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Core Idea - This is why we do human practice
We strongly hold a belife that it is our ardous responsibility to not only develop synthetic biology by working on a project day and night but teach and enlighten the public to be intrigued in biology and understand what scientists are doing on genetic engineering and other biology technology so that the public is capable of judging whether genetically modified organism (GMO) is safe and personalized gene sequencing and therapy is reliable enough.
Our iGEM team is also called as Coding Life Association(CLA) in our University of Science and Technology of China(USTC) and CLA spares no time for making the public discover and marvel at the miracle of life. We hope the public can go forward with scientific development and we are trying our best to eliminate the estrangement between complicated methods and public cognition. Science, existing because of our curiosity to the amazing nature, will prosper and benefit mankind with our endeavor to let everyone enjoy and understand. This is the core idea of human practice.
Plant Rubbing & Making Ambers
we held the plant rubbing & making ambers activity in our campus in April 11 to 12 as the first human practice activity , tring to interest the public, especailly children and let them know the fantasy of animals and plants with some sensitivity. We are glad to see hundreds of people participating in our activites and manufacturing their own linen pocket with plants rubbed on it and ambers guided by our staffs.
Plant Rubbing
We orginally put forward an idea to let chlorophyll or anthcyanin rubbed directly on the pockets. However, considering its possiblity of degrdation, consequently we decided to suggest participators applying the paint on the leaves. So we pick up some leaves from acertruncatum,metasequoia glyptostroboides,Broussonetia papyrifera and ginkgo biloba. The whole procedure goes like this: participators pick up a leaf they like and then apply some paint on the back of the leaf evenly and uniformly. After that, rub the plant on a linen pocket with hammer. Later, the leaves appears on the pocket. Some people decorate the different pigment on leaves and other draw a loving heart beside the leaves for their lovers. Well we explain to children about photosynthsis based on pigments like chlorophyll and light reaction system simultaneously. We hope they remember the knowledgy of biology and enjoy the experience in Plant Rubbing.
Making Ambers
The 'making ambers' activity is held for making the public know the process of formation of natural ambers and triggering their interest in insects. We bought some insects specimen online with colophony prepared for drawning it. So we in advance melt the colophony and then direct the kids and parents to poiled the colophony into a glass bottle with a insect inside. After a while, colophony sodificated and amber was completed.
Many kids said they enjoyed playing with insects in spare time, intrigued in picking up and recognizing animals and wanted to get into the nature more. Thus, we sincerely hoped that our activity again motivated their impetus to discover more magical things in our world.
Lab Open Day
The lab open day is an annual activity in our school held on May. This year, in 18 to 19 May, we opened our lab to welcome the public from all Hefei City and even far from Xi'an City to know what we are doing and what are genetic engineering and iGEM. We organized the following activities:
- Introduce the daily laboratory appratus to the kids and students such as centrifuge, vibrator, PCR Instrument, high pressure steam sterilization pot and incubator etc. We expained the mechanism of some of them and we were glad to see some middle school students caring about the working mechanism of centrifuge. So we continued teaching them more about the physical knowldge in it and it felt really pretty good to share them with our lose and gain and enlighten the kids who interested in science.
- View microscope and anatomical len: we collected some fresh flowers and leaves as well as cell slider including our Caulobacter crescentus and our staffs teached the kids how to use a microscope to observe the micro scale world and guide them to carefully dissect the flowers with tweezers. Many kids in China still were lack of opportunity to get in touch with the real science, which they could only read and learn from books. Consequently, we hoped this activity to trigger their motivation to not only think carefully but do meticulously.
- Class for kids: we equisitively prepared a presentation particularly to kids to introduce the basic knowldge of DNA and genetic engineering with simple words and lovely pictures. We are surprised to know that childern know the name of DNA, while they almost misunderstand the essence of DNA. So we instructed them about the scale, location, function, discovery and shape of DNA based on histroy and research. Besides, genetic engineering was also introduced using chocolate biscuits as example. We wished kids possess a memory about the mechanism in biological world and the seed sowed by us could prosper in future:)
- Fold It! Well it is a game invented by Baker Lab from Washionton University and introduced by 2010 Washionton iGEM. We introduced the game to the public and especailly high school or college students so that the students who have a little background of molecular biology is capable of understanding the best structure of proteins in some optimums. When the students knew that the structure of a reverse transcriptase(RT) in HIV, on which scientists have worked for more than fifteen years, was solved by player in ten days, we saw their great ambitions to participate in solving global problems they are good at and intrigued in. Well, this is why we hold it!
- Panel session: This session is almost for students and adults to let them know the iGEM, establishment and history of our team built in 2007 and future of synthetic biology and biological technology. Because the public in China recently is concerned about GMO severely, what we want to do is to introduce the genetic engineering technology directly and briefly and let the public to judge whether the GMO is safe for our daily requires with our lead tip. We are tring our best to landfill the gap between the fast developing science and puzzled people even if we finally are able to influence few. We still believe few can influence more with their constructive suggestion and going into action so that one day people in China, even in all over the world, go forward with science shoulder with shoulder.
Communication
Communication is really important to exchange our ideas while doing our project, thus we attach much attention to talk with many team in China.
With Nanjing-China
The communication with Nanjing-China was held in Apile 3 to 5 as Tomb-sweeping day in China. The contents contains both projects and some experience while doing experiments and modeling. And we sincerely appreciated Nanjing-China for their assistance of provide of some key parts for our project. Hope we can develop synthetic biology together with our true friendship.
With XMU
We participated the publish of newsletter firstly held by XMU. The newsletter, published every week as planed, will contains many teams from all over the world to introduce the project of their own and provide some key information and complicated problems when doing experiments. The first newsletter of our team mainly about the brief introduction of our project and histroy of our team, the second one contains the latest break through of our work and puzzles require solving and the third letter talk about the organization of our team and the development of our team.
The 2nd International Gnetically Enginering Machine Conference in Taiwan
The 2nd International genetically enginering machine conference was held in Hsinchu, Taiwan by National Chiao Tong Univeristy(NCTU) and NCTU_Formosa in August 3 to 8.More than 20 teams from Taiwan and Mainland joined the conference for understanding each other and meeting many friends. The conference includes official presentaion along with Q&A and poster session. We introduced our project to all, received much valuble advice and learnt much knowledge from other teams. And the host guided us to visit Chi Hu in which Chiang Kai-Shek,the president of ROC, were buried and the National Palace Museum where many treasures and collections sit. We sincerely acknowledge NCTU for their warm serve and we gained a lot through the conference.
Meetup in our school
The meetup in our school is held up by USTC_Software in August 15-17. 6 teams in China joined the meet-up. We introduced our development and breakthrough of our project so did them. Because
this meetup was mainly built for software improvement, we provide some advice for software team to enhance an user friendly software.
With Peking
In August 21, Peking visited our school and our lab. We sincerely exchanged our project with different aspects incluing some lab apparatus, modeling and experiment methods.
Propogation in Social Network
Online propogation becomes a much more important approach to introducing iGEM and synthetic biology.
Sina Weibo
Our project is featured on Sina Weibo for Weibo is a good entrance to all the public in China and we get in touch with many teams in China. This platform helps us communicate with each other and propagate much more biology knowledge to the public.
This main page is mainly opened for commnuicating with the worldwide iGEM team and our project and team are also featured on the main page.
Renren
Renren is a social network used in China. So the main page,regarded as most powerful page facing college student ,is built for communcation with Chinese iGEM team and knowledge propagation for college students.
