Overview

Communication exists in all aspects of our programs. Communication is a two-way process. Inward communication includes interviews with experts and communication between teams. Through such communication, we obtain information that is helpful to carry out the project and make plans for the design, experimentation, and product promotion of the project. We can also say that we improve ourselves through inward communication. Outward communication is mainly educational, passing on our knowledge to others and encouraging others to participate in the research and application of synthetic biology. In general, communication is always done for some purpose, and on this page, we classify communication activities according to their purpose.

Communication on Science Knowledge

Our project has been inextricably linked to the assistance of various academics and teachers, from idea confirmation through project design, project development, and project closure. Throughout the project, we spoke with the project PI, listened to advice from professors and experts, and actively sought assistance from the institution and lab.

Mr. Wang Jiangyun is our PI for this year's iGEM project, and he has been extremely helpful in every way. We gained valuable expertise from some seniors in his group who had previously participated in iGEM. After numerous discussions with the teacher's group, we decided on our project. Mr. Wang Jiangyun was extremely helpful with our experiments: he consistently refined our experimental procedures, he assisted us when we required large experimental equipment, and we could obtain instruction in his lab when we needed training on experimental techniques. We frequently attend meetings of our teacher's project group to learn from our experiences and to be inspired.

Communication on Products Marketing

Our project is ultimately to enable the production of meal replacement products and we hope to enter the existing meal replacement market. To achieve this goal, we need to fully investigate the market. Our communication about market research includes communication between meal replacement manufacturers and communication with the target audience of our product.

Communication with Meal Replacement Manufacturer

Communicating with real factories in the meal replacement industry can give us a lot of guidance in the initial design of our products, hardware and software construction, and product promotion. We held a successful factory tour of the food replacement production area to learn and exchange ideas.

What we learned: Food safety regulations and food industry laws and regulations, the need for strict sterilization, and other considerations in the production process, product design, and advertisement.

Communication with Target Consumers

After team discussion, the target users of our product are mainly young people aged 18-30. This group of people is more concerned about our product’s effect, i.e., fat loss and muscle-building. We pay attention to the communication with this group of people and hope to hear their suggestions for our products.

We design and send a questionnaire and then conducted a random street interview. We were glad that many strangers offered us their help, and cooperated patiently with us to complete the street interviews.

What we learned: We analyzed the problems of our product for both target groups. For the younger group, saving time is their main concern, and our home meal replacement maker may be a time-wasting burden for them.

To address the issue mentioned above, we have taken measures as follows.

We improved our hardware structure and designed a kind of software to control the meal replacement machine remotely to produce food, which saves a lot of time.

Communication with people worldwide

We hope to come up with a method that can popularize our projects rapidly. The internet gives us such kind of chance.

We have designed a science breakout game to players learn the science of the human digestive system in a pleasant game experience. It contains a variety of ways to play, there are solving puzzle levels like a maze, as well as adventure parts that are similar to Super Mario. All ages and kinds of people can have fun through our game. Moreover, the design of each level is based on the characteristics of the corresponding digestive organ, while every character’s attributes setting also considers sufficient scientific basis.

We put our project into this interesting game, hoping to be known by people worldwide.

Communication For Synthetic Biology Education

Finally, we also hold many interesting educational events to pass on the knowledge of synthetic biology to others. We divided the target population of education into biology majors and non-biology majors. The former has a basic knowledge of biology, so for these students, we can expand their knowledge in the more specialized field of synthetic biology. For the latter, we consider combining synthetic biology knowledge with other disciplines to design educational activities that are easier to accept. Have a look at what we’ve done!

For College students majoring in biology

1. Biology Knowledge Contest

For students who have some basic knowledge, we hope to educate them in a demanding and exciting format such as a competition. We prepared the competition questions, invited students to participate in the competition, and awarded prizes and gifts to students who did well. The poster we designed for this activity is demonstrated below

2. Bioethics Debate

Emerging biotechnology raises many social and ethical issues, and this event focuses on some of the HOT ethical issues in the field of biology. Students are encouraged to express their views on these issues through a debate format. After registration, we will divide the registered players into teams of four and draw a debate topic and their attitude (agree or disagree) on the topic. The contestants were given a week to prepare, and on the day of the competition, both sides would speak. Questions and rebuttals are asked. Unlike a regular debate competition, we do not judge winners and losers. We prefer to make this event a large discussion, with no winners or losers.

During this event, we gathered a lot of valuable opinions. For example, some students thought that the current technologies such as cloning and genetic modification are against the laws of nature and do not conform to the laws of human reproduction. Some students thought that resurrecting extinct species would pose a great threat to the current ecological environment. In addition, there are many interesting points of view.

As the saying goes, "the more the truth becomes clearer", the contestants generally reflected that they gained a lot from the debate and understood the importance of safety in biological experiments.

For Non-Professional Students

Here, non-professional students include high school students, junior high school students, and college students who are not majoring in biology.

1. Primary School Support Education

We learned that there is an elementary school near our campus (school name: Huao Elementary School in Shijingshan District, Beijing), where most of the children are not native but are forced to study in Beijing because their parents work there. We contacted the director of this school in hopes of organizing an educational event at this elementary school. They were very welcoming of our arrival.

We wanted to educate the children about synthetic biology, but the boring lecture was difficult for the children to accept. After discussion, our team decided to use origami games to lead the children to learn through games. We compared restriction enzymes to scissors and ligases to glue, showed the children the basic process of gene cutting and splicing, and invited them to make their creations.

Our class worked very well, and the children were immersed in the craft and learned the basic concepts of synthetic biology. We were very touched to see the smiles on the children's faces. At the end of the lesson, the children gathered around us and hoped we could stay for another lesson, and some of the team members were even moved to tears.

We truly felt that we were working hard to pass on our knowledge to others, which gave us a strong sense of accomplishment. And we hope to continue to keep in touch with the children in future projects.

2. Microbial Painting Competition

Similar to last year's project, we held the second microbial painting contest, using colonies of bacteria growing on the medium to form various patterns, allowing students to feel the beauty of life while familiarizing themselves with biological experimental operations.

The principle of using microorganisms for painting is simple. We selected white bacteria to be used for culture. Ink was added to culture medium to change the color from the original yellow to black, red, etc. The students used inoculation rings to dip the bacterial culture into the culture medium to draw their favorite patterns. After 6 hours of incubation at 37 degrees Celsius, they got a variety of patterns, which are actually colonies formed by the growth of bacteria

Students actively participated in this year's competition and we received many beautiful entries.

3. Essay contest on the theme of ‘Love and Life’

We hope to leave students with the impression that synthetic biology is a living and warm subject, not just boring theoretical knowledge. The flowers on the roadside, the birds on the trees, everything contains biological theories. For this reason, we held an essay contest with the literary club in our college and invited students to express their feelings about life. In the end, we jointly selected the best essays and awarded prizes. The poster of the event and the pictures that we reviewed the essays together with the literature club are shown below

4. Synthetic Biology Salon

Considering that it is difficult for non-biology majors to accept the more specialized knowledge of synthetic biology, we held a communication salon to discuss some issues in the field of biology that is closely related to students' life, and the atmosphere of the salon was relaxed and friendly. We made a questionnaire to survey the gain of the students in the salon, and most of the students reported that they gained a lot.

5. iGEM competition lecture and new team member recruitment

The iGEM competition is the top event in the field of synthetic biology, and we hope to increase students' understanding of this competition, and more importantly, to stimulate their interest and recruit a group of capable and enthusiastic new team members. We introduced the basic concepts related to synthetic biology, information about the iGEM competition, and what kind of skills are required to participate in this competition. People are very interested in this competition and more than 40 people have already contacted us, wishing to join our team and work together to make the next year's project even better!