Overview
This year, SHSBNU_China team planned a series of educational activities, including making DNA molecular structure model, designing and selling merch, designing and promoting a board game and a few other activities to educate the public about synthetic biology.
DNA Molecular Structure Model
First of all, DNA is the foundation of biological research. Small DNA molecules control complex traits in living organisms. The structure and properties of DNA molecules were shown in high school textbooks and became one of the main contents required for high school students. However, we learned from the communication between classes that many students could not master the structural features of DNA proficiently. Vivian Li told us “It is difficult to imagine the complex connection between its structure and function”. Through the iGEM competition, our team members have a deep understanding of the importance of hands-on learning, and many difficult knowledge and experiments can be suddenly understood after their hands-on participation. So, we thought, why not invite students to come to our synthetic biology lab and try to model the structure of DNA themselves? We prepared different experimental materials representing " nitrogenous base", "ribose" and "phosphate group" in advance. We also listed several questions for the students, and asked them to answer the questions while trying to build the best DNA structure in their minds.
After half an hour, we were surprised to see that all the students worked out the same DNA structure, which was exactly the double helix structure of DNA. The participating students told us that they had a deeper understanding of the structural features of DNA and surprised by the mystery of nature, which is even the smallest cells were full of wisdom.
Next, we ask students to imitate the content of the “Central Dogma” to further simulate DNA replication, gene transcription and translation. This process will allow students to further understand how DNA could control biological characteristics, and thus understand the greatness of nature. After such activities, we got good feedback. Mr. Ni from the biology teaching and research group said that more students should participate in making the model. We also hope to promote our DNA modelling small class to more schools and students.
Design and Promotion of Merch
Secondly, in addition to promoting more students' understanding of synthetic biology, we also want to further publicize this year's anthocyanin synthesis project. We made several anthocyanin-related key rings, stickers, brooches, notebooks, etc., and held a charity sale at the school. Our activities attracted a lot of students. We introduced this year's project to the students who were interested and reminded them of the importance of eyesight protection. We also carried out extensive online communication to let more students know about our project and products. All the money we get from the charity sale will be donated to the blind children through the Red Cross Society of China.
Participation in art exhibitions
On Oct 7th, we came to the Beijing 798 Art Zone and introduced our program to the visitors in the exhibition “Into the Dimensionless”. We explained the progress and prospect of synthetic biology to about 70 people, including a 5-year-old kindergarten child and a 60-year-old writer. By showing the delphinidin stained cloth strips we made, we brought a new world to those artistic visitors. The beauty of art and the wonders of science were all combined by this bluish violet.
Board Games
Thirdly, the final goal of our project this year is to protect eyesight through the production of anthocyanins and enhance people's attention to eyesight protection. So, how can we attract more people to participate in our activities? Our team noticed that there was a very popular game among young people which is named board games. We thought that if we could combine board games with eye protection, we would get good results. We conducted a questionnaire survey on the public and noticed that the large number of people in daily life are short-sighted, but only a small number of people know that anthocyanins can protect our eyes, and even fewer people are thinking about using anthocyanins. The original data of the questionnaire are shown as follows:
We further contacted some interviewees who gave us their email or phone number, we introduced anthocyanins and our project as well, some of them showed interest and told us “We have expectation to use anthocyanins to help improve eye health, if it could boost immunity, improve allergies and control blood pressure will be better.” “If there is a product to have this function, I think I will have a try.” Although other interviewees still worried about the safety of our product, they impressed us when they said a preference for topical products over oral ones, which let us think more about the implementation of our product. Based on this, we found the main topic: the public need pay more attention to eyesight protection and learn more about anthocyanins. We moved on to combine our project with board games. We designed a team board game and drew all the cards and chessboards. Here are some main rules of it. 1.Every player gets a dashboard of a bacteria. During the game, the player has two tasks: 1) to synthesize seven enzymes to obtain delphinidin and 2) to collect 10 Human Practices points. Whoever completes these two tasks wins the game. 2. In each round, the play draws an DNA card from the deck and obtain a segment of coding sequence. The player can keep the DNA card in the plasmid spot on his bacteria dashboard. 3.The player rolls a dice to move his avatar walk on the map. He will run into events such as “Electrophoresis”, “Social events”, “Education events” and “Safety events” 4. A player can run PCR on his plasmid at any time during his round. Upon completion of PCR, the player draws a card from the deck and finish the round. 5. The card draw n only be turned upside when the player runs into “Electrophoresis” events. If the card shows success, the player can obtain the corresponding enzyme. 6. There are many copies of the same DNA segment in the deck. Players can trade redundant cards in “Collab” events after completion of every round. Players receive 1 HP point through such events. 7. Players can purchase multiple plasmid spots at the cost of giving up their round, or their HP points. Multiple plasmids grant players multiple chances in drawing PCR results cards and increase the chances of winning.
Science lectures
As the enthusiasts of synthetic biology, everyone in our team knows the importance of science education. We made two lectures about our program and eye health in Beijing Sanfan Middle school and Beijing Haidian Middle school. Even though the COVID-19 epidemics became our obstacle during the whole progress of education, we managed to finish the lecture online. We received great response from the listeners, everyone asked questions to us actively. Seeing the interest in synthetic biology of the students grow, hearing them talk about how amazing this new and cool technology is, we were really touched.
Further promotion on online platforms
With the fast-developing technology today, we are presenting our experiments on online platforms at the same time we do them and sending educational blogs. The blogs we sent on the platform have already have 18645 views and many amused comments.
