| CPU_Nanjing - iGEM 2022

Overview

    Education and public communication are of great importance to us. This year, our project focuses on the universe and the upcoming future. Therefore, young students in high school and colleges, the protagonists of the future development of modern technology and human society, are our primary target audience.

    Considering about the different cognitive characteristics of these two groups of youngsters, we organized corresponding forms of educational activities tightly connected with our research topic and developed novel educational materials. Meanwhile, in order to encourage communications and active participation of the target audience, our materials are portable, accessible, and the phenomena are immediately observable.

    Besides, in order to make iGEM and synthetic biology known to a wider audience, social media is also used as one of the means of communication and education.

    Based on this, we have carried out five types of educational activities.

    1. Entering high school classrooms, leading students to feel “daily phosphate”

    2. Leading high school students out of classrooms, into observatories to explore the galaxy

    3. Stepping into university campuses, “coming across phosphate”

    4. Beyond the campus and deep into communities, communicating "phosphate" with grown-ups

    5. Running social media to communicate with the public

Entering high school classrooms

The knowledge about phosphorus mastered by high school students is related to the content in the biology textbook. Actually，they know little about the indispensable role that phosphorus act in agriculture, industry and our daily lives in this modern society. This is confirmed by a background investigation through phone calls before we went there. Therefore, our first step of carrying out education plans in high school was to popularize all aspects of production and dailylife where phosphorus is involved.

Before the summer vacation, we came to Qingjiang Middle School in Huaian, Jiangsu Province. Through PowerPoint presentations, explanations and classroom interactions, the students were initially shown the crucial role of phosphorus in social production and daily lives.

Furthermore, in order to let students truly experience the phosphorus around us, even cola that we enjoy frequently requires phosphorus, we took out the materials prepared for on-site demonstration experiments, and conducted experiments on the cola purchased by the students in the school canteen. The rapid chromogenic reaction visually demonstrated the “daily phosphate” aceessible to them every day.

Jumping out of high school classrooms

Education and communication for high school students should be progressive. After understanding the importance of phosphorus in manufacturing, they can definitely realize that phosphorus is indispensable. The next question is how should we convey the information about phosphorus on terrestrial planets in the universe, and why phosphorus is in a lower oxidation state there. Since lectures in the classroom will never be vivid enough, using scientific methods to let them get in touch with the universe and catch sight of meteorites may be a better option. Therefore, our second step of carrying out high school education is to jump out of the classroom and visit the observatory.

During the summer vacation, we led some students to Purple Mountain Observatory in Nanjing, and invited Dr. Liping Fan from the Department of popularization of science of Purple Mountain Observatory to give a live explanation to the students. Through this visit, the students learned about the differences between the environment of terrestrial planets and Earth, and got a glimpse of giant astronomical telescopes and meteorites by themselves.

We prepared elaborate tickets with team logo, iGEM logo and a picture of Purple Mountain Observatory for them as a souvenir. At last, we told them that it is the difference in environmental conditions that leads to phosphorus on terrestrial planets being in lower oxidation state and hard to be converted into phosphate to support manufacturing activities of human society. And that is exactly the reason why we need to manufacture phosphate.

Into the college campus

Unlike high school students, college students have already accumulated certain knowledge, acquired basic experimental skills and developed the ability to think independently. In order to encourage and promote this kind of target audience to discuss and communicate with us, a reverse education form of ‘ask and answer’ was adopted: we let students to perform a tiny experiment by themselves, see a novel experimental result and then raise questions which will be answered by us later. For this purpose, we designed a simple and rapid chromogenic reaction which is able to discriminate between phosphate and phosphite, prepared relevant materials including colorimetric cards and went into the campus of China Pharmaceutical University.

Such a novel form soon attracted the attention of students. As was expected, they came up with a bunch of questions after trying by themselves, especially about phosphite which they were unfamiliar with. We passed on to them the perception of phosphorus forms on terrestrial planets, the importance of phosphate and the necessity of using phosphite as a substrate to manufacture phosphate.

Deep into communications with communities

The audiences inside universities are undoubtedly limited, so one of our major concerns about our education and communication is how to make our programs accessible to a broader community of young people. To this end, we turned to the senior residents. As grown-ups, they have accumulated some basic knowledge over time about the importance of phosphorus and the environment in space, and what may be missing is the differences in the oxidation states of phosphorus between Earth and terrestrial planets.

In light of this situation, our team members went into the community located in a lively commodity market named “Yiwu” in Jiangning district and carried out one-to-one communication with the residents there. We distributed souvenirs such as mugs and key rings printed with the theme of our education project for free after communication, so that they could take our project home. Once the youngsters at home asked them about where these stuffs came from, they would probably tell them stories about phosphorus, the outer space and synthetic biology.

It is the universal mission for every iGEM team and iGEMer to communicate synthetic biology with the public. Synthetic biology, a systematic discipline involving technology for engineering life systems, is very likely to give birth to the next biotechnology revolution. Considering the unique feature of our project, we decided to deliver series of public lessons about synthetic biology in Bilibili, a Chinese mainstream social media site targeting specially at young people.

Meanwhile, a booklet on space breeding was created in collaboration with NJTech_China as part of our Partnership. In light of the common background of both teams, we agreed on working together to draw the public's attention to the interstellar migration and get the meaning of synthetic biology across to more people. It was a successful integrated communication event, which not only strengthened the relationship between our two teams but also built a bridge between iGEMers and the public.