Education
Overview

To include more people in participating in work in synthetic biology and promote both iGEM and us in the local community, we made efforts in education, propaganda, and a brochure.

Attend science and Technology Week

We USTC-Software and USTC participated together in the science and technology week held by our school. We set up a shed on the campus so that students could get closer to biology knowledge. The participants were mostly middle and high school students from nearby schools, as well as elementary students. We helped them do hands-on experiments together, such as making leaf bookmarks, doing chemical titration experiments, and observing fine structures with stereoscope. At the same time, we also prepared a knowledge contest about biochemistry and helped them to identify pictures of animals and plants. Participants of all ages showed great interest in our experiment, and some even asked us for relevant knowledge. Through this activity, we brought rich and interesting knowledge to students. Participants deepened their understanding of relevant biochemistry knowledge and cultivated their interest in relevant area.

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Fig.1 The students are taking part in our activities
Hand out brochures

Synthetic biology is very profound in the eyes of the public without biological background. Therefore, we have designed a set of brochures to provide a complete overview of synthetic biology and enzyme theory in a vivid and interesting way. The brochures provides a comprehensive overview of synthetic biology, from its development history, research content and practical applications. Besides, it also introduces the relevant knowledge of enzymes and enzyme kinetics we used in our project. Compared with the boring explanations in other books, the whole set of brochures is lively and light-hearted, with easy-to-understand explanation, avoiding complicated and advanced terms as much as possible; and we also used cartoon images to visualize the theory, which makes the descriptions more graphic and more acceptable.

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Fig.2 The booklet provides an overview of synthetic biology
More diversified communication

BiliBili is a cultural community and video platform which is highly popular among young generations in China, and we hope that our work will also be more visible to young people - who have a lot of energy, active minds, and the ability to turn ideas into reality. We upload our promotion video and user guide video for our software. Maybe somewhere in China, a young person will see our video and may light a torch of thought and curiosity and start trying to climb the heights of synthetic biology.