Team:USTC/humanpractice

From 2010.igem.org

Revision as of 11:00, 20 October 2010

An overview of the compus talk

Since the birth of the igem team in the University of Science and Technology of China, which participated in the 2007 igem competition, synthetic biology gradually gained recognition in our school. When our fellow schoolmates were conversant of the fresh upcoming event, they were burning with curiosity. Instead of feeling the apprehension over unknown risky possibilities, schoolmates of our age (16~22) focused on the enjoyment and excitement of the unknown and felt no form of hesitation to do it. However, admittedly, technology is a double-edged sword. If not left under responsible hands, the results can be catastrophic.On the other hand, ignorance can also lead in needless anxiety over new things.As students are the hope of our future,it is a pressing issue to convey a thorough understanding of synthesis biology to them. So this year, we, igemers at USTC have decided to organize a campus-wide talk to extend awareness on synthetic biology as well as to instill a scientific and responsible attitude towards it, in our fellow schoolmates.

In the first part of our talk, we introduced our guests to the world of synthetic biology and informed them the result that we had explored in this area. For the introduction part, we gave a brief description of what synthetic biology is about. Then we presented some of our iGEM previous gold-winning projects, and hopefully by doing so, we can give a good impression to the viewers. Apart from that, we also showed to the guests on some pictures of our lab and what ustc igem team had achieved since we joined this program in 2007. Before the end of the first part, we tried to explain and emphasize on the responsibility that we should take when doing the scientific research, hoping to instill into our guests the scientific and responsible attitude towards synthetic biology.

the questionnaire

Below are the results of the questionnaire answered by people before the talk. The first two questions are about people’s attitude towards genetic manipulation. The results somewhat worry us. As they show, more than a half of the students resist genetically modified food and are terrified when hearing that something is genetically modified. Probably, they will show similar concern towards what we are doing in the area of synthetic biology. On the other hand, as the third question shows, students show much enthusiasm for gene manipulation. So there is a pressing need for us to help them form an objective view of synthetic biology. To achieve this goal, we held comprehensive talk about synthetic biology.

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The fourth question shows the impact of synthetic biology on human health concerns students most. In general, this concern can be divided into two parts: what synthetic biology can do to benefit us and what harm it may do. For the first part, many gold-winning projects of previous years have shown its great potential. As for the second part, it really worries us whether the microcompartment we’ve synthesized may raise safety issues in terms of public health and environment. So we decided to do something to estimate the risks.

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The fifth result really cheers us, for it shows that about 3/4 students involved tend to show a responsible attitude towards scientific research.