Team:USTC-China/outreach

Overview

The outreach project is of great importance in our whole iGEM program. To make more people know about what synthetic biology is and help them consider the safety of biotechnology, our team have divided our project into several sections.

The students' synthetic biology group have conducted GMF safety activity in our campus to help students reach a further understanding of transgenosis and synthetic biology. A training camp was held for members of the group during the winter.

Our synthetic biology lab have welcomed some visitors from the outside and show them how we conduct our work. The open day were done during the week of science of USTC, getting a great range of people involved.

Lectures were held for students from the high school summer camp, providing them a general impression of synthetic biology.

Collaborations with Xiamen University and Nanjing University were done to help the team prepare for the Asia Jamboree.

The safety of our project is taken into fully consideration before we start, with discussion with our professor and proper rules followed, the risks of our work should be minimal.(know more about the safety)

Students' Synthetic Biology Group

Started by the team members of iGEM USTC in 2012, the students' synthetic biology group has developed into a healthy organization which contributes a lot to the promotion of synthetic biology in our campus . This year, the group have conducted GMF safety activity which helps the students in our campus get a further understanding of transgenosis and synthetic biology.

Also,the recruiting campaign was conducted to attract more students in our campus to join us. To help these students better understand the field of synthetic biology, we held a training camp inside our campus during the winter vacation. This training camp is also aimed to choose the new iGEM members for the next year.

The lab of synthetic biology

This year, the USTC iGEM team work at the lab of synthetic biology in the building of the school of life sciences. Besides doing experiments in the lab, we have welcomed some visitors from outside and show them how we conduct our work.

The open day

We conducted the visiting activity in our Synthetic Biology Lab as part of the "Open Day of Biox " program during the Week of Science of USTC. This program is annually held for people outside from our campus to get to know more about science. Being part of this program, our lab serves as a visiting site for people to pick up some concepts about synthetic biology. A great range of people, from kids to the elderly are involved in our program. (GET TO KNOW MORE)

Communications within exchange students

This summer, our lab has welcomed some exchange students from Michigan State University. We shown them around our lab and explained some informations about synthetic biology and our work.

Lectures

In August we held lectures for students from high schools who came to our campus to participate in a summer camp. These lectures were deigned in a simplified way to demonstrate what synthetic biology and iGEM are. During the lecture, we introduced the basic principles of synthetic biology as well as the history of the iGEM competition in USTC.

Collaborations

With Xiamen University

A member of the Xiamen University team came to our lab this summer for communication. We introduced the idea of our project, the composition of our team, the activities we held and how we conduct our work in the lab. Also, we discussed some details about the preparation for the Asia Jamboree.

For collaboration, we provided them with some information about the agent manufacturer. We also help them with their experiments: we suggest the use of 3A assembling method and remind them that the engineering parts should be assembled to the pSB1C3 plasmid. The two teams help each other on the parts submitting, Xiamen University informed us that we cannot spot DNA on filter paper and should put the DNA solute in the PCR tubes and air-dry them, while we suggest them to have their parts transported by more than one delivery company to ensure the samples being submitted on time.

With Nanjng University

We also give some aids to the team from Nanjing University. Our team members have instruct them how to use the partsregistry.org to find proper biobricks. Also we helped them with their wiki construction: we instruct them how to submit their html&css profiles, and provide some informations about the management of the upload files. Some useful informations about parts submitting are provided by our team too.