Education&Communication

1.Popular Science on Public Social Platform

To raise public awareness of our project, as well as RNA Splicing, Biobrick, Myelodysplastic Syndrome and synthetic biology, we wrote popular science articles and popular science handbooks. Then we released them on some of the most popular social media platforms with almost weekly updates. The topics of our articles are as follows:

·Why is cancer called the king of serious illnesses

·The introduction of molecular biology laboratory equipment

·The Secret of RNA Splicing

·What's Biobrick

·Interviews with MDs about MDS

When we write the popular science articles, the writing styles is also considered to be suitable for different user groups. In order to increase the availability and visibility of our project, we sought to expand our project goals to a larger community, it's often varied from platform to platform.

1.1 Instagram Public Account

Instagram is extremely popular for different user groups in abroad. Such a popular social networking app is suitable for our project with a focus on sharing photos and videos emphasis on mobile use and visual sharing. Through Instagram, we published a brief introduction of our project and relevant popular science poster and pictures, which have got nearly one hundred of visits and readings.

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Figure 1. Our Team's Official Account on Instagram

1.2 WeChat Public Account

As one of the biggest and most influential social networks in China, WeChat public account are taking over conventional publications and becoming the go-to place for reading and news following with comprehensive interaction of articles, pictures, videos between, as well as encourage an open dialogue with our audience.

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Figure 2. Our Team's Official Account on WeChat

Compared to Instagram, the target audience are more accessible to read, to think or to communicate as a result of the campaign. Though WeChat public account, we could get real-time update for our project and send the message to all the followers.

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Figure 3. Popular science articles we wrote on the WeChat

1.3 Bilibili Social Platform

Bilibili is a video-sharing platform popular in China. Here, users can watch, share, and create videos. While it may not be as well-known outside of China, Bilibili is a powerful social media tool for marketing products and services to Chinese consumers.

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Figure 4. Invination letter of our Public lecture about MDS

On August 22th, we had a public lecture about our project of MDS on Bilibili Live, and there were more than 9,500 target audience certainly be able to attend or to watch it.

2. Public Education for iGEM and the MDS

Our team, YiYe-China, has prepared for 2022 iGEM since October last year. We were deeply touched and attracted by the ideas of fostering an open, cooperative community and friendly competition. As iGEMers, we have a duty to promote this promising program as well as our project of the MDS for a wider target audience.

2.1 Public Campaign in Hubu Lane

Hubu Lane snacks have become a synonym for Hankou style breakfast services in Wuhan, it can receive about 10,000 customers in a day. On weekends, customers can amount to 25,000. For the public education and promotion, we went to this famous and busy lane on the weekend to distribute our propaganda brochures and surveys to pedestrians. Unfortunately, only a few people were willing to learn about our project. We were so frustrated by choosing a wrong place and time, most visitors were people who just got out of work and rushed home, and also because the disease of MDS is less related to them as they were primarily young, even so, we still ended up with some helpful survey results.

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Figure 5. Our team members in Hubu Lane with our Poster

2.2 Public Campaign in the Community

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Figure 6. Community residents are filling up our survey.

Learned from the previous mistake, we arranged a second public campaign. The following week, we went to a neighborhood during the daytime, when many older people were hanging out, to promote knowledge about MDS. Since MDS is more related to the elderly's health conditions, and we had cute masks and keychains as gifts, many people read our booklet and took our survey.

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Figure 7. Our team member Gezhi Ma is talking to the man about our project

As we have planned, the second campaign was very successful. People in the community said that they would pay more attention to their body and be more aware of MDS symptoms.

3. Public lecture of MDS at the online live

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Figure 8. Poster of our Public lecture about MDS

We also had a live lecture with the HZAU-China team on Bilibili Live, a popular video platform in China. We introduced MDS disease and thrombus to make people know more about health life, including the signs, symptoms and tests of MDS, as well as, the cause, prevention, and treatment of thrombus. We made a presentation and a detailed timeline for the lecture before the meet-up. Specifically, the presentation includes

·the introduction to synthetic biology and the iGEM competition;

·the cause, prevention, and testing methodology of MDS;

·YiYe-China's experiment design;

·the cause, prevention, and treatment of thrombus;

·HZAU's experiment design;

·Q&A section

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Figure 9. Q&A with our audiences in the live-room

In the end, the live lecture was very successful and there were 9,532 audiences attend to our Live room. So many audiences participated in our live lecture which are more than we expected. We arranged Q&A section right after the lecture, and received positive feedbacks from passionate audiences. They asked questions about the investment we got and our experimental results and appreciated us for sharing the information and working on this meaningful project.

4. Popular science handbooks and face masks

Since the outbreak of pandemic in 2020, we should all be wearing masks. Because of the tightened mask requirements in China, we designed hundreds of face masks for sharing all the audiences, to let people know more about iGEM and our project.

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Figure 10. Our team's handbook and face masks

5. Public communication in the different cities of China

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Figure 11. Junyan was having a dialogue with the college students in Jinan

On September 24, our team member Junyan Gao, form city of Jinan, had a public science workshop about our project of MDS with the college students at Qilu University of Technology, and there were more than 60 target audiences participated in the discussion. They showed a strong desire to know our project with the diagnosis and treatment methods of MDS. Although they are blind to this disease before, after the workshop, they obviously have a deep understand about iGEM and the tests of MDS.

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Figure 12. Lanxuan was introducing our project to the people in Chengdu

Meanwhile, our team member Lanxuan Peng also had public communication with the people in the city of Chengdu. She went to the street of Chengdu and had an open dialogue with the people who learned to know more about our project and encouraged our team members to keep on doing the research on the field. It is a really unforgettable experience for us to show the excellence of our new test about MDS.