Team:Tianjin/Human Practice

In order to investigate the spread and uptake of synthetic biology and IGEM competition in universities, we made a survey on the internet, through a wide-spread and professional platform for online questionnaire survey, Questionnaire star. We promote our questionnaire within the scope of all colleges in China as far as possible. According to the investigation, students coming from hundreds of schools have participated in the survey, including not only high school and undergraduate students, but also graduate students. So we can roughly believe that the results are authentic.

According to our results, we can see that the great majority of the respondents are undergraduate students, 1.24% of them are high school students and 0.62% are graduate students. There are also 1.86% staffs and 3.73% other people. On the other hand, 52.8% of them are men while 47.2% of them are women.

How many people know about the concept of synthetic biology? We are very pleased to find 40.37% respondents answered “yes”. As for the question, “Do you know some applications of synthetic biology in our contemporary life?” 44.1% people illustrate that synthetic biology has not yet entered their lives. 52.17% said they have their own?? comprehension; synthetic biology has been involved in many areas in life. We can see that only 3.73% people understand synthetic biology very well; synthetic biology has got great achievements in pharmaceutical, bio-energy, medical and many other fields. Faced with safety issues of synthetic biology, 40.37% people indicate that they would follow scientific principles to support the development of synthetic biology. While 55.28% people support precautionary principle, emphasizing the necessity to improve the supervision mechanism. 4.35% showed an attitude that they do not care the safety problem, they will use as long as they can be applied to life.

78.88% people think people should be involved in the supervision and management of biotechnology. 21.12% people disagree; they hold that people are so lack of relevant biological knowledge that they cannot have a comprehensive understanding of science.

If you have the opportunity to learn synthetic biology-related courses and take part in IGEM, would you like to have a try? 57.14% people answered yes, they expressed an willingness to have a try, but do not attempt to spend too much time or energy. However, 24.84% people are very glad to join IGEM. There are also 18.01% people that are not very interested in it. If people have taken part in an IGEM team, 36.02% of them want to study the environment and energy direction. 50.31% people are interested in medical and pharmaceutical direction. 9.94% people suggest to study agriculture, and green manufacturing direction. Whereas, 3.73% people prefer to study other directions.

If you can assemble the gene sequences of different modules to customize an e. coli with special features are various, what functions do you want to realize most? The answers are various, to treat diseases, prevent cancer, lose weight, generate electricity, etc.

What is the most urgent problem that synthetic biology should solve? We designed four answers: treatment and prevention of human diseases, command of environment pollution, efficient energy production, construction of appropriate ethical system. The results are as follows:

It is obvious that the great majority people support “treatment and prevention of human diseases” as the most urgent problem. “command of environment pollution” are in the second place, followed by “efficient energy production”. “Construction of appropriate ethical system” was the least.

From this questionnaire, we can easily draw the conclusion that synthetic biology has been developed to some extent in universities in contemporary China, but not very well. The great majority of people do not know synthetic biology or IGEM at all, according to our data. To our relief, most people already have some comprehension to synthetic biology. Although faced with safety issues, many people showed a supportive attitude to the development of synthetic biology. A large percent of people hold the belief that they should possess the power to monitor it. Frankly speaking, there’s a long way to go before realizing people’s demand. There being a vast part of people have the desire to join IGEM, we hope that synthetic biology could be understood by more people, we hope people with such dreams could be able to achieve their goals one day, we hope those worries that people have about synthetic biology could be solved earlier, we hope that more robust management system could be established as soon as possible. As great fans of synthetic biology, as students with great dreams of Tianjin University, we will spread knowledge of synthetic biology heart and soul. We believe synthetic biology will have a better future tomorrow!

Tianjin University,Tianjin, China
Email:michaelss@tju.edu.cn