This year, the UESTC iGEM team has conducted many human practices to disseminate iGEM and our project. One of them is a questionnaire survey which gathers the information of public awareness of synthetic biology, formaldehyde and last but not least, their perspective on the transgenic plant which can absorb formaldehyde. Last, we analyzed our research data, and come to a conclusion of our activity, and made many charts or diagrams to make people easier to understand.

Results

The Questions

First Part (Basic Information)
1. Your gender:
A. female
B. male
2. Your age:
A. below 18
B. 18 to 35
C. 35 to 50
D. over 50
3. Your current educational situation:
A. high school or below high school
B. undergraduate
C. graduate
D. master degree or above
4. Your monthly earning scope:
A. <3000 RMB
B. 3000-6000 RMB
C. 6000-10000 RMB
D. >10000 RMB
5. Your vocation is _________
6. So far which city have you stayed the longest time?
A. first-tier city
B. second and third-tier cities
C. countryside
D. foreign country

Second Part (environment)
7. What environmental problems you think is most important?
A. air pollution
B. water pollution
C. noise pollution
D. light pollution
E. soil pollution
8. Where do you think formaldehyde come from?
A. furniture
B. oil paint
C. cosmetics
D. carpet
E. automobile exhaust
9. Which drawback do you know about formaldehyde?
A. stimulate the skin mucous membrane
B. acute poisoning (difficult to breathe)
C. chronic hazard (lower immunity, sleepy, feeble)
D. carcinogenic (multiple myeloma, leukemia)
E. allergic dermatitis

10. If you buy a new house, which way you prefer to reduce the amount of formaldehyde?
A. ventilate to fresh the air
B. plant
C. activated carbon
D. photo catalyst
E. air cleaner
F. else

11. If you did not choose ‘plant’ on the question 4, what is your main consideration?
A. low purified efficiency
B. trouble to grow plant
C. prefer other ways
12. If there is a pot of plant, made by synthetic biology can absorb formaldehyde, do you accept it?
A. can’t accept it
B. a little care
C. accept with pleasure

Third Part (technology level)
13. Which application you think belongs to synthetic biology or genetic engineering?
A. biosensor
B. synthetic insulin, vaccine
C. microbes which can decompose oil
D. hybrid rice
14. What effects you think that synthetic biology or genetic engineering bring to human being?
A. high yield of grain
B. lower drug costs
C. improve the environment
D. no influence

15. For the plant designed by synthetic biology which absorb formaldehyde, which kind of problem you care more about?
A. the efficiency of absorbing formaldehyde
B. biological safety
C. whether it is easy to keep alive
D. the costs to keep plants healthy

16. What’s your opinion about this year’s UESTC iGEM team’s plant project?
A. I am very supportive about this project, because it can solve out the problem came from our daily life.
B. supportive, because we do not know this much, if it is good to undergraduates then we support it.
C. do not support. The plants made by synthetic biology may do harm to human being.
D. do not care about this competition. I feel the thing is far away from my life.

Forth part (marketing)
17. If you will go to buy the very product to get rid of formaldehyde, which two of the following options you care more?
A. portability
B. safety
C. efficiency
D. price
18. If you will buy this product, where do you prefer to buy?
A. supermarket
B. online shopping
C. building materials market
D. stall

Statistic

Analysis

From the charts, we could get the information that, for these questions, the number of male slightly exceeded the number of female. And this excess is trivial enough to guarantee the scientificity of our data collected.

From the charts, we could get that more than half of the people answered the questionnaires were young aged between 18 and 35. And the people between 35 and 50 also counted a crucial part. The information we got may insured the practicability and scientificity of our data collected.

We could notice that people received our questionnaires were mostly accepted a bachelor’s degree or not graduating students in college.

Due to the people received our questionnaire were mostly not graduating students in college, so the revenue people got, finding in this chart under 3,000 counted 52%. And the second most proportion was the people with the revenue between 3,000 and 6,000.

People from this chart mostly came from city, especially the second or third-tier cities, not downtown or countryside.

About 43% people thought that the most serious environmental problem around us was air pollutant. About 30% thought that the most serious problem was water pollution. So the most urgent two environmental pollutants people care about were the factors which were crucial to our life such as air and water.

Most people thought that furniture and paint are the main sources of formaldehyde. And rarely recognized that some cosmetics also release formaldehyde. Last but not least, nearly 10% people held the idea that, formaldehyde can be released by chemical carpet, automobile exhausts and burnt gas.

About 29% people recognized that formaldehyde might lead to cancer to people. 24% considered the consequence of formaldehyde was chronic hazard. 18% thought that formaldehyde irritated skin and mucosa.

Most people preferred ventilation above all other choices. And the proportion reached 34%. Also they were fond of green plants and it counted 29%. Besides, 21% people chose activated carbon, 13% chose air purifier, rarely chose photocatalyst, which might due to the unawareness of photocatalyst in my opinion.

People who did not choose plants to absorb formaldehyde was mainly because of the low absorbing efficiency. Also the troublesome of cultivating a plant also counted a lot.

About 81% people accepted the plant designed by the synthetic biology. And 15% people accentuated that they minded accepting this manmade plant. What couldn't be ignorable was that there were still 4% people could not accept the plant.

37% people believed that synthetic biology or genetic biology could be applied in medical science such as synthetic insulin and vaccine. 29% believed that hybrid rice was also one of the application of synthetic biology, and this implied that about 29% people cannot figure out synthetic biology, ‘cause hybrid biology was not the application of synthetic biology, and the choice displayed here was just a barricade we made to distinguish the people knew synthetic biology or not.

34% people believed that synthetic biology or genetic biology could play a role in high yield of rice. 33% believed that it counted a lot in cutting the cost of drugs. 30% held the idea that it did a lot in promoting the environment. And only 3% people did not notice the effect made by synthetic biology.

About 39% people cared the biosafety of the plant made by synthetic biology, and about 29% paid attention to the efficiency of absorbing formaldehyde.

About 94% (77% plus 17%) people were in favor of our project in synthesizing a plant absorbing formaldehyde largely. Only about 4% people held the idea that they cared little about this project for the project had no business with them and 2% people did not back our project due to the potential hazard of synthetic biology.

When buying the products to absorb formaldehyde, people cared more about biosafety (47%) and the efficiency (32%). About 17% people cared about the price and 4% cared about the portability of the product.

When buying the products of absorbing formaldehyde, people prefered to supermarket (58%) and online shopping (26%) than roadside market or stalls.

There is more analysis of our questionaire, which contains more details of our analysis.