Introduction

NCTU Formosa team did a lot of work on Human Practices, 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 voice to the world. And the most important one, we created a Facebook Page for those interested in Biosynthetic Biology who can now follow up our works.

　Details

　Bio-camp

　Schedule for our Bio-camp

　Day 2

At the second day of the camp, and we prepared a lecture for introducing the future development of synthetic biology; today we were 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 were also took their notes hardly. At the end, they could totally get into the profound of the synthetic biology. Miss. Zhong introduced many interesting applications of synthetic biology and amazed the students. They also contributed some interesting ideas during the Q&A time.

We answer students’ questions anytime anywhere and helped them catch the core concepts of the synthetic biology.

　Day 3

Overall, we first introduced the development of the synthetic biology, and then introduce the origin, the competition and where the iGEM competition is held.

And 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 structure of experiment, we design a recycle illustration to represent the relations of each step, and introduced each experiments contents and necessities by simple words. To let 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 not only understand the course easily but also do exercises right away to test themselves whether they really understood what we had taught in the class. Because most of them were Senior 2 students and part of them were Senior 3 students, their background knowledge are different. As a result, we needed to let Senior 2 understand but not too easy for Senior 3. 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 themselves, and we hoped them could learn a lot from the courses.

　Day 4

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

Then we explained the steps and principle of experiment by PowerPoint clearly .To increase the familiarity of experimental operation, and prevented accidents happened. After the experiment began, we set the iGEM team members in each group so that they can avoid to make the mistakes during the experiment and they more understand the experimental technique by our members help.

The E.coli we prepare for them had been transplanted red fluorescent protein gene, and it is beautiful red at the beginning. But when we added the solution II which is need for taking the plasmid out of the bacteria, 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 surprised and to give 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. Our destination is the Genomics Research Center, Academia Sinica. We invited two professors to go with us, and hoped them to answer the questions if we can’t figure it out by ourselves. 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 of students. In order to know whether the knowledge that each group members learn in these days had keep in their mind, we design some question of genetic engineering to make students use their brains. 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 which we had given participants in each group. Second, they should show the answer to everyone. Last, we according to the creativity and feasibility of the answer to give scores, just like just like a real iGEM competition, so the students experience personally the presence of competition. Due to the special charm of the host the atmosphere is tense and exciting. This competition between the group is difficult to decide who will win or who will lose. The points between each team were very close, so every students effort to recall the lessons learned knowledge, were hoping to win glory for the team. I believe the knowledge and experience they have learned in this six-day camp was precious. And they’ll never forget this memorable trip.

　iGEM Cooperation

(developing)

　Popularization on Campus

(developing)

　Popular Science Creation

(developing)

　Surveys

(developing)

　L-shaped Folders

(developing)