Team:Hong Kong-CUHK/Practices
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Policy & Practice
We have planned and carried out many activities related to synthetic biology and our projects throughout this competition. The ultimate goal for our team is to promote synthetic biology as well as this competition, iGEM, to the public.
The power of innovation and advance in technology have become one of the most important indicator of the development of a society. Even though Hong Kong is one of the fastest growing city in the world and very well-known as the “trade centre” of Asia, much of the development of this city relates to aspects of financial industry. In Hong Kong, innovation technology and scientific research attract much less public attention than financial industry and are frequently over-looked. In recent year, there has been much controversy on whether to establish an Innovation and Technology Bureau. Its establishment is believed to be able to facilitate and support the growth of innovation and information technology industry in Hong Kong which includes technologies related to renewable energy, waste management, as well as research and development in Chinese medicine. However, the legislative council have not yet approved the budget to develop this bureau due to many reasons. Therefore, there is still no end as to when science and technology can be better focused and to become more well-known and valued among the general public in Hong Kong.
By conducting several surveys and activities, we hope to have a better understanding of current public opinion and attitude towards life sciences and particularly synthetic biology, and to raise certain awareness of the importance of supporting basic scientific research in local community.
The followings are high-lights of the activities conducted by our team to promote synthetic biology as well as our project.
1. Local questionnaire
In order to have a better understanding of the public opinion, we think the best method to collect data massively is to distribute questionnaire to people from different backgrounds. We examined the respondents’ attitudes toward life science and synthetic biology for two months starting from early June this year. Among total 206 responses were received, most of the respondents expresses that synthetic biology is quite uncommon among the public. Not only does our data reflect this conclusion, but the immediate response we received from the people whom we have approached and invited to complete the questionnaire. Most people refused to participate, some due to not having the time, but many due to the disinterest of the topic. In some cases, we would even receive half-finished forms as some people claimed that they seriously have no interest on synthetic biology, therefore they were reluctant to spare the time to complete the questionnaire. These real life reactions, even though not reflected on the data analysis, but it reflects the indifferences and ignorance toward synthetic biology or even basic sciences in Hong Kong.
As a result, we decided to hold the following activities in order to raise people’s awareness on synthetic biology. We tried to reach as many people in the general public as possible, through the social media, such as YouTube and Facebook. On the other hand, for some of the activities, such as out-reach, we mainly focused on secondary school students and university students because they represent the “new” generation, whose actions can cause a bigger impact to the future of our society. Moreover, their educational background allows them to have a better understanding of the topic, which is much more efficient given limited time and resources we have. Detailed of the workshops can be found later in the report.
The following activities aim to raise people’s awareness on synthetic biology to address the problem of lacking appropriate promotion on synthetic biology.
2. Video clips
We were looking for an effective way to attract the attention of our target audience. And what’s the better way than the use of short video clips to deliver the information which we wanted to promote? With the busy life style which most people now have (especially in Hong Kong), we needed a direct and convenient way. Apart from the easy access to watch video clips online, links of video clips can also be easily shared. Therefore, using videos to promote synthetic biology is a good way to increase people’s knowledge toward synthetic biology. We have made two video clips; the first one is to promote synthetic biology and our project; and the second one to promote the iGEM competition and introducing our team members.
Video on promoting synthetic biology and our project
As we have mentioned above, one of the age group we wanted to focus on is young people with an educational background. Hence, we have put this video on the channels which allow us to communicate with people of our target audience, which are Facebook and Youtube. This video simply consists of pictures full of drawings along with the narration to present synthetic biology and what our project is about to the audience. This is an excellent method to grasp people’s attention in a few minutes and people can gain a brief knowledge on synthetic biology in a relatively short time. Because the colourful drawings are eye-catching and make the message which we want to deliver more comprehensive.
Video on promoting iGEM and introducing our team members
Another video was produced aiming to promote iGEM in a more fun and interesting way. The reason behind this video was that we have realized not only does the general public lack the awareness of the existence of such a competition named iGEM, even our friends and families who have higher education in the field of Science and Engineering. Therefore, we chose the very well-known and popular Disney song among all ages - “Let it Go”, and changed the lyrics producing a parody called “Let it Clone”. The parody of the song “Let it go”, from the Disney movie “Frozen”, helps to highlight the friendly and fun “iGEM attitude”. With such a catchy song it is very easy to get the lyrics with the useful information into people’s heads. In addition, with this entertaining outlook, it would ignite people’s interest and curiosity toward iGEM. The names of all team members, instructors and professors are also shown in the last part of the video. Some members even sang and danced in the video aiming to gain more viewers from the public.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ch8mYyFWF4I 3. Facebook page
We have also created a Facebook page of our team in order to post latest news from our team, like videos, photos, et cetera. This is to attract people to pay more attention on our team and the iGEM competition. Through posting photos and comments, it helps to bring this competition closer to people. Because the more chance they are exposed to it, the less strange they feel towards this technology and it assists on bringing a friendly image of synthetic biology. The eye-catching icon on our Facebook page was designed by one of our team members, which integrates our project with the iGEM 2015.
4. Workshop
As our target group is the younger generation, we have invited secondary school students to attend a one-day workshop held by our iGEM team on the 4th of July. This workshop was called “A day as a scientist in CUHK”, targeting students of F.4-F.6 from various Hong Kong secondary schools. This workshop aims to benefit high school students by providing a platform for learning synthetic biology and a chance to work in a lab at university. Firstly, introduction and ice-breaking session were held in the morning. Secondly, the first lab session was provided for the students to experience the lab work like pipetting, making agarose gel, dye loading as well as performing gel electrophoresis.
5. Talk
Aside from holding workshops, we have also provided a more formal talk targeting the secondary school students to provide basic knowledge over the background and advantages of synthetic biology. The talk did more than just inspired interest in synthetic biology, but it also encouraged students to think more about the impacts of synthetic biology. We hope the talk could help them to think and understand the change synthetic biology can make in environment preservation, novel energy sources, medicine, and as a whole, improving the quality of life. Most importantly, we also encourage students to consider the ethical aspects of synthetic biology, which is a controversial issue and probably the major reason people hold a skeptical view toward synthetic biology. Meanwhile, with the raise of interests on synthetic biology, it even paved the way for them to join iGEM in the future when they become university students. We have also introduced our project to them in which they found meaningful, and we were delighted to found many of them asking thoughtful questions regarding our project enthusiastically.
6. Promotion to freshmen
On our university’s - CUHK registration day on the 9th of August, which is when freshmen registered for orientation camps and attend to information talks. Our team members grasped the chance to introduce synthetic biology and our project to them and many other senior students. We were glad to have passed our enthusiasm towards iGEM to them, as many of the students we’ve reached showed much passion towards joining the team next year. As most of whom have only heard of synthetic biology for the first time, they were eager to find out more and excited about this competition. During the process, we have received many surprised comments, as most people felt so amazed that they could also have the chance to participate in such a competition and contribute to the development of synthetic biology.
7. Asia conference at Taiwan
National Chiao Tung University had held an Asia conference at Taiwan during 19-22, July, in which they have invited all the iGEM teams in Asia. Our team was honored to participate in this conference. We had a poster session to introduce the details of our project to other teams. Meanwhile, we also got this chance to listen to the presentation from the other teams and gained many great ideas from them.
8. Exchange of ideas with other Asian team leaders
Our team leader also got a great chance to interact and exchange ideas with other teams on the lab method and the promotion of synthetic biology. This was a precious opportunity which we can know the progress of other teams and their methods in doing lab. We also received some great suggestion which we consider seriously in order to improve our project. Through these interactive sessions, friendships were developed among us, and one of the other team's team leader even travelled all the way to Hong Kong to visit our lab.
9. International questionnaire
CUHK was honoured to be in cooperation with 10 various different universities to conduct an international questionnaire on synthetic biology and on our respective projects. The universities which participated were Technische Universität Berlin, Beijing Institute of Technology, Universidade de São Paulo, Chang Gung University, University of Leicester, Université de Toulouse, Tianjin University, Kungliga Tekniska högskolan, Karolinska Institutet and University College London. Responses were collected from the location where the universities are located. This helped to collect opinions from around the world, not only confined to Hong Kong. We can distinguish the importance and acceptance of our project in a much larger scale of different places worldwide.
10. City University presentation and exchange of ideas with their team members and professors
We have also had a chance to visit the City University of Hong Kong and communicated with their team members and professors. During the visit, we have reached an agreement on collaboration of which we would help them to do characterization on the expression of the lacY gene. And they offered to help us with part of the modeling of our project.
We have gained informative and constructive advice from this visit.
11. UCSF iGEM Team wikiflicks
To enable people worldwide to further understand synthetic biology and our project, we also collaborated with the UCSF iGEM Team, which composed of students from UC Berkeley, San Francisco State University, and recent graduates from Lincoln High School in San Francisco. Through this collaboration, we were able to present our videos on the UCSF iGEM Team’s wikiflicks. This enables us to spread the message to a much greater number of audiences.
12. Interview with Professor Douglas Yung
To better understand microbial fuel cells, which is one of the applications of our project. We had an interview with Prof. Douglas Yung. He is an assistant professor of the department of electronic engineering, CUHK. Prof. Yung acquired his Ph.D. in Bioengineering from Caltech in 2008 and worked in the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California as a NASA Postdoctoral Fellow focused on the sensor development microfluidics as well as bacterial spore viability. One of his current research interests is microbial fuel cell. Prof. Yung has provided us many valuable insights of microbial fuel cell and how to adapt this concept to real-life application. Microbial fuel cell is closely related to our project, it is one of the three applications of our project. We gained lots of knowledge from Prof. Yung on microbial fuel cell and asked for his advice on our project in which we regarded this as a valuable chance to review our project.
