Community Lab
In order to spread the idea of “synthetic biology” to public, we did a lot of brainstorms and came up with plenty of ideas, one of which was to cooperate with Zhejiang Science and Technology Museum (ZJSTM) and exhibit a series of activities to a wide range of people.
After a long and profound discussion with the principal of the museum, we noticed that building up a community lab should be an excellent way to introduce “synthetic biology” to public and ZJSTM would provide us with a certain place for this lab.
Months later, the building of a small lab especially for presentation of life science as well as a stage was completed. The walls of the community lab were especially designed to be made by glass. They are transparent so all visitors of the museum, even children at low age, can watch the whole procedure of some biology experiments with out any risk.
To make full use of the lab and other resources provided by ZJSTM, lots of thoughts were put on how to make the activities presented entertaining while educational.
Children were doing experiments in our lab.
Children were doing experiments in our lab.
Our lab in March.
During March, we displayed the experiment of fruit DNA extraction to some young children and instructed them to do the experiment by their own. A seminar with some high school teachers and students was held in the museum and a discussion about how to start and get involved into IGEM took place, which partly contributed to the foundation of Hangzhou No.4 High School and Hangzhou No.14 High School iGEM team.
Later in June, we presented an activity especially for high school IGEMers and other students interested in synthetic biology. Dr.Zhang Haoqian, who was the team leader of Peking IGEM and now a doctor doing research about synthetic biology, was invited to give a speech. The high school IGEMers then got the chance to try an experiment called Rainbow Kit, which is one of the achievements of the University of Alberta iGEM 2009. All students participating in the activity learnt a lot while having great fun.
In August, a carnival of synthetic biology was held in STM with our unique “Poly Cards” game, which taught citizens to know more about synthetic biology and our project.
