Outreach

1 . Questionare

Synthetic biology is the design and construction of biological devices and systems. Synthetic biologists approach the creation of new biological systems from different perspectives, focusing on finding how life works or how to use it to benefit society. However, biosafety and biosecurity concerns are the understandable response to this new science and technology. Then we wanted to know the general public opinions on synthetic biology. Thus we did a survey among people aged 15 to 30 who will be the masters of the near future. We distributed 2,000 copies of the questionnaire through network , covering 19 provinces in China.

Our greatest concern was that whether the public is willing to improve our daily life through synthetic biology approaches.Here we got the following data:

More than half of them were in favor, but not quite sure whether synthetic biology can be beneficial. Next, we asked a question for further development, trying to find out public’s attitude when there is a product of synthetic biology in the market. It turned out that more people were on the sideline.

In order to find out people's concern for synthetic biology, we asked further questions in our survey.The data showed that people are worried about many aspects, focused on ethics, pollution of emissions to the environment and misuse of biological weapons. As for challenges, people pay much attention to two parts.One is the unknown function of many biological components and the other one is the stability of biological systems.

Since people have doubts, we want to find out which areas are more acceptable if synthetic biology is used to solve current problems.The answer turned out to be environmental management and treatment of disease.

For the limited sample size of our survey, the conclusion can not be so valid.So we will continue to collect data and refine our investigation. We hope to provide some inspiration of the development of synthetic biology and some clues for the choice of the public when synthetic biology is in the stage of application.

2 . Publication awareness

This May,we volunteered to a local high school to introduce the advancement of synthetic biology. We told them about the iGEM jamborees and famous teams in the world. We were happy to see more and more students getting curious and excited about the missions of iGEM Foundations and the idea to combine cells with engineering and encoding.
Last November, after we had returned from Hongkong, we made a public speech in our school to report what we achieved, to share the feelings in the iGEM competition. After that, many students want to join us and make a contribution in the 2013-iGEM. We hope that our team will be inherited and become more and more influential.

3 . Corporation and share(with WHU&HZAU)

There are three teams in Huazhong district this year：HUST,WHU， HZAU. We have been keeping in contact ever since this April. There will be a comprehensive presentation in the mid of September, as what we are going to do in Hongkong.
We have a meeting with HZAU iGEM team on May 7, 2013. We shared our idea and help them to characterize their part BBa_K1228008 . They help us characterize our part BBa_ K1037000. We have a very happy cooperation.

4 . Crossword

We designed a crossword puzzle with knowledge about iGEM for the fun of all iGEMers,and to popularize these iGEM common knowledge.

Horizon

1. This is one of the strongest team in Europe who won Grand Prize in the year of 2006,2008,2010 and 2012.
2. This word can describe a common material in film electrophoresis. It can also describe a small space in a car or other transportation tools.
3. iGEM began in January of 2003 with a month-long course at MIT during their Independent Activities Period (IAP). The students designed biological systems to make cells _____.
4. iGEM spun out of MIT and has become an independent _________ organization since 2012.
5. It is an international jamboree derived from a summer competition with 5 teams in 2004, 13 teams in 2005 - the first year that the competition grew internationally - 32 teams in 2006, 54 teams in 2007, 84 teams in 2008, 112 teams in 2009, 130 teams in 2010, and 165 teams in 2011.
6. ____ is the first year that the team numbers exceed 200.
7. All the teams joining in the competition come here to find an ______ for their talents and interests.
8. ________ is the primary functional component in synthetic biology, all the teams deserving a medal in iGEM competition have made a contribution to their category.
9. This is one of the strongest team in Europe who won Grand Prize in the year of 2006,2008,2010 and 2012.
Vertical

10. The first research to create a bacterial cell successfully with biochemical methods was published in _______, 20th May 2010.
11. The iGEM Foundation fosters scientific ________ and education.
12. The headquarters of iGEM office locates in _________, Massachusetts, USA.
13. Projects range from a _______ of pigmented bacteria, to banana and wintergreen smelling bacteria, an arsenic biosensor, Bactoblood, and buoyant bacteria.
14. This company has been one of the sponsors for seven years since 2007. The other sponsors are known as The Mathworks, The National Science Foundation and SynBERC.
15. You can never get your research on business and be productive without speeding most of your time in ___.
16. China joined in the iGEM in the year of ____.

Answer

Horizon：
1.SLOVENIA
2. CAB
3.BLINK
4.NONPROFIT
5.iGEM
6.2013
7.OUTLET
8.BIOBRICK

Vertical：
9.SCIENCE
10.RESEARCH
11.CAMBRIDGE
12.RAINBOW
13.GENEART
14.LAB
15.2007

Safty Form

No,The biological material used in our project are E.coli K12 and B strain, which rank group 1 in safety risk according to the ABSA. The main idea of our project is to regulate the expression of enzymes in the pathway of propionate synthesis by gene clone. Maybe it will burden E.coli thallus itself, but less threaten to researchers, the public or the environment.
As we want to make the microbe in human’s intestine function the same way as E.coli do outside the body in the future work, a lot of condition difference need to be considered. Firstly, we should make sure that E.coli K12 will not cause any pathema when they work in the guts. Otherwise, we will transform the genes to another microbe that belongs to intestinal probiotics.
We have also thought about the crowd psychology about the medicine with live microbe. After a small surgery on the campus internet, we found that most of them were reluctant to use microbe as medicine. But if we give them the example of yoghourt, vinger and distiller's grains (a kind of chinese sweet food, like congee,by glutinous rice fermentation).

No, we do not believe that the BioBrick parts made this year raise any safety issues. Our biobrick parts consist of an operon encoding four enzymes in propionic acid synthesis pathways and synthetic gene oscillator. The four genes are all endogenous in the E.coli K12 and the function of biological oscillator has been demonstrated in the reference paper.

Yes, there is a non-official group constituted by safety officer in every laboratory. They supervise everything related to safety like sanitation, reagent consumption, instrument application and even personal dressing.They will record the improper behavior and point out to warn the staffs in the regular meeting every week.

Better documentation and standardization of parts is required. And some safety analysis tools should be extensively incorporated into synthetic biology models. Through human practices project, exploring different perspectives of synthetic biology by asking members of the public, as well as iGEM participants.