Team:Hong Kong HKUST/human practice/start-up kit/report

As the iGEM headquarters put effort to bring the topic of synthetic biology close to the society, more and more attention was given to human practice. In year 2008 to 2013, there was a total of 707 teams who joined the iGEM jamboree and received medals, and a total of 1387 human practice projects were conducted.

But how well exactly has human practice developed over the years? How much attribution was made in each region? Are some types more commonly done than others? To answer these questions, HKUST iGEM 2014 team gathered all the information since the year 2008, hoping to see some correlation between regions and types of projects done, and some possible trends over the years.

This section primarily focus on the number of teams all in all over the regions from 2008 to 2013. The graph simply suggest that the number of teams who did human practice projects has significantly increased throughout the years, and the teams who did not do human practice projects are decreasing as time passed by. There may be a multiple reason for this cause. Primarily it would be due to the fact the synthetic biology and iGEM has increased its popularity and it is encouraged for teams to introduce synbio and iGEM to the society. This may also be caused due to the emergence of best human practice award. Therefore some teams are aiming to win it. To sum up, human practice has become an increasingly popular destination for iGEM teams, especially in recent years.

This part of the report was established from the graph to distinguish the percentage of projects done within the 700 projects. Talks seem to be the majority of the types done in the past. 288 talks were delivered from year 2008 to 2013, taking 21% of the entire projects. 11% of the projects were performed in the form of survey, becoming the second largest portion. Workshops and Articles were the third biggest contributors, scoring 145 and 143 times respectively, taking 10% each of the entire projects. Books and Business were the least popular types, only 26 and 22 of them done in the past six years. The sole purpose of human practice is to expose the idea of synthetic biology out to the society, and the three types mentioned above fulfil the mission in a most obvious way. Teams introduce their projects by holding conferences, observe and analyse people’s knowledge and perspective on synthetic biology by conducting surveys, and provide the opportunity for people to witness their working environment and attain hands on experience by giving lab tours and various workshops. In contrast, types like books and business seems not yet fully developed comparatively because making this type of project and reaching to the society are more challenging. But books and business, if done amazingly, can touch the people more deeply.

In each region, it can be deduced that the number of teams who did human practice project in each region differ from one another. Graph 4.1 indicates the relationship between the percentage of teams who did human practice project in each region and graph 4.2 indicates the number of teams in each region. Judging by the value indicated in graph 4.1, it can be concluded that all the teams in Africa did human practice project. But in relation to graph 4.2, there exists only 1 team who won a bronze medal or above from Africa. Hence Africa shows a 100% occurrence in graph 4.1, from that 1 team in graph 4.2. The results from graph 4.1 also indicate that approximately 90% of the teams in Latin America did human practice project and roughly 79% of the teams in Europe and Asia. North America scores the lowest among the region with approximately 62% of the teams did human practice project. The evidence shown from graph 4.2 in relation to graph 1 is quite surprising especially towards North America. Despite the fact that North America has the most number of teams, it seems that compare to the other regions, North America did not show as much attitude towards human practice, in reference to the data in graph 4.1. It can be concluded that from the values of the percentage of number of team who did human practice project in each region is different from one another.

Fig 1 . Here is the potato.

Here is the description of the potato: it is a potato!

The number of human practice projects in each type is estimated to be growing in number in the past years. Taking the data from graph 5.1, the amount of human practice project done has increased more than expected. This may be caused by the growing trend of synthetic biology and the increase in the importance of human practice project. Graph 5.2 describes the amount of projects done in each type from the year 2008 to 2013. The observation from the graph can conclude that the amount of projects done in every type increased in every year.
Graph 5.3 also shows the number of projects done in each type from 2008 to 2013. From this graph, it is suggested that from 2011 to 2013, talks has been the most favourable types of project. It is estimated that half of the total projects of each types occurred in 2013. This may prove that the number of human practice project is increasing at an acceleration, also as given from graph 5.1. By observing the correlation between the 3 graphs, the turn events of the number of projects done is in 2011 where it increased by almost twice than in 2010.

Fig 1 . Here is the potato.

Here is the description of the potato: it is a potato!

After reviewing the past human practice projects in a detailed manner, it is safe to say that human practice is becoming a large part of iGEM. Furthermore, the space for improvement and future development was found by looking in to regions and types of projects done.