Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder that affects 1 in 44 children, as estimated by the CDC's Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring (ADDM) Network. People with ASD have trouble in communication and interaction and may also face challenges in the classroom or the workplace. Meanwhile, having an autistic child can also affect the family in various ways, including finances, emotional burdens, mental stress, worsened marital relationships, and reduced recreational activities.

Guided by Goal 4, we want to develop a therapeutic approach to ASD with the help of synthetic biology. We believe that helping autistic people and their families is another way of doing our bit to promote overall well-being. Besides reducing the comorbidities of ASD, our engineered bacteria are also designed to improve some of the symptoms of the condition by secreting NAD+ and eliminating heavy metals. They also have the potential to promote the emotional well-being of the family members of autistic people if put into use.

Health is not just about being disease-free. According to the World Health Organization, it also includes mental health, social adaptation, and morality. Therefore, in every one of our interviews, we made sure that we were carrying out the activity on the premise of protecting the privacy of the interviewees. By doing so, we hope to leave as little effect as possible on the family and the growth of their child.

Besides people with ASD, we plan to look at more conditions that are related to the intestinal microbiota. We hope that in the near future, we will be able to work with more people or teams to build a platform for the treatment of different conditions related to intestinal microbiota with synthetic biology, especially in developing countries and newly industrialized countries.

In an effort to provide inclusive education for more people in terms of ASD and synthetic biology, we organized three educational programs for children of varying ages and educational backgrounds. We also ensured that we reached schoolchildren from distant and rural areas when conducting our educational activities. In order to make our lectures more accurate, we referred to up-to-date literature and held a series of meetings to share our understanding of each article. At the end of each activity, we provided our contacts so that everyone we reached could contact us if they ever needed any follow-up support. More details are available in the Education and Communication section.

At the same time, we printed quotes of famous women in STEM on the containers of sanitary towels during the “Give one, take one” movement. We consider this a form of promoting equality and inclusivity since it serves as an inspiration for women to believe in themselves and do what they truly love. You may read more in the Inclusivity section.

Apart from sharing empowering quotes of women in STEM, we also paid special attention to female students as we conducted our educational programs. We would encourage them to keep on learning what they were enthusiastic about regardless of what others might think. Members of our team's art and design group included the concept of “Grl Pwr” in their design of the team merch, and we wore them in most of our educational activities. The selection of our team members was also consistent with this goal since there is a fair split of both male and female students. We believe that everyone is created equal and females have to power to change things for the better. Details of our efforts to promote gender equality are also on the page for Inclusivity.

This year, we looked through Goal 10 and decided to mainly focus on SDG 10.2, which states that the social, economic, and political inclusion of all should be empowered and promoted, irrespective of age, sex, disability, race, ethnicity, origin, religion, or economic status.

Specifically, in terms of education for teenagers and children, we designed different education plans for different age groups and tried to reach students of different genders, origins, and ethnicity. We wanted to ensure that we were not just organizing educational activities in relatively more developed cities such as Nanjing. Three of our educational programs took place in inland areas where educational resources are not as sufficient. Moreover, we encouraged students of different backgrounds to enter tertiary education and donated the money we got from selling the team merch on our WeBusiness store to those who needed financial support. We hope that our consideration can help reduce the inequality in education.

Another aspect of our effort to reduce inequality is supporting autistic people and their families since people with neurodevelopmental conditions are more likely to suffer injustice, discrimination, rejection, and in some cases, even bullying. We started by promoting the idea of neurodiversity in most of our educational activities with the hope that more people would treat autistic people with respect. In order to inform more people about typical manifestations of the conditions, we made a picture book about ASD with the help of specialists and handed our free copies to surrounding communities.

Although we could not make a difference in the consumption and production patterns of every individual and every factory, we stuck to this goal ourselves in our wet lab work and human practices. Specifically, we tried to reduce unnecessary expenditures and chose digitalization over paperwork. In activities that required using a certain amount of raw materials, such as our simulation to demonstrate the functions of genetic materials, we tried to use mainly recycled ones that could be purchased from environmental groups in the city.

Using a bicycle, public transportation, or our feet to get around helps reduce air pollution and climate change emissions. As a result, we attended most of the offline meetups by public transport or other low-carbon transport. We also encouraged people around to join us in limiting emissions. Hopefully, this will help in reducing the environmental footprint.

Collaboration is essential in almost any field. Team NJMU-China 2022 values collaboration and took the opportunity to participate in collaborations of different forms. All of these cooperative activities and joint efforts enabled us to modify our project and promote other aspects of sustainable development.

This year, we partnered with iGEM NAU-China, and together, we held XX online meetups at each stage of the project before finally meeting offline during the summer break. During these meetups, we shared our designs and offered suggestions for each other, which was greatly helpful for the modifications of our projects. In the meantime, we held an online Zoom session where team members discussed their plans to carry out inclusive educational activities. You can visit the Partnership section for more information.

Apart from the teams that we partnered with, we also attended a meet-up hosted by iGEM NJTech_China and iGEM NNU-China, where iGEMers from different teams got to share experiences and learn from one another in terms of education. Five other teams also participated in the meetup, including NJU-China, NAU-China, NJXDF-CHN, Worldshaper-NJBIOX, and Worldshaper-Nanjing. At the beginning of the meet-up, team NNU-China invited Professor Xiaohai Shen, an experienced educator from the School of Food Science and Pharmaceutical Engineering, to give a lecture. Professor Shen offered us suggestions on approaches to human practices and shared tips on altering objects based on the target audience, which gave us a better idea of improving inclusivity. Details of this meetup are on the page for Collaborations.

We appreciate the efforts and participation of every team we collaborated with and hold firmly that, together, we will make a difference in realizing the Sustainable Development Goals when our actions are combined.