Introduction

We, NCTU Formosa team did a lot of works on Human Practice, endeavoring to get people in other areas to know the great power of Synthetic Biology. We held a Bio-camp for high school students and did iGEM Cooperation throughout the country. We even tried to do Surveys from high school students, netizens around the world and professors from National Chiao Tung University and made L-shaped folders to preach our word to the world. By the way, we've created a Facebook Page for those interested in Synthetic Biology. Feel free to click in and stay tune to our works.

　Details

　Bio-camp

　Schedule for our Bio-camp

　Day 2

At the second day of the camp, we prepared a lecture for introducing the future development of synthetic biology; at this day we aimed to let the students know some basic knowledge as well as the competition methods of iGEM and how we did the experiments.

We did our best to introduce many contents in easy way. However, Mr. Tsai captured the students’ attention by his humorous speech, so that he turned the abstract and hard molecular biology concept in an easy way. Moreover, students also took their notes hard. At the end, they could totally get into the profound of the synthetic biology. Pearl introduced many interesting applications of synthetic biology and amazed the students. They also contributed some interesting ideas during the Q&A time.

We answered students’ questions anytime anywhere and helped them catch the main concepts of the synthetic biology.Overall, we first introduced the development of the synthetic biology,then the origin, the competition and where the iGEM competition is held.

Then, we talked about some basic biobricks to yield our target proteins, and introduced the functions and properties of the enzymes that were usually used.

In order to let students have more complete experimental structure, we designed a cyclic illustration to represent the relations of each step, and introduced each experiments contents and necessities by simple words. In order to allow students clearly understand the concepts and methods of the synthetic biology, we edited some basic introduction and easy examples into the handouts. So they could understand the course easily as well as do exercises right away to test them whether they really understood what we had taught in the class. Because most of them were year 2 Senior high students and part of them were year 3 Senior high students, their background knowledge were different. As a result, we needed to make year 2 Senior high students understand but would not be too easy for year 3 Senior high students. And it was also a challenge for us to edit the handouts. Finally, we chose some examples like the regulator mechanism of the lactose, the fluorescence mark of the protein, etc. These were all questions we wanted to test them, and we hoped that they could learn a lot from the courses.

　Day 4

On the fourth day of biotech-camp, we prepared special half-day experimental course for students experience to the experimental techniques which our team used frequently: bacteria culture, plasmid extraction, electrophoresis, etc.

Then we explained the steps and principle of experiment by PowerPoint clearly to increase the familiarity of experimental operation, and prevent any accidents from happening. After the experiment began, we put our iGEM team members into each group so that they can avoid making mistakes during the experiment and help the students in understanding the experimental technique.

The E.coli we prepared for them had been transplanted red fluorescent protein gene, and it is in beautiful red color at the beginning. But when we added the solution II which needed for taking the plasmid out of the bacteria, then the color changed suddenly into bright yellow. What’s more, when we added the solution III, it changed form yellow into colorless. This significant color change phenomenon made the student surprise and gave rise to their curiosity on iGEM, finally, aroused their passion on the experiment.

　Day 5

Today we had a trip to visit the supreme academic organization in Taiwan. It is the Genomics Research Center, Academia Sinica. We invited two professors to join us, and hoping that they could answer the questions pointed out by students. Genomics Research Center also generously provided us the opportunity to visit their lab and they explained how the equipment works in detail. And we also explored the cutting-edge technologies of genomics by their lecturer’s speech.

　Day 6

In the last day of the camp, we held a competition to test the learning achievement and knowledge that each group member learned in previous days. Therefore, we designed some questions on genetic engineering to make them think. And then we invited Mr. Tsai who is very energetic and humorous to host the competition. First, they should listen to the question and write the answer onto the whiteboard we had provided for each group. Second, they should show the answer to everyone. Finally, we gave scores according to their creativity and feasibility of their answer, just like a real iGEM competition, so that the students could personally experience the presence of competition. Due to the special charm of the host, the atmosphere was extremely tense and exciting. It is very difficult for us to decide who will win the competition. The points between each team were very close, so every students tried hard to recall the lessons they learned, hoping to win for the team. I believe the knowledge and experience they have learned in this six-day camp was precious. And they’ld never forget this memorable trip.

　iGEM Cooperation

Hoping to be able to com NCTU_Formosa, NYMU-Taipei and NTU-Taida, was built. We discussed the popularization and application of the synthetic biology in this platform.

On the experimental aspect, just like a real and formal iGEM competition, each group presented their own topic in an extremely formal and extraordinary style, hoping that more information could be given to the audience in limited time; after each group finished their presentation, there would be a time for Q & A in which everyone could ask questions, in case they didn’t understand. They might solve their experimental problem for the other team either by excluding or find better experimental methods. On human practice aspect, on one hand, in order to promote the synthetic biology efficiently, the three teams think of ideas and shared the creative and effective ideas together hoping that we could broaden the scope of the human practice to make more people know synthetic biology as well as increase the visibility of iGEM; on the other hand, we could share things each team have been done to understand each other.

　iGEM Chinese Guiding Book

The most important thing we have done on promoting synthetic biology is that we have made a synthetic biology guiding book featuring many experimental protocols and well-illustrated graphics which could help people know the purpose of experiment much easily. The guiding book has been uploaded . Feel free to Download Our Guiding Book (PDF). NTU-Taida and NYMU-Taipei have already own our guiding books. All those who want to take a look at our guiding book are also welcomed to download. We have strong confidence that people will get interested in molecular experiment more after reading our guiding book.

　Popularization on Campus

We made a short video introducing iGEM , hoping that we can promote this interesting, brain-storming competition to everybody. We described iGEM as an once-in-a-lifetime experience, that anybody with a big heart & strong mind can participate in it. We played this video in the student diner at lunch time, so people can relax and see this vedio like they’re watching a movie.

After watching the short video above, some students told us that they want to know more about iGEM. So we made another video, sharing our experience on our experiments, trial-and-error learning, joining the iGEM final competition in MIT, and other feelings that can't be express by words. We’re glad that many students from different field of studies told us that they’re willing to join iGEM 2013. We believe that they can surely contribute great and brilliant ideas to iGEM!

　Popular Science Creation

Department of Biological Science and Technology and Department of Communication and Technology cooperated to make a Brief introduction to synthetic biology.With the skill of CT and knowledge of DBT, we make a video with four simple Q&As.

We hope this short interview can help the public understand the applications and techniques, as well as the influence of synthesis biology. Also we hope that this video can decrease irrational fear of Genetically modified creature, and build the positive concept.

This short interview will be put on the popular science website – KEBOWEN, sharing it to the whole Chinese-speaking region.

　Surveys

We have designed a survey. Please click to View the English Version File(PDF) or View the Traditional Chinese Version Form.

We received 360 valid surveys. And the results are as follow:

Fig. 1 shows that one third of people have ever heard about the synthetic biology. Meaning that, we still have a lot of progressing space to promote biology related knowledge.

From the Fig. 2, we found that about one third of people accept the synthetic biology, and when Fig. 2 compared with the Fig. 3, we could see that the age between twenty and thirty contribute the most on "accept" option, and the age between ten and twenty also choose the accept one as their answer. Therefore, we could see that this cutting edge science, synthetic biology, is taught in almost college students as well as senior students in Taiwan. So, these ranges of people have the tendency to accept synthetic biology.

We continued analyzing the people who have ever heard about synthetic biology, and from Fig. 4, we found that only sixty three percent of people really knew the correct definition of synthetic biology. As a result, we must do our best not only on popularizing the synthetic biology but also letting people know it completely.

　L-shaped Folders

We made colorful double-side-L-shaped folders, which were designed by De-Jung Tseng. We hoped that those who received our folders could have a deep impression on NCTU iGEM team as well as our experimental topic ,E. coline, and our experimental purposes which is solving the problem of energy crisis and air pollution, life would be better by our project.

Our designed ideas as follows:

On the front side shows a blackboard sketched with our ideas of producing biosynthetis isobutanol to make a better life. For the left part, we illustrated the pathway that indicates how cellulose is metabolized to isobutanol by constructing the enzymes, while for the right part shows two major method to increase the production rate of biosynthetic isobutanol , temperature control system and zinc finger utilization. The enzymes are indicated as the robots with their specific zinc finger shown in the triangle sign. The temperature control system is illustrated as the traffic light between IlvD and KivD.

The back side strictly showed the synthesis and application of isobutanol. With the production line of Eco.Fuel , isobutanol would be easily accessible and widely used to replace gasoline . The products yield by burning isobutanol are carbon dioxide and water that is harmless to the environment.

　Gallery