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The Questionnaire about acknowledgment of Tuberculosis and Synthetic Biology.

Investigation Report on the Cognition of Tuberculosis and Synthetic Biology

Abstract

Objective
To investigate the current awareness rate of tuberculosis and synthetic biology knowledge among Chinese people so as to provide the evidence of tuberculosis health education and synthetic biology education in Chinese people.

Methods
194 tourists around the Weiming Lake of Peking University from August 16th to August 18^th were selected by random sampling. The anonymous questionnaire was of our own design.

Results
The awareness rates of the sources, routes of transmission, clinical symptoms, severity and treatment effect of tuberculosis are high, which accounted for 70%-90% among 194 tourists. However, the awareness rates of the diagnosis methods, the specific treatment methods and the national prevention and control policy of tuberculosis are less than 40%. As for the part of cognitive attitude of synthetic biology, only 6.2% of the tourists have a deeper understanding of synthetic biology, while 33.3% of the respondents have never heard of synthetic biology. The awareness rates of the selected terms about the field of synthetic biology are generally lower than 35%, of which 58.1% and 52.8% of the tourists have access to relevant knowledge through the Internet and television, respectively. 76% of the tourists agree that applying synthetic biology methods to clinical diagnosis is feasible, and 86% of the visitors are willing to use the relevant technology products if possible, the main reasons of which are rapidness, individuation and the reliable results of the new detection technology. To the contrary, the tourists who are not willing to use that detection technology mainly worry about the potential side effects, and they believe that traditional detection methods are mature enough.

Conclusion
Chinese people have certain knowledge of tuberculosis, but not systematic or comprehensive; they have a low awareness rate of synthetic biology, which means its popularization needs to be strengthened.

Keywords  Tuberculosis; Synthetic Biology; Cognition

Objects and Methods

Objects
194 tourists around the Weiming Lake of Peking University from August 16th to August 18^th

Methods
Respondents were selected by random sampling in our investigation. The anonymous questionnaire was of our own design. A total of 200 questionnaires were distributed, and 194 questionnaires were collected, the effective recovery rate was 97% (Table 1).

Statistical analysis:
Using EpiData3.1 to import the questionnaire data based on the methods of data entry, thus to establish a database; then SPSS20.0 was used to statistical analysis.

Results

General demographic situation

Gender and age structure

A total of 194 questionnaires were collected in this investigation, of which the proportion of men was 48.7%; for female, it was 50.8%. Most of the population was among the 15-50 years old age group, accounting for 82.3%. Therefore, the composition of gender and age of the population in the survey was different from the national population in some extent (Table 1).

Region

Among the 194 respondents, 139 were from urban, accounting for 72.4%, and 53 were from rural, accounting for 27.6%.

Education level and economic level.

In the survey population, the educational background of the majority was undergraduate degree or above, accounting for 61.5%. The economic levels of most respondents are not bad because 71.4% of whose family income were more than 2000 yuan.

Table.1 The General Demographic Situation

Aspects	Options	Percentage	Ratio
1.Age	Below 15	13.5	26/192
	15-30	35.9	69/192
	30-50	46.4	89/192
	50-70	4.2	8/192
	Above 70	0.0	0/192
2.Gender	Male	50.8	98/193
	Female	48.7	94/193
3.Census register	Rural	27.6	53/192
	Urban	72.4	139/192
4.Degree of education	Untutored	0.5	1/192
	Grade school	6.3	12/192
	Junior high school	13.0	25/192
	High school	18.8	36/192
	Undergraduate or graduate	61.5	18/192
5. Month-earning of the family	Below 500 RMB	1.0	2/192
	500-1999 RMB	10.4	20/192
	2000-4999 RMB	40.1	77/192
	Above 5000 RMB	31.3	60/192
	Unknown	17.2	33/192

Awareness of tuberculosis

Most of the 194 tourists were well aware of the core issues of tuberculosis. In detail, the awareness rate of severity, the infection sources and the transmission routes of tuberculosis were 77.8%, 71.1% and 70.1%, respectively. And the awareness rate of the clinical symptoms of tuberculosis was as high as 88.7%. However, the national tuberculosis control policy awareness is much worse, only 40 people answer the related question correctly, accounting for 20.6% of the survey population. And the respondents who can answer all of the six core questions accounted for only 6.9%. As for the knowledge about specific diagnostic methods, treatment methods of the tuberculosis, the results were barely satisfactory, the awareness rate of which were just 34.5% and 7.2%, respectively.

Table.2 The Acknowledgment of Tuberculosis

Crucial questions	The percentage of correctly answered（%）	Ratio
1. Do you think the Tuberculosis is a disease greatly threatened human health?	77.8	151/194
2. Which is main source of infection?	71.1	138/192
3. Which is main transmission route of TB?	70.1	136/194
4. If someone get cough and expectoration more than two weeks with Hemoptysis and blood sputum. What should he or she do?	88.7	172/194
5. Whether the tuberculosis can be cured?	90.7	176/194
6. Are the drugs and treatment services for the infectious tuberculosis patients free?	Male	20.6	40/194
The other question	The percentage of correctly answered（%）	Ratio
7. TB can be confirmed by which of the following symptom?	34.5	67/194
8. Which drugs are for the tuberculosis treatment?	7.2	14/194
9. What’s your idea about the positive result of PPD test?	36.1	70/194

Awareness of synthetic biology

Among the 194 tourists, only 12 of them has a deep understanding about synthetic biology, while 33.3% of visitors have never heard of synthetic biology. Among the people who had heard of synthetic biology, most of them had not heard of the specific professional terms in the field of synthetic biology, such as "bio-element", "molecular machine", "bio-plastics". The awareness rates of these terms were 26.4%, 21.2%, 31.1%, respectively. It deserves to be mentioned that, 68.4% of the respondents said that they had heard the term "genome", but unfortunately, only 3.6% of people had heard of iGEM. And the main ways the respondents use to access to the knowledge of synthetic biology was through the network (58.1%), the television (52.8%) and classroom lectures (30.4%).

Table.3 The Acknowledgment of Synthetic Biology

Questions	Options	Percentage	Ratio
1. Have you ever heard of Synthetic Biology?	Yes. And have some knowledge of it	6.2	12/192
	Yes. But have no idea about it	59.4	114/192
	No	33.3	64/192
2. Which of the following nouns you have heard before?	Bio-element	26.4	51/193
	Molecule machine	21.2	41/193
	Gene Sequence	68.4	132/193
	iGEM	3.6	7/193
	Bioplastics	31.1	133/193
	None of them	21.2	41/193
3. Where you heard the above nouns?	Network	58.1	93/160
	TV and radio	52.8	85/161
	Newspapers	19.3	31/161
	Neighbors	3.1	5/161
	Classes and lectures	30.4	49/161
	The others	10.5	17/162

Attitudes toward synthetic biology

Among the tourists who had heard of synthetic biology, the attitudes toward synthetic biology of the majority were neutral. To be specific, 70.5% of the population held the idea that synthetic biology had both advantages and disadvantages. About 76% of the population were optimistic about the development of the diagnostic methods combining the methods in synthetic biology. And 86% of the investigated people were willing to use the synthetic biology methods if possible, the main reasons were rapidness (46.4% of population choose the answer) and the individuation (51.8% of population believe this point) of the new detection technology, in addition, 37.5% of the population believes that the method is more reliable. To the contrary, the tourists who were not willing to use that detection technology mainly worry about the potential side effects (39.3% of population believe this point), and 40.7% of the population believe that traditional detection methods haven’t been well developed. (Table four)

Table.4 The Atittude Towards Synthetic Biology

Questions	Options	Percentage	Ratio
1. What’s your attitude to the Synthetic Biology?	Have no advantages	0.8	1/129
	Have no disadvantages	3.9	5/129
	Have both advantages and disadvantages	70.5	91/129
	Have no idea	24.0	31/129
2. Do you think it possible to invent a new method of TB diagnosis make use of the knowledge of Synthetic Biology?	Sure	76.0	98/129
	No way	0.8	1/129
	Have no idea	20.9	27/129
3. If such a method has been invented, would you like to try it?	Yes	86.0	111/129
	No	13.2	17/129
4. Why you would like to have a try?	Cheap	8.0	9/129
	Fast and convenient	46.4	52/112
	Personalized medicine service	51.8	58/112
	Efficacy is better	37.5	42/112
	Other reason	0.0	0/112
5.Why you don’t do that?	The potential side effect	39.3	12/28
	It will pollute the environment	7.4	2/27
	It will be expensive	18.5	5/27
	The technique is not well developed	40.7	11/27
6. How much would you like to spend on such a method for your health?	Less than 10 yuan	1.6	2/123
	10 yuan-100 yuan	6.5	8/123
	100 yuan-500 yuan	22.8	28/123
	500 yuan-1000 yuan	25.2	31/123
	1000 yuan-5000 yuan	36.6	45/123
More than 5000 yuan	6.5	8/123

Conclusions

Through this investigation, we recognize that Chinese people have a certain understanding of the basic knowledge of tuberculosis, but it is not comprehensive and systematic, especially details about the disease. The majority of the population of the survey has a neutral attitude towards synthetic biology, and most of them are optimistic about the applications and progress of synthetic biology, though only a small portion of people knows this field very well.
Therefore, on the one hand, it is necessary to strengthen the popularization of the knowledge of tuberculosis in public. The process of propaganda to the national for health education of tuberculosis should not be a slogan, and it should be in-depth and systematic. On the other hand, researchers in the field of synthetic biology should actively work for the science popularization of synthetic biology at the same time they are working for the scientific research. They are responsible for improving the people’s understanding of the synthetic biology, and attracting more people to join the development trend of synthetic biology.

To attract children’s more attention toward synthetic biology and to popularize some basic biological concepts among them, we invited near 20 pupils to visit our laboratory. In the morning of August 17th, these children and some of their parents came to Peking University and attended a lecture given by ZHANG Yihao, the team leader.

By plain words, he made it easy for these children to understand the basic concepts of biological field and the core ideas of synthetic biology. What is the basic substance of life? What caused creatures on the earth so diversified and fascinating? Moreover, can scientists build life with fancy functions? They got the answers to all these questions above.

In the afternoon, they visited the lab of Peking iGEM. Having known how the biological researchers work in the labs, they all indicated that they hope to learn more about synthetic biology.

On August 23th, our team member YE Yixuan went to Zhenghe No.1 Middle School of Fujian Province, giving a lecture to the high school students. She mainly introduced the overview of synthetic biology and the project of Peking this year.

More than 60 students who were interested in science have attended the lecture. They were confronted with the choice of their major fields in the university, so the lecture really helped them. Ye combined the basic concepts of synthetic biology with what they had learned in school. After the lecture, a heated discussion about biology and future life began. What’s more, the project of Peking iGEM team this year was presented, for the purpose of arousing their interest in this field.

Handing out propagandistic handbooks is another approach of scientific education for public. In this summer, we have wrote a comprehensive literature review about tuberculosis and synthetic biology and made a propagandist handbook easy for learning.

Every time when we finished our questionnaire surveys, we gave our informants handbooks to spread the knowledge of TB control and synthetic biology.

In the handbook, we introduce the basic information of tuberculothesis, such as route of transmission, diagnosis methods and its treatment, along with the national policies of free diagnosis and treatment on tuberculosis. After that, we give a brief description of the history of synthetic biology, combined with its application. In such a small handbook, many vivid but scientific pictures are shown. We did our best to make the words easy to be understood but rigorous.