Human Practice

Survey

We took questionnaires from 100 people at our exhibit of school festival.

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The respondents were mainly students and parents of participants in our experience.

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Most of citizens in Hokkaido didn’t know about iGEM.

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More than half of respondents have negative views of gene recombination.

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Our presentation changed the view of participants on gene recombination to positive.

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Almost half of respondents didn’t have correct knowledge on DNA.

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With help of our presentation, most of respondents could understand what DNA is.

iGEM is little known by citizens.
Next year, iGEM will be 10 years old. By making use of this good opportunity, we want to make iGEM better known. We want people to know what iGEM is. In order to this, it needs to appeal to the mass media.
A lot of people have prejudice for gene recombination. However, the technology of gene recombination itself is not wrong. In common with other technologies, it’s the matter how to use it. After educating the people, we should discuss how to use it.
By human practice we changed people opinions. We didn’t know whether we can change their minds, nevertheless we found gradual information transmission important.

High school students no more knew about iGEM than citizens. We should act to make iGEM famous.

All students were interested in iGEM and synthetic biology. There may be students who were attracted to research activities

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More than half students have positive view on gene recombination, but one third of students view it negatively. We should improve this view.

We could change their mind because we explained how we take care of safety, and diverse applications of gene recombination.

By our lecture, they understood “what gene recombination is."

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More than half students wanted to participate in iGEM. We hope they join us in the future.

Image of gene recombination.

Gene recombination is used for plant breeding.
Released recombinant species could negatively affect the environment.
It is useful for our livelihood.
Genetically modified food can harm our health.
This technology might have both merit and demerit.
Using this technology, we can gain strong plants. However, its safety may not be enough.
Snack food packages often say “Non gene modified.” Because of that, I thought gene recombined foods damage our health.
Gene recombination is more useful than selective breeding, because we can gain improved phenotype immediately when we use the technology.