Students’ Synthetic Biology Group

Last year the team members of iGEM 2010 decided to start a specific group aimed at promote synthetic biology in our campus as well as taking charge of the non-academic activities such as choosing and training new members for the next year.

In December the previous team members held a lecture about the basic concept of synthetic biology and information about iGEM, more than 150 people came to the scene, including undergraduates and graduates. After online application and interviewing we have sorted about 70 students out of 130. And the number of our fellows was expanded to over 100.

During winter vacation a workshop was organized in which we invited the team leaders of iGEM 2010 to introduce us what synthetic biology is and what can we do to make a new idea come true. Faculties also gave lessons about experiment technologies and ways to get the most valuable information in a short time.

In April we held a lecture together with Students’ Union to enhance the public awareness of iGEM, MCM and ACM. Two team members of iGEM 2010 had been there to elucidate the whole process of the competition and encouraged students to take part in it.

Survey

We dispersed two hundred questionnaires and half of them were passed to students majoring in biology. Finally, we got one hundred and sixty-five questionnaires back.

Our research shows that 98.78% students believe keeping our intestinal tracts healthy is necessary and 80.61% members hold the opinion that the pathogenic bacteria in intestinal tracts really threaten a lot to our healthy. However, 92.73% say that they know little about the pathogenic bacteria nor its negative effects. So it is so important for us to pay attention to the health of our intestinal tracts.

As 91.25% students know Escherichia coli which is symbiotic with human body does good to us and more than half of them like to take artificial methods to keep their intestinal tracts in a good state. This response offers a positive background for our project which suggests that people are looking forward to any method to solve this serious problem.

Excitingly, more than 60% of students believe and like to use our engineered Escherichia coli as a medical treatment to cure the illness of intestinal tracts caused by pathogenic bacteria and if our engineered Escherichia coli can achieve our expected results (killing pathogenic bacteria more quickly and completely, and functioning for a long time once taken in),nearly 70% of them would like to use our method instead of the traditional way.

However, there are also 66.67% students worrying about our engineered bacteria in that they may cause dangerous effect to human. Among them 27% students think our engineered bacteria may have some side effects，32% students worry about the gene mutation of our engineered bacteria，21% students consider that our engineered bacteria may break the balance of the gut flora，and 20% students believe that our engineered bacteria may lose control in some unkown conditions.