Team:Peking/iGEMClub

iGEM Club

Peking iGEM Club was established in 2007 right after the birth of Peking iGEM Team. As an academic society, Peking iGEM Club aims on developing academic ability of students, especially undergraduates. Education based on research is the main purpose of Peking iGEM Club, which is being accomplished by a variety of activities including academic lectures, experiments training and journal clubs.

After several years’ development, Peking iGEM Club has been the talent resource of iGEM team. Most team members of Peking iGEM are also members of Peking iGEM Club. After iGEM Jamboree in November, Peking iGEM Club will hold several discussions reviewing this year’s competition, studying those fantastic ideas sparkling from students all over the world. Then, anyone who is interested in Wet Lab could take part in experiments training given by former experienced team members. Through these activities, iGEM team members could transfer their ideas into characteristic plans. To a greater extent, previous academic training can sow the seed of basic rules inside those who have just stepped in to academic world. Many former iGEM Club members now are still in the academia and doing research on advanced topics. iGEM Club is the first step they took in their academic life. Though iGEM Club is just in its infantile time, it gives an applied example transferring common students into professional researchers.

iGEM Club is an academic society welcoming students from all majors. We believe that iGEM is far more than biology, even more than transitionally called sciences. Club members now include undergraduates studying in liberal arts like social science and history.

26th~27th, Sept, 2014, Peking iGEM Club recruited many new members. During this period, team members of Peking iGEM 2014 along with some volunteers were promoting iGEM and synthetic biology to the whole campus. Next Peking iGEM Team will be born from these new members just as those former ones.

Before the recruitment activity, we have done much to popularizing both iGEM Club and synthetic biology. A public page was further constructed(Named Peking University iGEM http://page.renren.com/601444914）in www.renren.com, an SNS with almost 300 million registered users.During the 2-day recruitment, hundreds of undergraduates and graduates came to our booth asking information about iGEM and synthetic biology.(Fig. 2&3)

Some of them showed huge passion about future iGEM Competition and were willing to be a team member of future Peking iGEM team.Some students had heard about iGEM before but didn’t know what it really is. Therefore, we team members introduced what the competition is, what we did in labs everyday, and what we planned to accomplish.

After 2-day recruitment, more than 50 students registered as new members of Peking iGEM Club. Later, series lectures will be held to them to give an overview about synthetic biology.

Society Goal

iGEM Club, fully named System and Synthetic Biology Society, chose "promoting synthetic biology and developing students' academy skills" as its fundamental target.

Synthetic biology is a newborn subject. Many students (even they are majoring in life sciences) don't know it, neither do a large proportion of teachers. However, synthetic biology gives us a new way looking at this world. Via synthetic biology we can design organisms with specific aims rather than screening desired ones from numerous candidates like Mendel (Austrian geneticist, 1822~1884) did with his peas. What's more, synthetic biology provides a platform not only for biology, but also for physics, chemistry, and computer sciences. Synthetic biology is more like a highly merged topic instead of those specific ones, questing for all kinds of skills.

Peking iGEM Club welcomes students from all majors and every undergraduate can find his position here. We have a strong interest in promoting synthetic biology to the campus, even outside campus. We are willing to use ideas from synthetic biology and advanced technologies solving practical problems.

Building the link between labs and society is also an important mission for Peking iGEM Club. Every club member wants his work to be understood by the world outside labs. In which way and to what extent can citizens accept synthetic biology as a tool improving daily life nor a weapon threatening the world is the main problem in front of us. From iGEM competition, hundreds of shining ideas jumped out from undergraduates’ idea, some of them even have been put into application. Sadly, many great ideas are forgotten due to lack of acknowledgements. Peking iGEM has been building the bridge connecting lab and society, encouraging more and more people know that this world could be better with the help of synthetic biology. And we are transmitting the information that under appropriate supervision synthetic biology won’t be a harmful item.

Future iGEMers

Peking iGEM always welcomes the participation of high school students. Every year Peking iGEM gave assistance to high school students who adore synthetic biology, as an avenue promoting synthetic biology to the society. At the same time, working with undergraduates improves academic level of these students. This time, Peking iGEM 2014 provided opportunities to a high school student from Beijing Huiwen Middle School

DU Haoxing participated in Peking iGEM 2014 experiments. She has a strong interesting in synthetic biology and planning to major in life sciences in her college. With passion and keen, she took part in Peking iGEM 2014, working with ZHANG Zijian and MENG Liuyi in Binding group.(Figure 5.6)

DU is willing to organize an iGEM team representing her school to present their idea in next year’s iGEM High School Competition. And she thought that working with undergraduates is a good start.

“Working with DU is with great pleasure,” said ZHANG Zijian, a member of binding group. ZHANG’s partner, MENG Liuyi, also gave high comments on working with her.In fact, it is not hard for a high school student to manage basic molecular cloning. And DU soon got the basic idea of our project. However, modeling group did spend some time explaining how and what they were doing.

After several weeks training, Haoxing was capable to design her own experiments and finished them. Though she is lack of finical support and enough assistance, we have the faith that she could be a good leader of a iGEM High School Team.