As one of the essential nutrients for the human body, vitamin B6 plays a vital role in maintaining brain function, metabolic regulation, and immune system health. However, the current public awareness of vitamin B6 is relatively limited, especially in terms of how to consume enough vitamin B6 through the daily diet and the specific benefits of the vitamin for the human body, many people lack understanding. In order to fill this awareness gap, our team hopes to spread the basic knowledge of vitamin B6 to people of different ages through a series of popular science education activities to help them make healthier choices in their daily lives.
At the same time, we also recognize the importance of STEM education for the development of students, as a “curative medicine” to develop research skills and core literacy to address more critical global challenges in the future. The education industry is hungry for an innovative transformation, and we hope to use this as an opportunity to empower STEM education with design thinking and foster a STEM innovation ecosystem based on our IGEM competition, the development of synthetic biology.
1. Education for kindergarteners#
1) Process#
In our vitamin B6 awareness survey, we found that while many adults understand the importance of vitamins for health, kindergartners lack basic knowledge about how vitamin B6 can help them stay healthy as they grow up. To this end, we decided to develop a series of lectures and activities to educate children about vitamin B6 in a fun and interactive way to promote our program, namely, The bio-friendly production of vitamin B6 based on the cell-free expression system, and stimulate children’s thirst for knowledge and innovation in STEM fields. First of all, we pilot in kindergartens Jiangning Chonghua Qingshan Kindergarten, California Sunshine Kindergarten, Rui Yi Road kindergarten Wenhong Road branch, and Nanjing Foreign Language School Fangshan branch kindergarten to explore interactive propaganda more suitable for kindergarten children.
Next, we will take our half-day education lecture as a pilot in Chonghua Qingshan Kindergarten as an example to explain our publicity process and content, including providing children with synthetic biology related knowledge, and promoting our IGEM entry project and IGEM competition. We hope to empower the design of STEM teaching activities for young children in a structured and organized way.
brochure-English and-chinese-version .pdf
First, we created a picture book story with vitamin B6 as the main character. In the story, vitamin B6 is personified as a little hero, hiding in different foods and acting like a little hero to keep people healthy. However, because of the limitations of the human body itself, it is necessary to take vitamins alone to promote people’s healthy growth. B6 story characters with bright images, rich colors, compact and interesting plot, can quickly attract children’s attention. With this vivid story situation, we want to let young children easily understand the importance of vitamin B6.
Picture book reading has multiple interactive links to enhance children’s sense of participation and experience. For example, when talking about vitamin B6 heroes helping people get healthy again, teachers can pause and encourage children to wonder how vitamin B6 will help them next. Through this questioning and discussion, children can participate in the development of the story and deepen their understanding of the role of vitamin B6 in their thinking.
We designed an interactive activity for children to participate in. They were given pictures of food and tasked with coloring food containing vitamin B6. This not only helped them remember which foods were good for their health, but also allowed them to learn about nutrition in the game.
After that, we also held a small trivia contest where children could pair food with the superhero power of vitamin B6 to consolidate their learning.
Finally, in order for the children to take the lessons home and share them with their families, we prepared a small coloring book for each child with stories and pictures of their favorite “Vitamin Hero B6”. In this way, not only can the children continue to learn, but parents can also discuss the importance of healthy eating together.
Through fun stories, interactive activities and intuitive visuals, we have succeeded in giving children an initial understanding of the importance of vitamin B6 while stimulating their interest in healthy eating.
2) Project design and execution#
Through a series of educational talks in kindergarten, we introduce children to the basics of vitamin B6, including how it helps the body maintain energy, keeps the brain active, and boosts immunity. After that, our goal was to design an educational program that, through simple stories and interactive activities, would stimulate children’s interest in health and nutrition, while also planting the seeds for better food choices in the future.
We provide each teacher with a complete education package that includes lecture slides, animated presentations and a picture book activity book.
In combination with the interdisciplinary nature of STEM education, we recommend that teachers further expand their knowledge of synthetic biology with short videos or animations. The slideshow introduces vitamin B6 and its benefits to the body with colorful illustrations and simple animations. By showing scientists using synthetic biology technology to produce vitamin B6 in the laboratory, children are initially exposed to scientific application scenarios and stimulate their curiosity about science and technology. At the same time, the situation of reducing production pollution by cell-free expression system was demonstrated, and the importance of green production for environmental protection was emphasized. In order to enhance children’s environmental awareness, activities can be designed to explain synthetic biology to achieve green production to reduce environmental impact. Educators spread and gradually spread to other schools and educational institutions to guide them to carry out similar educational activities on their own based on these resources.
In combination with the interdisciplinary nature of STEM education, teachers can further expand their knowledge of synthetic biology through interesting picture books. Through colorful illustrations and simple animations, vitamin B6 and its benefits for the body are introduced. By showing how scientists can use synthetic biology techniques to produce vitamin B6 in the lab, children can get an initial exposure to the application scenarios of science and stimulate their curiosity about technology. We also show how cell-free expression systems can reduce pollution in the production process and highlight the importance of green production to protect the environment. In order to increase their environmental awareness, they can also design activities to explain how to achieve green production through synthetic biology and reduce the harm to the environment.
We encourage children to share their feelings about the activities, and we also design home-school interaction sessions to encourage parents to work with their children to complete some after-school tasks. For example, parents can work with their children to find vitamin B6-rich foods in their daily diet and work together to create healthy recipes. In this way, children not only learn scientific knowledge in the classroom, but also extend scientific inquiry into family life, forming a more comprehensive learning experience.
3) Feedback and improvements#
After the activity, we reviewed the whole activity process with the kindergarten teachers and collected feedback. Some teachers suggested that we simplify the animation to make it more suitable for young children to watch, and in the future, interactive features can be added to enhance children’s sense of participation. We also found that some of the principles were too complex to explain, and will further optimize the educational package in the future to make its content more in line with the cognitive level of preschoolers.
With this feedback, we plan to continue to improve the teaching content in future campaigns and extend the educational materials to more kindergartens to provide early education about vitamin B6 and healthy eating to more children.
2. Education for teenagers#
The modern education system is increasing its emphasis on STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and mathematics), yet many young people, especially women and disadvantaged groups, still lack interest and engagement in STEM. Synthetic biology, in particular, is an emerging interdisciplinary field capable of using gene editing and bioengineering techniques to design and manufacture new biological systems. In recent years, synthetic biology has been widely used in drug production, environmental protection and food industry, especially in green production technology has played an important role. To educate youth about this emerging technology, we combined synthetic biology with vitamin B6 production to design an educational program with STEM at its core. This educational program is designed to stimulate their passion for learning through rich content and interactive experiences, and to demonstrate how STEM disciplines can solve real-world problems in real life. Through school clubs, talks and lab activities, we hope to help young people realize the importance of STEM and provide them with more study and career options for the future.
1) STEM Club pitch with 2025 IGEMer recruitment#
The 2025 iGEM competition is coming to a close and soon we will need to form a new team for the 2024 iGEM competition. Since our team consists mainly of Senior 1 and Senior 2 students, it is necessary for us to introduce the iGEM competition to new Senior 1 students, as well as to publicize and promote the IGEM competition to Senior 2 students. To this end, we have prepared a special “Hello, iGEM Freshman Introduction” event designed to stimulate students’ interest in synthetic biology and iGEM competition. This event will help us prepare for the recovery of the team and attract new members to join us.
At the end of the lecture, we set up a question and answer session to encourage students to ask questions and share their understanding and confusion about synthetic biology. Through interaction with lecturers, students can not only solve their doubts, but also better consolidate what they have learned. At the same time, we also obtained feedback from students through this process to further improve the design and content of the lecture.
As a result, we also engaged in friendly exchanges and presentations with students in the STEM Club. We designed some interesting animations and images to show how synthetic biology can solve practical problems such as food safety, environmental protection and health by redesigning biological systems. In order to make it easier for students to understand, we also used our own IGEM project experience as an example to show how synthetic biology can effectively reduce the environmental impact of traditional production methods. This not only helps students understand the application value of synthetic biology, but also allows them to see the important role that science and technology play in global challenges. We also hope that through our vivid explanation, students can preliminarily understand the concept of synthetic biology, and inject fresh blood into iGEM2025.
It is worth mentioning that in addition to our campus, we also held a series of lectures in other campuses of Nanjing Foreign Language School to promote STEM and synthetic biology. We have adopted a step-by-step approach, introducing many complex scientific concepts to students in a simple way through lectures. Starting with the most basic STEM subjects, we introduce students to the important role that science, technology, engineering and mathematics play in advancing society. Through simple examples, such as the use of mobile phones, video games and sustainable energy, students are helped to make connections between STEM subjects and their daily lives. In this way, students not only understand STEM in theory, but also find the shadow of science and technology in life, thus stimulating their interest in these subjects.
2) “Women in Engineering”#
The underrepresentation of women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields has long been evident. Data on researchers compiled by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) show that out of 151 countries for which data are available from 1996 to 2021, women make up less than 50% of the total number of researchers in 127 countries, and women make up less than one-third of researchers in some 56 countries. In the age of digital intelligence, the gender digital divide further aggravates the disadvantaged position of women in STEM fields. in order to stimulate the innovative vitality of female students in STEM fields and create an inclusive educational environment, we conducted a series of “Women in Engineering” presentations aimed at attracting more young women to enter STEM fields.
We detail career prospects in synthetic biology and STEM fields. By demonstrating the applications of synthetic biology in fields such as medicine, agriculture and environmental protection, we show our female students the potential and impact of these disciplines in solving global problems.
3) The “her” power of the education industry#
We also invited an experienced educator to share her personal story and experience in education, and provide guidance to promote gender equality in the education industry. The ultimate goal of women’s STEM education is to enable women to pursue and benefit from careers in STEM fields, and we hope that by emphasizing women’s career development in STEM fields. It also inspires female students to discover the beauty and infinite possibilities of science, laying the foundation for their future academic exploration and career choices.
3. Educational activities for the general public#
The process of publicizing synthetic biology and our IGEM program, we used a combination of online and offline promotional methods.
1) Online#
For the online part, we created a Jitterbug account to expand our reach by regularly posting short science videos through the platform to introduce the public to the basic concepts of synthetic biology and the importance of vitamin B6 in human health. We combine animations and easy-to-understand explanations in our short videos to show how synthetic biology can produce vitamin B6 using a cell-free expression system, and emphasize how this technology can be green and reduce pollution in the production process. We also actively invited scientists, teachers, and parents to participate in the promotion by asking them to follow our accounts and retweet the content via social media, hoping to leverage their influence to get more people to understand and participate. Our online promotion received wide attention, especially from the younger crowd, who became interested in synthetic biology and green production technology of vitamin B6 by watching our videos. Some of our fans interacted with us through private messages, stating that the content made them curious about the future of technology and willing to learn and explore further about synthetic biology and sustainable future.
2) Offline
In the offline part, in order to promote synthetic biology in the community, we designed a series of education-focused promotional activities, drawing on the successful experience of several iGEM teams in educational programs, combining different forms of science promotion and interactive sessions, and aiming to convey scientific knowledge to the community at large in a vivid and interesting way.
In order to expand our influence, we have produced posters and easy-to-use materials for the IGEM educational lecture series and distributed them to community centers, schools and public places. We plan to introduce the development and current status of synthetic biology, synthetic biology practices and applications, synthetic biology to address global challenges to the residents through a series of community science lectures , and shared our team’s entry in iGEM 2024, . XXXXX and the results we have achieved so far.
In our lectures, we have simplified and streamlined the jargon to ensure that it is understandable to community members of all ages. We also increase public engagement through interactive question-and-answer sessions to help them gain a deeper understanding of the potential of synthetic biology. For example, the lecture could show how synthetic biology can produce vitamin B6 through a cell-free expression system, providing a more environmentally friendly way of production.
In addition, we will also plan to design community interactive exhibitions to allow participants to experience the basic operations of synthetic biology through hands-on experiments. For example, a DNA extraction experiment station can be set up to allow residents to try to extract DNA from fruits through simple experimental steps, and combined with on-site lectures, basic concepts of genetics and life sciences can be explained to them. Through this immersive experience, residents will be able to understand more intuitively the practical application scenarios of synthetic biology, and enhance their interest and knowledge in this field.
We hope to use this to help audiences of all ages understand the complex scientific concepts of synthetic biology. We will work with a variety of educators and community leaders to promote educational resources on synthetic biology to stimulate the public’s interest in science and attention to technological innovations.