Team:Hong Kong-CUHK/Practices

Policy & Practice

We have planned and carried out many activities related to our projects and synthetic biology throughout this competition. The ultimate goal for our team of carrying out all these out-reach and other activities is to promote synthetic biology as well as this competition, iGEM, to the public. Even though Hong Kong is one of the fastest growing city in the world. Also very well-known for being the “trade centre” for Asia. However, much of the development of this city only relates to aspects of economics. Unlike the United States, where there’s a fast growing economy as well as technology companies being well-developed. And their government is also aware of the importance of the development of technology. In Hong Kong, there has been much controversy on whether to establishing an Innovation and Technology Bureau. The chief executive of the Hong Kong government wished to establish this bureau to focus on the development of innovation and information technology. By that it includes technologies regarding 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. Therefore, there is still no end as to when science and technology can be better focused and to become more common among the general public in Hong Kong. The activities our team has held to promote our project and synthetic biology are as follows. 1. Local questionnaire In order to collect opinions from the public, we determined the best method to collect data massively is to distribute questionnaire to people with different backgrounds. We examined the respondents’ attitudes toward life science and synthetic biology for two months starting from early June this year. 206 responses were received. One discovery was that most of the respondents thought 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 not willing to spare the time to complete the questionnaire. These real life reactions, even though not shown on the data analysis for our questionnaire, but it reflects the uncommoness and indifferent of 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; Facebook et cetera. However, for some of the activities, such as out-reach, we mainly focused on secondary school students and university students because they are the “new” generation, their actions can change the future of our society. Hence, enlightening them about synthetic biology could bring a bigger impact. Moreover, their educational background would also allow them to understand this topic more easily, therefore this would be more time efficient. Given that we only have limted time and resources. The following activites 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 reach the attention of our target audience. And what 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, we needed a direct and convenient way. Apart from the easy access to watch video clips online, but 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 realised not only does the general public lack the awareness of the existence of such a competition named iGEM. But 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 let them want to find out more. The team members’ names as well as the names of 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. 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 agrose 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. Helped them to understand the change synthetic biology can bring in fields such as environmental; energy; medical and to improve the quality of life. Most importantly, we also aid the students to consider the enthical aspects of sythetic biology, which is a controversal topic. 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 many questions regarding our project enthusiastically. 6. Promotion to freshman On our university’s - CUHK registration day on the 9th of August which is for freshmen to register for orientation camp and attend to information talks. Our team members grasped the chance to introduce iGEM and our project to the freshmen and many 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 from the19th of July to the 22th of July, in which they have invited all the iGEM teams in Asia. Our team was honoured to have participated 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 et cetera. This was a precious opportunity to communicate with other Asian team leaders in which we can know the progress of other teams and their methods in doing lab. We also received some great criticisms 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. Collaboration : iQuestionnaire; City University; UCSF iGEM team 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, TianjinUniversity, 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. During the visit, we have reached an agreement on collaboration of which we would help them to do characterisation on the expression of the lacY gene. And they helped us to do a part of the modelling for the application part of our project. Furthermore, ideas were exchanged during further visits and lunch sessions and we gained precious opinions from them as well. 11. UCSF iGEM Team wikiflicks For collaboration and to enable people worldwide to further understand synthetic biology and our project, we also worked with the UCSF iGEM Team. Which is a team that includes 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 enable us to spread the message to a much greater number of audience. 12. Interview with Professor Douglas Yung To gain a better understanding on microbial fuel cells, which is one of the applications of our project. We had an interview with Prof. Douglas Yung. He is a CUHK assistant professor under the department of electronic engineering. Prof. Yung has achieved a 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. 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. Linkage with our Project: The three main applications of our magnetosome project which we focused on are: protein extraction; water treatment; and microbial fuel cell. Protein extraction may be tended to be tilted to research instead of application, however, we believe that this kind of research should promote more to the public enabling people’s interest on doing further research rather than just an application. As we have said before, Hong Kong is a place without much attention on supporting research of the development of science and technology. Protein extraction can be one of the research areas in which the government can give support because it is beneficial to the society. As the prevalence of synthetic biology is low in Hong Kong so we hope the above mentioned practices can raise the awareness of the society on synthetic biology.