Overview

Our human practice team had done a series of educational events such as promotional events on UM campus, an online class for remote middle school students, and entering a local primary school to introduce our project. All these events helped us share knowledge of synthetic biology with the public in a funny and relaxing way. We also used our Instagram account as the primary social media to promote our project online. For science communication, we attended two online meetups with different iGEM teams. We participated in Freshwater Bioremediation Alliance and HydroAqua 2022 iGEM league for further communication. Last but not least, we deeply communicated with Jiangnan-China and Puichind_Macau 2022 iGEM teams in the aspects of sharing experiences and exchanging plasmids due to the high similarity of our project.

Promotion events on campus

Aimed at promotion, we held the offline publicity booth twice within the University, on 28/09 and 06/10 respectively. The target audiences include all passers-by and even teachers! We designed some products suitable for all ages.

Badge

We designed badges with the logo of our project and modified their color. Through this painting, people can directly understand the basis of our project: engineered bacteria, and water acidification. Meanwhile, the handsome Aquaman indicates the goal of our project: creating a powerful thing against hazards.

Posters

Two delicate posters were fixed on board, laboriously showing their informative faces to the audiences. You can see the instruction of overall iGEM and our own project. We also considerately prepared QR code on the poster, by scanning which using WeChat or Instagram the audiences can automatically browse our official accounts and more detailed information.

Coloring brochure

Comic has been very popular among teenagers recently, and at the same time, there’s a fantastic painter in our team. Utilizing this trend and advantage, we create a short but excellent brochure with comics to advertise the content of our project in a novel way. There are handsome Aquaman, cute marine lives, and slightly nervous and exciting plots in our brochure, and the results show that it gained population in children.

Photo gallery of we introduced our project to passers-by in UM campus

Online class facing students from remote area in mainland China

Our team participated in an activity organized by CHINA-FAFU to instruct the condition of water pollution to some junior high students from Guangxi province in Mainland China. In this activity, UM_Macau as the first team to speak talked about the marine ecosystem and the concept of water acidification. Members of CHINA-FAFU went to the school for activity organization. They prepared delicate masks and stationery for whoever positively answering the questions. The activity seemed very successful, and we achieved our goal to make kids know about iGEM, some cutting-edge water treatment technique, and serious water pollution problem nowadays.

Entering local primary school

In order to let more people know the problem of sewage treatment existing today, and also to better popularize our project, as a part of education in iGEM competition, we went into local primary schools in Macao to carry out promotional activities.

First, we designed a coloring brochure. On one side of the brochure is the focus of our project and what we want to achieve, expressed in simple and easy-to-understand cartoons. On the back is the text introduction about our project, which helps the people who get the brochure to further understand the content of our project. Since all the text of our brochure is in English, we contact those primary schools that teach in English or have an English department. After getting permission and setting a good time, we got into the school and presented our project to all grades.

The students listened carefully to our explanation, understood our project, and actively participated in our coloring activities. After watching their results, we gave souvenirs to the students who had done their best. Through this activity, we promoted our project to different groups, and at the same time, we further enhanced our social responsibility.

As Macau SAR is still strictly adhering to the rule and regulations for Covid-19, opportunities for Community outreach and education have been strictly limited. However, we still managed to organize a few educational events to introduce our iGEM project and spread awareness of acidification.

Running Instagram account to let the world know us

We have run our official Instagram account which is named igem_ummacau with the aim of promoting our project to the public. We introduced our project and our team in a detailed and easy-understanding way. We frequently shared our public events and course with iGEM community. Many biology lovers, other iGEM teams’ official accounts, and even the igemcommunity has followed us.

Project communication with Freshwater Bioremediation Alliance

(Nanjing_NFLS, XJTLU - CHINA, Nanjing-China, CHINA-FAFU, GXU-China, UM_Macau) All the teams in the alliance have similar project content about water bioremediation, whatever to adjust the pH, biodegrade the waste, decrease the concentration of toxic metal ion, etc. We use the alliance as a platform to share our experience with other teams, co-organize some fresh water relevant events, and solve many problems together in this long season.

Project communication with HydroAqua iGEM League

(UM_Macau, Puiching_Macau, NNU-China, William&Mary, Tec-CEM) We, UM_Macau, along with Puiching_Macau, were the initiators of HydroAqua iGEM league. We invited teams William&Mary, NNU-China, and Tec-CEM into our league. All the teams in the league have similar project content— trying to improve the water environment. We set up this league with the aim of solving nowadays hydroponic and aquaponic problems using our own projects. We also shared our own projects with other teams and learned their original intention in choosing their themes.

2022 iGEM team meet-ups

G20 IGEM China Summit (organized by iBowu-China & SHSBNU) 2022. 6.26

Throughout June and July, we participated in the G20 iGEM China summit organized by SNSBNU_China and iBOWu-China, in which most iGEM in China had engaged. It was amazing to listen to all the other team’s projects and exchange ideas with them. We received many interesting ideas from many teams which truly assist us to improve our project. This is also a great opportunity for us to first present our projects in full English. Can’t appreciate it enough!

China iGEM Online Meetup 2022.7.17

(organized by GXU-China, Jiangnan-China, Jilin-China, and NPU-China)

The content we presented in this meetup was improved from last time’s meetup. And again, because there were many other different schools participating in this meetup, we learned so much new stuff again. The organizers put teams with similar projects together for sharing their content, and we catch this chance to meet GXU-China and XJTLU - China who also became our partners in the Freshwater Fioremediation Alliance later.

Communicate with Jiangnan-China

We set up a tight relationship with Jiangnan-China because we have similar projects. They also modified E. Coli against the acidic environment, but in a different way. We learned their modeling method and exchanged our plasmids Pasr-mcherry-pSB1C3.gb with their plasmids pRSFDuet-CFA2 because we want our XeR protein to have better anti-acidity capacity.

Details can be seen in Partnerships part.

Communicate with Puiching_Macau

Due to the high similarity and close location, we communicated upon a lot of stuff with Puiching_Macau. Their project is about to adjust the pH of plants environment and control the hormone release of the plants. Thus, we not only exchange lab work materials, but also co-worked with them to organize a series of events.

Details can be seen in Partnerships part.

Communicate with Macau waste water treatment plant

In the interview, we first get introduced by Mr. Angusto the general wastewater quality around the Macau area and the overall treatment procedure for wastewater. Mr. Angus told us that wastewater is different in every area, which requires different methods for wastewater treatment. In Macau, which sits in the southeastern part of the Pearl River Delta, sources of wastewater are mostly generated from household and domestic use, and the normal pH level is around 7. We introduced to him about our project and its application in water deacidification and agriculture. In the visiting, we learnt a lot of knowledge about waste water treatment. The plant in Macau also used biodegraded method to degrade the waste in water.