed, but our ideas are urgently needed in today's water-scarce and relatively serious pollution society and internationally.

Reactions and Reflections

This century is a century of innovation, and talents with innovative and entrepreneurial abilities are urgently needed by the society. As the main body of higher education and the source of forward development of society, college students need to adapt to the development requirements of the knowledge economy era. For the team, it is also crucial to insist on the research direction of microalgae and strive to popularize the direction of innovation and entrepreneurship. Therefore, the team will enhance the hands-on ability, organization and coordination ability, mental ability, teamwork spirit and social adaptability more in the future, and not being afraid of hardships and striving together is the basis of success.

“OCEAN IMAGE” Exchange Conference

Looking for a Team

We learned through relevant channels that Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University's River Xiao Yu team and Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University's Green Zeyuan team are teams doing research on river water quality and protecting river water quality, so we reached a cooperation with these two teams on the World Ocean Day to hold a public exchange meeting to call for public attention to the state of river and ocean water quality.

Limitations of the Epidemic

Our original plan was to have a large exchange meeting with different age groups, including teenagers, young adults, and seniors, to inform as many people as possible about the current state of the marine environment and conservation measures. However, due to the epidemic, we had to limit the total number of participants. We were saddened by the fact that we were not able to travel out of the school because of the outbreak situation in the nearby area. In the end, after negotiations, we decided to hold the exchange on campus. And our total number of participants was set at 50.

Outstanding Networking Session

In early June this year, CHINA-FAFU led an offline networking session on campus for the general public, led by He Xiaoyu's team from Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University and Luzeyuan's team from Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University. We prepared a presentation that included rich content about synthetic biology, the iGEM competition, and our project. We took the water pollution control as the starting point, and introduced the water environment survey, water pollution control action in the field, and microalgae treatment technology in turn. Finally, CHINA-FAFU team introduced the basic information of iGEM competition and popularized the current environment and energy issues.One of the students came up to the stage to make a speech, and he introduced some basic information about his mother river. At the end of his speech, he said that he had not studied his mother river seriously before preparing his speech, and he was ashamed of that. This is exactly the situation that most people face: something is around us, but we can easily ignore it. Many people in the audience were interested in the iGEM competition and asked us some questions about it, to which we explained and answered questions without reservation. One of the audience members asked a very interesting question: "When microalgae are treated through synthetic biology, it improves their ability to absorb N and P. Does that mean they grow faster and pose a threat to other algae," he said. That's actually the question we've been trying to solve, namely how to make genetically engineered algae strains that don't affect the natural environment.We are glad to inspire their curiosity and enthusiasm about synthetic biology, and hope they can also invest in it and use their knowledge and wisdom to make the world a better place. The whole process went very well, the audience watched the whole presentation intently, and the dialogue with people with common knowledge background common knowledge background communication efficiency and achieved scientific exchange.

Project Impact

Participants at the exchange session expressed their shame for not having acted sooner to contribute to the protection of the water environment, as they had often neglected the protection of oceans and rivers and lakes before. We reassured the participants that this was the case for most people and that all we had to do was to spread the knowledge and action guidelines as much as possible. This led us to focus more on public awareness at a later stage.

Upload Videos on bilibili,Weibo,Tik Tok and WeChat Official Account

Introduction

We hope that our research results can be noticed by different people in more areas. In terms of teenagers, we have chosen a series of platforms such as bibili, Weibo, TikTok, WeChat Official Account etc. to promote our project introduction videos, because these four platforms are the concentration of active teenagers, especially Tik Tok, which has about 300 million daily active users. In fact, WeChat Public and Tik Tok also have a large number of active mibddle-aged and older users. We upload our popular science videos on these media to spread the knowledge of biology and synthetic biology.

bilibili

As the leading youth culture community in China, bilibili features real-time comments hovering over the videos, which we usually call "pop-ups". We chose bilibili as our platform to popularize synthetic biology for a number of reasons, including the unique video experience of the "pop-up format" that allows Internet-based users to transcend time and space and build a wonderfully co-temporal relationship to form a virtual tribal viewing atmosphere; bilibili has become a very interactive sharing and secondary creation cultural community. It has become a very interactive sharing and secondary creation cultural community, and it has a special technology and science content section.

We noticed that this is a good way to interact with the audience and achieve our goal of communicating with them through pop-ups. At the beginning of the project, we simply put our project PV video on bilibili, but there are many viewers who do not know synthetic biology will feel our video is a bit obscure and difficult to understand, and there are also some viewers who want to know more about our project. For example, microalgae can be used to purify water and produce a lot of carotenoids; microalgae can absorb N and P elements in the water body to solve the problem of eutrophication, and the synthesized substances can promote the synthesis of their own oil; carotenoids are high value biomass products for health care, food processing, pharmaceuticals and cosmetics, making more people aware of environmental issues, etc.

Encouraging us, we saw many users of Station B messages to explain their interest in synthetic biology and affirm our popular science works.

Weibo

In China, Weibo is an online platform for sharing information and interacting with netizens in real time. It also allows users to access it via Web, Wap, Mail, App, IM, SMS and a variety of mobile devices such as PCs and cell phones, which means it can be distributed through multiple channels. Microblogs are a unique way of communication that fits the characteristics of people's lives in this fast-paced era. As Weibo is the largest blogging site in China with a very large user base, we tried to create short science videos and some illustrated softwares and post them on Weibo. Our short videos are also in line with the "short time" feature of Weibo. We have gained a lot of followers by posting the videos for a certain period of time, and some of them have sent us messages through the background that they think our videos are very interesting, including a message from one user: "Your videos are very interesting, I like the language style and video style, and most importantly, it is easy to understand, so I will share it with my parents and grandparents. I will share it with my parents and grandparents, they usually can't understand the formal science explanation, but this kind of fun science makes them understand quickly". This is a great encouragement to us, and at least some users do benefit from our videos.

In the past time, we have published articles and videos on Weibo, each of which has more than 1,000 page views, and it has a great influence.

WeChat Official Account

In China, WeChat has become a must-have app for people's life and work, and as an extension of WeChat, WeChat Public is naturally supported by the user community. In fact, WeChat Public is not only the place where teenagers are active, but also the content that many middle-aged and elderly people often browse, which means our audience will be even bigger. Therefore, facing a platform with such a huge user base, we also try to operate, edit and upload some team dynamics, science tweets, synthetic biology trivia, etc. However, the process of creation was not smooth. We found that the tweets we posted at the beginning did not get many clicks, so we reflected on whether it was caused by the poor quality of our own articles. We used a questionnaire to survey some readers, and the feedback we got was that most of the synthetic biology knowledge is built on the original biology theoretical framework, which requires a higher biological threshold for most readers. Presenting complex and obscure content with rich drawings and easy-to-understand language. For example, in the professional field, we would say that "proteins need a stable high-level structure to perform their functions, which requires many covalent and non-covalent bonds to be properly constructed and often requires conformational changes to function", and in science, we compare this function to "a house needs If any one of the steel bonds is unstable, the house may not form itself. In addition, we can only open specific doors and windows to allow the things we need to enter the house to function". After launching a new issue of science tweets received higher evaluation, which is undoubtedly our greatest motivation.

After a year, we have gained nearly 1,000 fans, and published popular science articles and videos for more than 1,000 times. At the same time, the majority of readers have commented on the popular science works, benefiting a lot.

Tik Tok

We are always looking for a video platform that exists for users of all ages and can be used to spread our short science videos. There is no doubt that Jitterbug, which has exploded in recent years, is a very good choice. Jitterbug has a very low threshold of use, so you don't have to worry about the elderly and children not knowing how to use it. In China, the average daily active users of Jitterbug has reached 300 million, which means our videos have a great potential to be viewed by a large number of users. After uploading our videos, we use the platform's "traffic plan" to get our work seen by more people, and we plan to create "targeted" videos for real-time hotspots, such as the "Monkey Pox For example, when the "monkey pox" outbreak occurred, we produced a popular science video to introduce the causes and symptoms of monkey pox. In addition, Jitterbug will use big data to push our videos to people who often browse science, technology and biology topics, which gives us more opportunities to communicate with such people who have more contact with science.

Reflection and Further Improvement

We regularly look at the pop-ups sent by our viewers and some of the comments they leave in the comments section, and we think this has been very helpful to us. Some encourage us, some suggest changes, and some say we modify the video content based on their feedback, or follow up with a science video that is as close to their feedback as possible. We hope we can do our best to promote the popularization of synthetic biology. And we hope that other iGEM teams can also make more people around the world understand the appeal of synthetic biology in this way.

"Retaining the Beauty of Nature" Nursing Home Charity Event

Introduction

Humanistic care is always a very important of our team."The 2022 CHINA-FAFU team from College of Life Sciences, Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University joined hands with Yizhou Street and Taishan Community of Yizhou Street to carry out an activity with the theme of "Keeping the beauty of nature" in the morning of October 8. The theme of "Keeping the beauty of nature" was a filial activity to enrich the cultural life of the elderly, and to lead them to celebrate the National Day and the Chrysanthemum Day by making dried flower bookmarks.

Dried Flower Art Bookmark

Dried flower art bookmark Dried flower art bookmark belongs to a kind of pressed flower art, which has a long history. It is made by using physical and chemical methods to dehydrate, preserve color, press and dry plant materials including roots, stems, leaves, flowers, fruits and bark to make flat flower materials, and then made by clever conception. In this way, we hope to mobilize the minds of our elders, inspire their love for nature and keep the beauty of nature around them.

The host introduced the raw materials and tools for making bookmarks: dried flowers, tweezers, scissors, glue, and tassels. After the facilitator explained the steps, everyone had a basic understanding of how to make them and they were eager to try. The next step was to make the bookmark with their own hands. The old people took the tweezers in their hands and carefully placed the dried flowers on the bookmark, creating all kinds of pictures by matching the flowers and grasses and different colors. Some of them even took up pens and wrote phrases in Chinese and English. During the project, iGEM team members communicated with the elderly, introducing the types of dried flowers and chatting about family life...All the bookmarks made by the elderly were unique and in a short time, most of them were done and competed to show their works. The aunties had a sense of accomplishment when they held the bookmarks they had made with their own hands. The dried flower bookmarks were of different styles, and with the tassels that matched the color of the flowers, they revealed a more simple and elegant flavor. The air was full of cheerfulness as the old people passed their masterpieces around and praised each other. Dried flower bookmarks are small but can decorate life and warm the hearts. Although it was just a small craft activity, it enriched the daily and spiritual life of the elderly and let them experience the fun of making bookmarks and the warmth of interacting with their offspring. Reflection and further improvement Finally, before the activity ended, we also gave out our small gifts to each of the elderly people who participated in the activity, hoping that they would feel our care. The aunties were all smiles with their bookmarks and the gifts we gave them. They said they were happy to feel the beauty of nature could be reflected in this way, and they pulled the team members to take pictures together. Some of them even said that we gave them a sense of home when their children were working outside. One grandmother said, "Making dried flower bookmarks as a craft activity is also effective in preventing us from getting Alzheimer's." Although small, dried flower bookmarks can decorate life and warm hearts. This activity not only enriched the daily life of the elderly and let them experience the fun of making bookmarks with their hands. iGEM team and volunteers from social organizations also provided thoughtful services and assistance to the elderly , which effectively made them feel the warmth of the community and enhanced the good image of the community service center.