Communication and Education
Educational Articles on Social Media
Our team has registered several social media accounts on various media platforms respectively and we continue to update our project progress and the popularization of the science we did, including what we have done, why we did it, and how we did it. We want to expand our influence through these channels to help more people learn basic knowledge about the nutrients which need by the baby and how mums chose safe and rich-nutrients milk powder products for their children. Through these efforts, we believe that we could not only propaganda our topic but also benefit other people to be reasonable in consuming products with a clear understanding of milk powder.
In belonging social medium platform, we focus on the WeChat Official Account mainly. This is because nearly everyone in China who can consume uses WeChat in daily life, and they often follow some of the official accounts and read the posted articles in their spare time.
Our first post so far has been read 464 times and received 17 likes. In this article with the name "MaiaPotion | Open Goddess Maia's "Mysterious Treasure Box", we introduced who we are and what we do. We stated our project goal to the followers and we aim to seek the power of mother from nature suggesting the solution we utilized is to borrow the power of production from the natural organism through biosynthesis technology. We also explained the meaning of our team logo and team slogan in the article to make some impressions on users who read this.
The first post on WeChat Official Account: "MaiaPotion | Open Goddess Maia's "Mysterious Treasure Box"
The core topic of our project is HMOs (human milk oligosaccharides), but according to our survey result, we found that many people know little about this ingredient. Therefore, we specially posted an article to spread the knowledge of popular science on HMOs. In this article on the topic "MaiaPotion | Explore the world of HMOs", we started with the introduction of human milk, then we introduced the chemical information about HMO and its benefits to babies' health and nutrition. At the end of the article, we talked a little about the HMOs situation in China market so as to introduce our project and our target.
The article post on WeChat Official Account: “MaiaPotion | Explore the world of HMOs”
In addition to the popular science on our topic, we also made efforts to promoting biosynthesis and biotechnology. After the meetup with the ProTeen-fessionals team (YkPaO), two teems decided to post an article about CRISPR technology since we also utilized this technology in our experimental design and we both agreed this powerful biotechnology worth more public attention. In this article on the topic “The correct way to open God's scalpel”, we started with the application of CRISPR/Cas9 in a medical case. Following that, we introduced the function of CRISPR/Cas9 in gene editing in detail with several illustrations to make it easier for understanding. At last, we restated the applications of CRISPR/Cas9 technology in different areas and its promising future.
The collaborative article with ProTeen-fessionals team (YkPaO) on WeChat
Online Public Lecture
To provide an intensive education to parents around us, we host and conducted an online public lecture about the topic we focus on and the solution we are working on.
After we decided on the lecture date, we designed a poster and posted it on our WeChat Official Account to invite audiences to attend.
The post and poster for promoting the online lecture
The lecture was formed and the speech was given by our team members. After saying hi to our audience, we introduced our team roughly, and meantime the introduction of iGEM, the meaning of our team’s name and logo that we would like to deliver the message of good hope for babies and their parents. Then we went to the core topic, the milk powder and HMOs. We explained the project background including some knowledge about milk powder and information on the relative markets.
The second part of the lecture was the intensive education in HMOs and 2’FL which are two key elements in our research and they are also what we mainly wanted to introduce to our audiences.
We were presenting our project to the audience
At last, we shared some of our understanding about nowadays market of milk powder and expressed our wish to make a difference through biotechnology in the milk powder industry and contribute to society. Of course, we had a Q&A section and we cleared their confusion about HMOs and biotechnology by answering their questions. Through this online lecture, we could really spread our impact on surrounding communities and also attract more people to follow us.
Threefold Popular Science Brochure
To help promote our project and our value to the public, we designed a threefold brochure as educational material.
In the brochure, we prepared one page for the basic introduction to the function of the HMOs, such as regulating the intestinal flora and strengthening the immense of the baby. In addition, we also added our research background as a sole page to point out the importance of breast milk feeding and how many mums are suffering from this problem.
Then we explained our project and its experimental design that we decided to use the waste in sweat potato dregs as the resource of the glucose and we use saccharomyces cerevisiae to replace E. coli at risk to synthesize 2’FL which is an element close to the breast milk. Following that, we expressed the social meaning of this project is not only to help individual families but also to help the continued development of agriculture and stimulate the recycling of the resource.
For promoting our team and expanding our team impact, we put our social media QR codes on another page to encourage people to follow us for more updates.
We can not only spread this brochure online for communicating our project with others and enhancing public awareness on HMOs but also print them out for offline education campaign use.
Our designed threefold popular science brochure
Propaganda and Concept Output in Offline Communication Activities
Besides our efforts in online education, we also took every chance to communicate with the public during our offline campaigns.
When conducting our offline survey, we could know about the thoughts and opinions of stakeholders directly, and mutually we could communicate with them face to face to talk about what we are going to do and what we are working on. In this way, we could also spread the impact of our project and the charm of iGEM and biosynthesis to the general public.
During our fundraising activities, we carried our peripheral goods with our logos on them and our brochures to the plaza. We not only promoted our project topic through our peripheral goods but also communicated with our buyers directly to deliver our project values. In addition, we will donate all our profits to the charity organization to support the charity work for helping infants and mothers.
The photo in our offline communication activity