Synthetic biology, as a new subject, has always been under great moral pressure due to its potential safety and ethical risks. In order to dispel people's prejudice against it and to collect views of the public, which may eventually cause the qualitative changes in the formation of relevant policies and the social opinions,we attach great importance to the social education and communication. Unfortunately,due to the epidemic situation in shanghai, most of our work in this year is online.But we also believe that the online form can allow more groups who dare not speak offline to express their own opinions more actively and freely.
This year, the work of Tongji_China covers all ages. For teenagers, we designed a card game based on the basic ideas of synthetic biology.For the older groups, we participated in an online course jointly organized by 10 renowned universities in China and provide them with quality courses and after class consultation.In addition, we also designed an unconventional questionnaire and organize online lectures to high school students in cooperation with other team.
“The Killers of Three Kingdoms” is a desktop card game, which is designed by four students from Communication University of China based on "BANG!," an American game.“The Killers of Three Kingdoms” is considered to be the most popular modern card game in China. Since its birth, it has fascinated all ages in China.
We believe that some of the spiritual cores of the card game "The killers of Three Kingdoms" are much similar to some of the basic ideas of synthetic biology.For example the reconstruction and allocation of the present resources and the utilization of the environmental factors.
Therefore, we have adjusted and simplified the game rules and the flow.Finally, a card game which based on the basic ideas of synthetic biology is designed and it's named ”The killers of Bacteria”.
The main concept of the design of this card game is divided into the following two parts: 1)To make players more familiar with all kinds of seemingly horrible biological vocabulary and understand their general functions and characteristics 2)let them generally understand how to design engineering bacteria in the purpose of solving their own practical problems(Win the game).
In the future we are going to invite other iGEM teams to participate in the design of the card, adding their own engineered bacteria or proteins to our card game and finally form a common card game connecting the whole iGEM community and the public.
Picture 1: Players first select the “Character Card” , and select the corresponding “HP Card” according to the marked value on the “Character Card”.
Picture 2: Each player draws four cards from the library in order as their initial cards. please remember don't let other players see them.
Picture 3: Players can draw two cards from the library when his turn began and all the“Protein Card”, “Promoter” and “Terminator” in the hand must be placed in the “Coding Area” at the end of the turn. Other types of cards must be discarded to the amount of HP remaining in your current turn. After the end of one player's turn, it will enter the other player's turn.
Picture 4: Players can use the “Signal Card” to activate other players' or their own “Promoter” to make other players' HP to zero during his own turn. Or they can use the “Function Card” to adjust the cards' position and the amount on the field to create the most favorable environment for themselves. He who lives to the end wins.
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Character Cards The character controlled by the player, which has its basic skills and HP.
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Protein Cards The main way of causing damage to other players. All the protein cards can only be launched after they have promoters at its left and had received the signals of corresponding colors. After launching, all cards (promoters, terminators and all of the protein cards) participating in this “Expression” will be removed from the “Coding area” to the discard area .
“Toxic protein”: Cause one point of damage to the owner of the “coding area”.
“Antimicrobial peptide”: Cause one point of damage to all the other players.
“Antidote”: Heal one point of HP to the owner of the “Coding area”. -
Function Cards The key cards that facilitate the process of the game.Except for the “Promoter” and the “Terminator”, All the other function cards are no need to be placed in the coding area before the end of the turn and should be moved into the discard area after their working.
“Promoter”: It has three colors(red blue and yellow). After receiving the corresponding color signal, it can start the expression of all the protein cards on its right side. And will be ended at the “Terminator”.
“Terminator”: It can be inserted into any position in the your own “Coding Area” to terminate the expression of subsequent proteins.
“Endonuclease”: It can remove one card in the “Coding Area” of all the players.
“Recombination”: It can change one card's position in the “Coding Area”of all the players.
“Signal”: Divided into ordinary signal and the strong signal. Players can only use it once per round. The ordinary signal card can start the corresponding color promoter of one player, while the strong signal card can start all the corresponding color promoters in the whole field. There are three types of signal: red, yellow and blue.
“Directed evolution”: Draw 2 cards from the library.
“Mutation”: Counteract the card effect of the other players on you.Can be used in other players' rounds. -
HP Cards Players' HP
“Library”: The place where the cards are stored, from which players draw their own cards.
“Discard Area”: Where all cards that meet the discard conditions are removed to. The cards in
the discard area will not return to the “library” before the end of the game.
“Coding Area”: Can only load 6 cards at most.When it has beyond this limit,all protein cards,
“promoter” and “terminator” in the player's hand need to be removed into the discard area before the end of
the turn. All protein cards, promoters obtained by players in each round must be placed in the coding area.
(All cards must be placed continuously in the coding area)
This year, we have made a set of popular science courses with other 9 high-level universities in China, including Tsinghua University and Peking University. The courses are divided into two parts: online live broadcast and the after-class Q&A section. The course are mainly focuses on the foreword field of synthetic biology and the hot topics of iGEM competition and it was divided into four main topics: 1)Synthetic biology in everyday life. 2)Directed evolution: to create your own protein. 3)Biosensor: how do bacteria “see light”. 4)Building a cell factory. Our team was in charge of the last part.
Before the course began, the FAFU team design a questionnaire to collect the geographic location, age and other information of the audience. The statistical results are shown in the figure. At the same time, we collected the content which the students are most interested in. Through the way of word cloud, we can understand their interests better.
Excluding the staff who organized the course, there are more than 200 students participated in it, and we even attracted three students from Singapore and Australia. We recorded each course as a video and uploaded it to BiliBili video platform after every class. By the end of October, the total playback volume had reached 27000.
At the end of the course, we collected the contact information of the students participating in the course and randomly selected several students to deliver gifts. For all the students, we made electronic postcards as a souvenir.
We contacted CUHKSZ and SZU. With their help, we held a sharing meeting on synthetic biology in Shenzhen Foreign Languages High School . Three teams first introduced their projects and popularized the basic knowledge mentioned in the project to the high school students, and then carried out Q&A section and seminar. During the Q&A section, students spoke enthusiastically and raised many interesting questions about synthetic biology and iGEM competitions. In the follow-up seminar, students put forward many views on synthetic biology and expressed optimism about its development and application. After the meeting, we distributed questionnaires(To learn more, please scan the QR code below) and small gifts to the students, and formed a post meeting communication group.
In order to better understand the public's acceptance of synthetic biology and our project, we made a questionnaire to solicit their opinions. Different from the traditional questionnaires, the questionnaire contains a lot of popular science content. In this way, after completing a questionnaire, the person who fills in the questionnaire can also get relevant knowledge.
From the questionnaire, we can see that although most of the people participating in the questionnaire do not
know well about synthetic biology, most of them think that it has played an important role in our life and has
replaced the existing scheme in some fields. They also maintain a high acceptance of the related safety and
ethical issues.