Drawing Contest

If I Were the Creator is a drawing contest we held this year. Considering the most unrestricted minds would be children’s, this contest is mainly for the primary school and kindergarten students. For a very long time, the Chinese students are said to be lack of imagination and creation. We attempt to break down this stereotype by giving them the freedom to design creatures that they like and providing them a platform to show their masterpieces.

We contacted primary schools and kindergartens in Shenzhen. The teachers and students showed great enthusiasm for this contest. We received 225 pieces of drawing within one month. Almost every teacher we contacted showed great interest in having this kind of cooperation next time.

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Survey

We designed an online survey to evaluate stigma and discrimination to HIV/AIDS. We also put questions about gene treatment in it. We collected 2211 answers in about one month. And here are some important conclusions we draw from the statistics collected.

1. We should enhance the education of detailed basic knowledge besides the transmitting pathways for the primary school and middle school;
2. The knowledge about HIV transmitting should be most emphasized among the old
3. Most of the respondents express that they can accept the foreign gene introduced to their body and would like to try the gene therapy.

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AIDS Ice Bucket Challenge

When we were doing our project in summer vacation, we also noticed viral spreading of Ice Bucket Challenge. This activity intends to promote awareness of the disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). We also want to arose people’s awareness of HIV/AIDS and promote them to learn more about this disease. And we also desired to show the world what our project is in an easy way. So we created Aides Ice Bucket Challenge.

Script

Scene 1: An HIV virus find a CD4+ T cell. The virus attacks the CD4+ T and kidnaps it.

Scene 2: The A-part of AB-toxin carrying CRISPR/Cas9 System and gRNA designed for the kidnapped CD4+ T comes to rescue. The gRNA helps Crisper system recognize the specific HIV virus and tear it up by a bucket of ice water.

Scene 3: The CD4+ T cell is protected by CRISPR/Cas9 System. But a mutated HIV comes again. The previous gRNA can’t recognize it again. The A-part of AB-toxin carrying the newly designed gRNA shows up to rescue the poor CD4+ T cell again and defeat the virus again.

Preparation

To ensure the challenge would go smoothly and the stardom could go back to lab next day, we prepared buckets full of ice water and a towel for everyone in advance. Once someone got wet, a towel would be given to him. The video was recorded by four different cameras at different places and clipped into this version you see.

Further

In this 3-minute video, we show the core mechanism of our project. We hope it can help the public to know more about our thoughts and gene therapy. Of course it’s also an excellent way for the team members to relax. We got it ready in September but decided to publish it with our wiki. So we are here to @you to watch our video and send the link to everyone you know.

Consultation

Inner-school iGEM Meetup

• July

Team Communications