Science communication has always been an important part of our program. We know that science is not a product in an ivory tower. The premise of any scientific achievement ultimately benefiting society is the support and recognition from the public. In the same way, science that is not understood by the public has no way to produce practical results, and academics suspended in the air will not ultimately translate into reliable results.
Synthetic biology is what we're doing, and we believe it can revolutionize the future of humanity. As our response to the climate crisis, microbial fuel cells(MFC) also have broad prospects for development and deserve the attention of society. So we go from online to offline, from campus to community, from iGEMers to the general public, and from highly developed cities to economically underdeveloped remote areas. We utilize a variety of materials such as online courses, lectures, debate contests, texts, reports and so forth. We try to convey the diversity and complexity of science and these two concepts to people in various regions, fields and occupations, thereby stimulating their imaginations for the future of technology, and also bring us new thinking and discussions, and promote healthier development of synthetic biology and response to the climate crisis to create a better life for mankind.
Intercommunication and Knowledge Transfer of iGEMers
From the very beginning of the project, we have been participating in various meetings between iGEMers and are happy to exchange ideas and discuss them with other teams. Science communication is not just a popular science activity for non-scientific people, researchers in different fields also need to absorb knowledge from other fields to inspire themselves. The participating teams of iGEM come from different countries and regions around the world, and the topics are also different, which in itself is an excellent opportunity for science communication.
In the process of communicating with other teams, on the one hand, we showed them the latest research trends of MFC and our efforts, and on the other hand, we also gained a lot of new knowledge and generated possible applications of the product. There are many interesting ideas, such as chargers that use sugary drinks to charge everywhere, such as small domestic sewage treatment systems, and so on. Such exchanges allow us to spread the idea of new energy and the climate crisis to other researchers and learners who are likely to work in these directions in the future.
Action: From Campus to Community
Students in higher education are the largest reserve force in the scientific community, so disseminating our ideas in universities is very beneficial to the development of synthetic biology and MFC. We have a good cooperative relationship with NJU-China, therefore, we jointly hold a lecture and debate contest on synthetic biology on campus.
Our lectures are divided into three parts: Synthetic biology and introduction to the respective projects. For students who have just entered research studies, a vibrant new field is always attractive and will arouse their great curiosity. Therefore, the content of the lecture is explained in simple terms, including a simple and clear historical introduction, as well as a more in-depth principle analysis. Our communication with classmates helps to deepen our own understanding of synthetic biology, and further share our practical experience with them.
Debating competition is a contest between intelligence and eloquence. In the confrontation of words, a particularly intense spark of thought can often be rubbed. The theme of our debate contest is "Whether compassionate use should be allowed in gene therapy", which aims to stimulate discussions on biosafety and bioethics. In the process of participating in the iGEM competition, we always bear in mind the boundaries of bioethics, so we also hope to pass on this vigilant attitude to every future researcher as much as possible. We are in the business of transforming and even creating life, which will undoubtedly involve ethical discussions. It is what iGEMers should do to root the concept of bioethics in the hearts of every contestant and audience through thinking training.
It's not enough to just spread our ideas on campus, we need to get out of the campus and face a wider population. Many of our interviewees mentioned that the research on MFC is in the developing stage, and if it wants to further promote its power, more social popularization is needed to attract public attention and thus attract investment. Therefore, disseminating the basic knowledge and benefits of MFC to the public will provide important support for the future of our project. Together with Worldshaper-NJBIOX, Nanjing_NFLS, and NFLS_Nanjing, we held a joint presentation in the community to introduce the basic concepts of synthetic biology and their applications in our respective projects, hoping to build a wider mass base.
The Value of Science Communication: Better Education
Our country is a complex terrain with scattered inhabitants in many inaccessible areas. Due to poor traffic and harsh conditions, these areas are often economically underdeveloped and lack high-quality educational resources. But the important value of science communication is to provide high-quality education for underdeveloped areas, thereby promoting education equity and igniting hope for every child.
Every year, our university has postgraduates voluntary teaching corps that go to the mountainous area of Yunnan to teach in the mountains, bringing the outside world to the children there. We've been working with them for two years running an online synthetic biology lecture and introducing them to our project. What touched us deeply was that, due to the lack of channels to obtain information from the outside world, they worked hard to absorb every bit of knowledge from the outside world. Originally, we did not intend to explain the in-depth content, but under their questioning, we finally explained some complex principles to them with the simplest description. When preparing for the course, we constantly revised the content of the course, hoping to truly open a window for them to see the vastness and splendour of the world. We encouraged them to study hard and gave them notebooks, canvas bags and more. We also shared learning methods and wished them to finally go out of their hometowns and bloom their lives. Isn't this a noble value?
Based on our good cooperative relationship in the past two years and the affirmation of our courses by local students and teachers, we hope to reach further cooperation with the postgraduate teaching team. We hope to establish a platform where every team willing to provide high-quality courses for children can contact us to jointly provide better education for children in mountainous areas and promote educational equity. For more information about the platform: Contribution
We also co-hosted an online and offline interactive course with five other teams from the Freshwater Bioremediation Alliance in a junior high school in Guangxi on water pollution and the environmental governance. Through such courses, we hope they will pay more attention to the water environment around them and the application of synthetic biology in life. The children were very interested in what we said, and they actively asked questions in class, which made us feel their desire and enthusiasm for knowledge again. We patiently answered their questions and ultimately achieved unexpected educational results. We also gave them masks to better protect themselves during the pandemic.
Spread Ideas through Words
We believe that writing has great power to spread scientific ideas because writing itself is a precise carrier of science. In the Internet of Everything era, we can send text information to everyone through the ubiquitous network and into everyone's heart.
We have set up our own WeChat official account to regularly send subscribers about synthetic biology knowledge, our project progress, videos of online courses, and so forth. We retweeted the tweet to our circle of friends and encouraged everyone to continue retweeting. The tweet received praise from many teachers and classmates in the circle of friends and opened the door to a new world for many people.
In fact, in our questionnaire, we are already providing popular science content about synthetic biology and MFC for the respondents. Many respondents said that they learned about synthetic biology and MFC for the first time from our questionnaire, and they were very interested. They hoped that we could carry out this project well. This was a great encouragement to us. Our two questionnaires collected nearly 500 responses from respondents of all ages, occupations, and regions. We are proud of such a broad popular science audience.
Safety Discussion
As our projects involve changes in living systems, biosafety issues are always our concern. We refer to many laws, regulations, policies, conventions and declarations under the framework of China and the United Nations, hoping to provide a direct biosafety consideration framework for more iGEMers in China, as well as a reference for teams in other countries and regions around the world. For more information please visit: Safety
Research Report on the Current Status of Power Batteries Recycling
When designing products, a battery company provided us with the idea of using retired power batteries as power storage devices. Therefore, we investigated the current status of global power battery recycling and formed a survey report. This report points out the estimated total capacity of retired power batteries in the future, expounds on the shortcomings of existing recycling and cascade utilization technologies, and can provide an effective reference for other teams discussing energy issues and those who want to understand power batteries in the future.