To improve public health and provide information relevant to the properties, production process, benefits, and possible potential safety issues of ß-carotene, we organized both online and offline education facing different age groups of people, ranging from 10-year-old kids to 40-year-old adults. For example, we created social media accounts and published articles; we visited a primary school and educated a group of students about gene modification, one of the crucial technologies applied in our experiment. Through analyzing the questionnaires, we continuously enhanced the quality of our education in order to meet the needs of the public. In addition, through teaching others and receiving the feedback from our audiences, we gained a deeper understanding of our experiment and grasped the current situation of our target group, which mainly refers to their relatively unhealthy lifestyles and their ignorance of the significance of ß-carotene. Doing these things helps us further complete our business plan.

Xiaohongshu

The reason why we chose Xiaohongshu is that there are more young users on this platform, and their tolerance and acceptance of such science and technology are also high. (Survey questionnaire results)

Our team actively engaged in online education initiatives to popularize science, focusing on gene editing and the benefits of β-carotene. With the development of technology, more electronic products are being used in daily life. Most people's eyes and vision have been greatly affected. Thus, we chose to educate everyone about the role of our product in online education. We have created accounts on both Little Red Book and WeChat official account, and are committed to popularizing the technical principles of gene editing to the public and making more people accept the products edited by genes.

(Figure 1)

We also recorded an ASMR video (a kind of video that uses trigger sounds to help listeners fall asleep faster) of about five minutes, which mainly includes tapping experimental equipment. Because we believe that a single stream of science related content may not be very attractive to the public, so some entertaining content can attract more people to pay attention into the field of biology.

(Figure 2)

At the same time, we also published 8 articles on Xiaohongshu, which received over 1000 views and 72 followers. We introduced our iGEM team, project, technical principles, and our final product - beta carotene beverage.

To address public concerns, we provided evidence-based information that highlighted the safety and benefits of gene-edited foods, aiming to foster a more accepting attitude toward these innovations. Our efforts reached a broad audience, making complex scientific concepts accessible and fostering informed discussions on gene-edited food.

Wechat account

(Figure 3)

The second platform where we have an account is WeChat official account, because most people in China can use WeChat, and the number of visitors is 700 more than that of red books. The content of the official account is also more suitable for publishing something serious and professional, such as our theme.

Content

We chose to display our interviews with experts on our Wechat official account to bridge the gap between cutting-edge synthetic biology and the public. Specifically, we interviewed 4 experts in the food industry to gain insights into the potential impact and feasibility of our project. We raised questions to experts during the interview, such as how to solve people's concerns about the side effects caused by excessive intake of beta carotene. However, the results given by the four experts were that those who directly consume beta carotene in the market are not good, and it is advisable to integrate carotene into food like ours. And presenting the interview results directly to the public like this can provide them with first-hand scientific knowledge, because the authority of experts will not misunderstand our carotenoid drinks. These articles about the interviews can helps us engage more meaningfully with our audience, inspiring confidence in the potential of synthetic biology and gene editing to address pressing challenges in the food industry.

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We also published an article on the official account that received 102 likes and more than 200 views, teaching how to use experimental equipment.

Reflects

We believe that bringing gene editing to the public does not necessarily mean imparting professional knowledge or rigid content directly to them, but rather fostering their spontaneous interest in this area. Articles like these published on Little Red Book and WeChat official account can improve customers' trust and dependence on our products. We have also demonstrated that gene editing technology can bring them more healthy and nutritious products.

Online academic lecture for adults

Reasons we educate:

Through analysis of data obtained by questionnaires, we realized that a relatively large group of people is not aware of multiple aspects of ß-carotene, including the benefits of ß-carotene, how is ß-carotene produced, the safety hazard of taking inappropriate amount of ß-carotene etc. These issues result in various consequences such as the lack of motivation towards trying ß-carotene, incorrect way of taking ß-carotene and so on. As a result, we aimed at popularizing knowledge relevant to ß-carotene in order to improve our audiences’ health.

Reasons we chose adult as our audience:

We set our target audience as adults aging between 30 years old to 50 years old, because we regarded them as the busiest group of people compared to others. The majority of people in this age group live a life in which they commonly work overtime and sometimes are not able to take meals regularly. This lifestyle is harmful and it is our goal to help them realize how ß-carotene can improve their body health, as well as how to choose and use ß-carotene supplements.

Major contents:

In our online education, we focused mainly on the background of our research and experiment, as well as the introduction of our experiment. The former includes the functions of ß-carotene, different methods to produce ß-carotene and a brief introduction related to CRISPR/Cas9 technology, the core technology applied in our experiment. The later generally refers to the design of our experiment, for example, how we generate ß-carotene in detail etc. In addition, we elaborated how we construct our integrated plasmid containing the target gene fragment and how we apply CRISPR/Cas9 technology to transform the plasmid into Saccharomyces cerevisiae cells.

Reflection:

Through this online education, we collected precious advice from both the ordinary people and from experts. the advice we obtained were mainly about how we can improve the project to cater the public’s need as well as few of our existing problems and how we can solve them. Furthermore, we are also able to gain a deeper understanding of our topic after this education and realized the necessity for the public to become aware of ß-carotene.

For more information about the lecture, please refer to presentation slides.

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lecture for elementary school students

Purpose:

1.Our school has many elementary school students, so we can easily access them.

2.Teaching elementary school students about synthetic biology and its related knowledge makes them contact to cutting-edge sciences and technology, and may stimulate their interest in biology, even evoking their interests in the iGEM project.

3.Children need beta-carotene from healthy bodies and further growing, so we think that popularizing related knowledge to them is conducive to their thriving growth, so they will pay attention to the intake of beta-carotene nutrition from an early age.

Topic:

We mainly discussed the principles and examples of gene editing and also included some simple information about our project (construction of saccharomyces cerevisiae with high yield of β-carotene).

Process of the lecture:

We contacted the primary school principal, and then decided the time and place of the lecture after discussing it with him. Four of our team went to the primary school and presented the lecture, and two people joined after halfway through the process. The lecture lasted about 30 minutes, and about 23 pupils attended. We prepared stickers with patterns of representatives of the team as gifts for every student who attended, and 3 pendants to award those who performed well. The lecture went well.

(Figure 9)

On-site situation:

We prepared the presentation not only with word paragraphs, but also diverting contents such as interactive games and short videos; so, most children were focused. When interacting with us and answering questions, we could see students showing a basic understanding of the taught knowledge and interests in more in-depth cases. However, a small number of students were not particularly attentive. In addition, they were not actively involved in the interactive game initially due to shyness, but the situation soon became better when we started to guide them.

For more information about the lecture, please refer to presentation slides.

(Figure 10) (Figure 11)

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Carrot Beast-Poster

Carrot Beast-Poster (English version)

Reflection & Summary:

The content itself was not particularly perfectly prepared, and there had also been some avoidable accidents (such as being later than the appointed time). These can be improved by spending more time, effort, and attention on preparing the lecture in the future. Overall, we believe this lecture for elementary school students is relatively successful. Mutual learning was well presented in this activity. Feedbacks from our audiences show that they really gained some extra knowledge from attending this lecture, and we were also pleased by teaching and interacting with them.