Sketch in Dishes
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Best Education and Public Engagement:
Best Education! We thoroughly understand that it's vital to spark new scientific curiosity among the youth. Therefore, this human practice is designed to introduce the magical world of life science to kids around 10 years old. With the help of a simple but interesting experiment, kids can know more about microbes and enjoy the fun brought by synthetic biology. Furthermore, we explain the principles behind every step to them when doing experiments together. Another meet-up is held latter to encourage them to bring their friends to come next year, which means our human practice is sustainable. Best Public Engagement! Voices or views outside the lab are important for iGEMers to optimize their projects. The human practice 'Sketch in Dish' could also be regarded as a public dialogue. Not only kids but also undergraduates of other major, parents and other family member of kids, etc. participate in Sketch in Dish. Thus we get an opportunity to explain the science behind synthetic biology to them and talk about the benefits and risks in this emerging field. Some views and conclusions are listed below: 1. "Even if we don't know what synthetic biology exactly is, we still encourage our kid to take part in such activities. Because we want them to know more about science but we lack the ability to explain those things to them." one of the parents said. Many parents are eager to develop their kid's interest in science and would like to take part in any relating activities. 2. People are more willing to learn about brand-new field than we expected before, especially when the development of the field might influence their daily life. Many parents are curious about the use of synthetic biology in medicine and the microbes that may apply in daily life in the future. 3. "Transgenic" was the word they mentioned the most. Parents kept asking us questions about this when we talked about the biobricks inside E. coli. Risks of such transgenic operations have been asked again and again. Therefore, we must pay more attention to explain our work to the public and reconsider the potential risk of our products more carefully.Sketch in Dishes
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Preparation:
- 1. "Colors" : GFP and RFP gene under the control of strong promoter and strong RBS on vector pSB1C3 are transformed into E .coli separately. E .coli expressing GFP and RFP are cultured in Lysogeny-Broth medium.
Fig.1 E. coli expressing GFP and RFP.
- 2. "Drawing Papers" : Disposable dishes were sterilized in an autoclave. Lysogeny-Broth medium (solid) with chloramphenicol was used to culture E .coli after painting.
- 3. "Brushes" : Toothpicks were packed in groups of ten and sterilized in an autoclave.
Fig.2 All tools needed.
- 1. "Colors" : GFP and RFP gene under the control of strong promoter and strong RBS on vector pSB1C3 are transformed into E .coli separately. E .coli expressing GFP and RFP are cultured in Lysogeny-Broth medium.
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Sketch in Dish:
- We tried to attract people hanging out who noticed our posters to come, and also sent invitations to primary schools nearby.
- 2. We taught kids and their parents how to draw a sketch:
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First, draw a sketch on a small piece of paper with pencils and stick it on the back of a dish; (see in Fig.3)
Fig.3
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First, draw a sketch on a small piece of paper with pencils and stick it on the back of a dish; (see in Fig.3)
Sketch in Dishes
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Sketch in Dish:
- 2. We taught kids and their parents how to draw a sketch:
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Second, lit an alcohol burner and clean their hands with 75% alcohol we provided; (see in Fig.4)
Fig.4
- Third, pick out a toothpick near the alcohol burner(see in Fig.5), wet the toothpick with bacterium liquid (see in Fig.6) and carefully copy your sketch to the dish ( patterns could be seen through the transparent dish ); (see in Fig.7)
Fig.5
Fig.6
Fig.7
- Forth, pick out another toothpick, select the other color if you like and repeat the thrid step.
Fig.8 Teaching a primary school child to doodle on the plate and explaining the principles.
Fig.9 Chatting with undergraduates, kids and parents.
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Second, lit an alcohol burner and clean their hands with 75% alcohol we provided; (see in Fig.4)
- 2. We taught kids and their parents how to draw a sketch:
Sketch in Dishes
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Face to Face:
- We talked with them on topics like microorganisms in our daily life and the development of synthetic biology. Moreover, we encouraged them to know more about iGEM through the Internet. All participants were informed to check their email several days later for photos of their sketch. Some participants even paid a visit to have a look at their dishes. In the meantime, some of them were shown how our lab works.
- See in Next Year:
- A lecture about Sketch in Dish was held in the Community Activity Center several days later. At the beginning, we played some video clips to show them the beauty of life. Then, some principles of our experiments and sketch in dish were explained to those kids for a deeper understanding. To estimate how much they learnt, we asked some questions based on the lecture above. Lastly, we warmly welcomed them to participate in our practices next year.
Fig.10 Answering a question raised by a kid.
Fig.11 Our audience from nearby primary schools.
Smile Mates
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Smile Mates_Best Education and Public Engagement:
Best Education! Although dental caries trouble people around the world,especially in China, we haven't pay enough attention to oral caring methods or to our own oral conditions. Thus we organized this human practice to benefit our mates in the campus, arousing individuals' attention to dental caries prevention. Most of our participators were students, but we also met with a 5-year-old little girl and some faculties and dustmen above 40 years old. By giving and explaining a certificated oral condition exam for free, we helped our mates know more about the role of bacteria population in containing our oral homeostasis. Then we offered several advice for each of the participators while explain our new dental caries solution, including some basic transgenic principles. At last we asked them to check their oral condition routinely so our idea could be spread from time to time. Best Public Engagement! As mentioned above, we have a large scale of engagement and triaged a wave of curiosity and care about the oral hygiene throughout our campus. Our mates' attention covered from their own well being, which is our primary aim, to the principle of homeostasis and transgenic, even to the final cure of dental caries. We gave them a little questionnaire during the queuing, chatting with them, from which we not only established dialogue but also found some interesting points of views outside the lab:- 1.Relating to human health care, the public needs more patience and confidence for young scientists while young scientists must try to make the product practicable and easy to reach. Kindness and care outside the pure medical science is what matters most. Since the young dentists and the young scientists are actually college mates here, we received massive trusts and kindness during the whole process. However this also pushing us to try our best in our iGEM project this year.
- 2.The more direct the show is, the larger the impact could be. "You won't worry that much until your college mate check and tell you that you got a bad tooth." one of our mates said. Actually this kind of examination is a relatively new activity in our campus and we successfully caught tons of attention during the process, which means this is a new efficient way to advertising oral caring.
Smile Mates
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In practice, we invited two graduate students in College of Stomatology who have the Practicing Doctors Certificate to do examination of oral cavity of participants in our university.
Fig.1 Certificated oral condition exam.
Fig.2 Students doing the examination.
We have a busy time during the practice.
Firstly, we encouraged everyone who was interested in our practice to fill a form about his or her daily habits such as the time they cost on each teeth brushing, the frequency they brush teeth in one day, and whether they have tried some assistant methods such as mouth wash to keep the oral hygiene.
After finishing the questionnaire they could accept the examination for free, and the dentists would curtly told them their teeth condition and the knowledge about prevention of dental caries. During their waiting time, we also had lots of interactions.
After that, we took photos of their happy faces withfronting their teeth and invited them to do the Lucky Draw, where we prepared lots of prizes relevant to teeth health, from toothbrush to mouthwash, and most people were accompanied with satisfaction, happiness and also the prizes. At the same time, we distributed the leaflets which contain the introduction of the iGEM and our project, also some basic information about dental caries.
Fig.3 All of the organizer and dentists
Fig.1 Certificated oral condition exam.
Fig.2 Students doing the examination.
We have a busy time during the practice.
Firstly, we encouraged everyone who was interested in our practice to fill a form about his or her daily habits such as the time they cost on each teeth brushing, the frequency they brush teeth in one day, and whether they have tried some assistant methods such as mouth wash to keep the oral hygiene.
After finishing the questionnaire they could accept the examination for free, and the dentists would curtly told them their teeth condition and the knowledge about prevention of dental caries. During their waiting time, we also had lots of interactions.
After that, we took photos of their happy faces withfronting their teeth and invited them to do the Lucky Draw, where we prepared lots of prizes relevant to teeth health, from toothbrush to mouthwash, and most people were accompanied with satisfaction, happiness and also the prizes. At the same time, we distributed the leaflets which contain the introduction of the iGEM and our project, also some basic information about dental caries.
Fig.3 All of the organizer and dentists
Smile Mates
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This practice lasted for nearly three hours, about fifty people joined us. And averagely we achieved our goal that raised public consciousness about dental caries prevention in our campus. Through the practice, people began to care about their teeth and may want to see the dentists, do some cure of their dental caries. Also they wish we can finish our experiment, finally find a way to control or even cure the disease.
We not only devote to research the cure of dental caries just in library, during the practice, we got the data about how people are troubled by the teeth disease. We believe the activity do help the participants to prevent dental caries, and individuals who just asked questions to us then took leaflets may also got the basic knowledge about the disease. Considering normal people's attitude about dental health, we will try our best to make our program more meaningful and practicable.
Fig.4 Faces of participants smiling happily.
Fig.4 Faces of participants smiling happily.
Meet Up
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In Wuhan City, three universities, WHU-China, HUST-China and HZAU-China, have registered their iGEM teams. To enhance the communication and cooperation among iGEM teams in Wuhan, Wuhan University hosted the iGEM Exchange Conference. We focused on problems we faced in experiments, human practices, etc. and shared the experience in solving them. Moreover, a blueprint of establishing a league to improve our collaboration has been discussed.
Time: July 29.2015
Location: College of Life Sciences, Wuhan University
Fig.1 Group photo taken in lab.
Schedule:
Fig.1 Group photo taken in lab.
Schedule:
| Time | Items | Remarks |
|---|---|---|
| 09:30-09:40 | Register | |
| 09:40-10:00 | opening ceremony | Introduction & Keynote Speeches |
| 10:00-10:30 | presentation of HUST | 20 min for speech; 10 min for Q&A |
| 10:30-11:00 | presentation of HZAU | 20 min for speech; 10 min for Q&A |
| 11:00-11:30 | presentation of WHU | 20 min for speech; 10 min for Q&A |
| 11:30-12:30 | Lunch | having a break; further discussion and communication |
| 12:30-14:30 | Experience Sharing | discussing about the problems existing during the preparation |
| 14:30 | Lab Visiting as an End | Group photo; Contact information exchange |
Meet Up
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Presentation:
During the presentation, every team briefly introduced principles, methods and goals of their project. Everyone got to know the project of each other. Therefore, the audience could provide suggestions which might help improve the projects when speakers asked for suggestions at the end of the presentation. Some suggestions were further discussed latter and comparison of different idea was made for an optimized solution.
Fig.2 Presentation of WHU-China,HUST-China and HZAU-China.
Experience Sharing:
Every team has its own way to overcome the difficulties throughout the project. Thus inspiration could be gained by listening to the stories and experience of each other. In the experience sharing section, we drew attention to difficulties in lab work, human practice, mathematic modeling and operation of the team. The following parts describe the conclusion we made that day in details:
Fig.3 Discussion during the break.
Fig.2 Presentation of WHU-China,HUST-China and HZAU-China.
Experience Sharing:
Every team has its own way to overcome the difficulties throughout the project. Thus inspiration could be gained by listening to the stories and experience of each other. In the experience sharing section, we drew attention to difficulties in lab work, human practice, mathematic modeling and operation of the team. The following parts describe the conclusion we made that day in details:
Fig.3 Discussion during the break.
1. lab work:
Key Problem: The unexpected failure of some experiments troubles all the teams a lot. On the one hand, even a single operation in the experiment could lead to such failure and thus experienced members are needed to give instructions at the critical time. On the other hand, the inadequacy of control tests makes it ambitious to reason the failure out. Inexperienced members don't know how to set adequate control test during molecular cloning experiments for too many details should be involved. Details include whether the enzymes or antibiotics work, the efficiency of competent cells, the purity of the DNA, etc. But generally speaking, most of team members lack experience because few of the experienced members from the team of last year would remain in the team this year and that's the point of the problem.Meet Up
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Solution:
Seek for help more frequently! More face-to-face talk with professors in College of Life Sciences and senior students in the lab! Though seeking for help online is useful and convenient sometimes, but it's hard to make your problems clear by chatting online. Talking to those experienced lab workers face to face, you can not only convey your problems to them unambiguously and get the solution but also learn how they design their experiments and estimate an experiment.
Fig.4 The audience are listening.
2. Human Practices:
Key Problem: Some of our projects focused on putting forward some brand-new concepts to promote the development of a subject. Because the projects are a bit far away from daily life and cannot be put into use at once, how it would affect our future remains unknown and the importance of it would be hard to convey to the public. Therefore, we must think different when designing meaningful and feasible human practices for such projects. Solutions: Do some research related to your project and prepare for the future use of your project in this way. For example, chatting with scientists who might get interested in that emerging field and get idea about the role your project could play in that field. Cooperate with local science museums. Science museums are places where the public gains knowledge of science. Lectures or other activities held there might impress the public and change their mind about the field that your project is in. Getting familiar with that field, people would be willing to know more about your project. Combine the human practices with other social practices. Every summer, many universities in China require students to do some social practices. When some members of iGEM team do their own social practices, they can bring a piece of questionnaire or two with them and do the human practices of iGEM by the way, suggested by the HUST-China iGEM team.
Fig.4 The audience are listening.
