Special OUC-China HM

1.Relay in OUC-China

We are not just a team.
OUC-China iGEM is not just a team. Up to now, we have three teams—OUC-China 2011, 2012 and 2013. We are not like other teams, we have relay. When busy in preparing 2011 iGEM jamboree, 2011 OUC iGEMers took their time to teach 2012 iGEMers molecular biology and introduce synthetic biology to them. To educate 2012 members better, they used every minute to learn and taught more. Some of their team even helped us and taught us experiment after they graduated.
To the same goal, this year, we taught biochemistry and microbiology to freshman in our university. In addition, to make iGEM and synthetic biology known to them, we held lectures (about iGEM ), meetings (with Peaking University)and camps (with Qingdao No.2 High School and learn synthetic biology).
Our team is not just a team. It’s a home where we can treat as brothers and sisters. No matter what medal we got, we would appreciate OUC-China 2011 iGEM team and hope OUC-China 2013 iGEM do a better job!

2.Respect nature

Human beings have been making significant changes to the face of the earth for thousands of years. We have made buildings and dug tunnels; we have sent people to the moon and reached the bottom of the sea. We have also changed the lives of many of our fellow organisms. To what extent can we tolerate our actions that are creating an increasing impact on our earth? Is it a violation of nature's laws what biologists nowadays are doing?
Different people have different views on what humans are "allowed" to do. One example of radical views may be the fruitarian.Fruitarians only eat fruits and nuts that have fallen from its branches naturally, trying not to make any impact on other

living organisms. We believe that this is wrong and unnatural, as humans are consumers designed to live on other organisms so it is unavoidable that we make an impression on our world. The other extreme may be the biologist who changes the genetic material of life, transforming their role in ecology, perhaps even altering the course of evolution. The question is to what extent can humans accept their own actions.
In our opinion, every form of life has its impact on the environment and other living things. Humans' reform on nature has always been one part of its construction. The earth has undergone many changes in its long history, each change ending up reaching a new ecological balance. Synthetic biology is opening up new opportunities and bringing about new changes. This is a natural progress.
Most may say that humans possess more ability to change the world than any other creature that has existed on the earth. Greater ability brings forth the need for further responsibility. We must be aware of what we are doing and avoid altering life into an undesirable form. For example, our project is aimed at preventing pollution and protecting the marine environment. This is what we scientists should be doing: making a positive impact on the earth.

3.Environmental survey

Because our project of this focuses on the ratio of N and P and cyanobacteria in the sea water, we consulted professors who study on ecology to get more information about it. Our university is located in Qingdao, Shandong Province, near the Kiaochow Bay, so we made a environmental survey there to collect phytoplankton there and learned how to classify them. In particular, we made this survey with freshmen in our university during 2th summer camp of life science and technology. We think we can learn more about red tide and cyanobacteria from this survey. We let more students to join the survey and learn with us in this survey. It not only made us better, also was a good chance to introduce iGEM, our project, and most importantly, conception of protecting the environment to them. It’s a new approach to held a survey in camp to introduce iGEM and do human practice, we hope it can help other teams.