Overview
This year, our team fully recognized the importance and necessity of disseminating advanced knowledge in synthetic biology. Given that our project focuses on colorectal cancer treatment—involving extensive expertise in biology, hardware, and other fields—this has further inspired us to popularize project-related knowledge to a broader audience, including high school students, college students, the general public, and professionals in the technology sector.
Unlike previous years, our focus this year extends beyond imparting professional knowledge to also igniting enthusiasm. Therefore, the goal of our educational practice this year is to enhance the public's understanding of the knowledge related to synthetic biology and its role in tumor treatment, while also raising awareness of the causes, treatment methods, and impacts of colorectal cancer. This will enable more people to recognize the existing problems in current tumor treatment and the unlimited potential of synthetic biology in this area. Encourage them to pay attention to or even participate in research on the treatment of related diseases to promote the progress of medicine.
To achieve such a goal, we have delved into rural areas to provide teaching support, transforming advanced knowledge in a downgraded manner and passing it on to middle school students. Actively hold meetings and exchanges with the high school iGEM team to enhance our project through discussions. Participate in interdisciplinary forums and exchange our ideas with the college student team; Write public account push notifications to let the public understand the value of our project. Attend the exchange meeting and share our creativity with scientific and technological workers. Continuously expand the influence of synthetic biology through these means.
It is hoped that these approaches can ignite people's enthusiasm for in-depth research on the mechanism of action of colorectal cancer, and in the future, more treatment methods can be explored and more therapeutic drugs developed. We believe that by continuously promoting the unique advantages of synthetic biology and highlighting its crucial role in this colorectal cancer treatment approach, more individuals will engage in related research in the future.
Figure 1. Overall thinking of the education section
Educational practice is an excellent guide for our team. After each activity, we collect feedback from the participants and continuously improve and perfect our project based on the opinions. This feedback ensures the educational value of the project while also attracting more participants during the event, allowing us to share knowledge about synthetic biology and explain our ongoing work.
High School Students: The Spark of Knowledge Transmission
Volunteer Teaching in Fangshan County, Shanxi Province
In Fangshan County, Shanxi Province, students can only acquire biological knowledge through textbooks and have no knowledge of synthetic biology, medicine and other aspects. Meanwhile, their elders are often troubled by colon-related diseases. Therefore, we decided to go to Fangshan County to teach as volunteers and bring brand-new biology classes to the high school students there.
During this volunteer teaching process, we always kept in mind our goal: not only to impart knowledge, but more importantly, to ignite their enthusiasm for exploration and research. Therefore, we will efficiently integrate synthetic biology knowledge with high school biology textbook content, presenting it in a way that resonates with high school students. By engaging their interest and motivation, we will explain synthetic biology concepts in an accessible and understandable manner. By advancing the depth of knowledge on the basis of ensuring that they can understand, we have promoted the concept of synthetic biology, which is completely new to them, through such a gentle process.
Additionally, to complement our program, we have carefully designed specialized courses to introduce them to the biological and medical aspects of the colon and rectum. We also provide a basic overview of colorectal cancer.
Finally, we also introduced our projects for this year to them and engaged in discussions. They showed great interest in our projects and asked very detailed questions about each aspect. Through communication with them, we concluded that they have a particularly strong interest in the minimally invasive, convenient and intelligent control aspects of the project and have shown great enthusiasm for research in these areas. This excites us, as it means we are one step closer to achieving our educational goals.
In addition, we specially made a presentation to briefly popularize several living habits for preventing colorectal cancer to them. We hope that they can start from every day, pay attention to their own health, and promote this healthy lifestyle to their elders and people around them. We hope they can pass on a healthy lifestyle to more people.
Figure 2. Teaching in Fangshan County
Figure 3. The process of the volunteer teaching activity in Fangshan County
Open the Window of Thought
Communicate with the Subcat Team and the Profuture Team
Many high school students in Beijing have a strong interest in synthetic biology, and many universities have also formed their own teams to participate in this year's iGEM competition. This time, we took the initiative to hold online or offline meetings and exchanges with the two high school student teams, Subcat and Profuture. At the meeting, we presented our project background, sources of inspiration, technical approach, and anticipated outcomes for this year. Similarly, they shared details about their own project for this year. In addition, we spoke freely and discussed together the emerging technologies, cutting-edge progress and so on in synthetic biology.
Later, we continued to discuss each other's projects. They are all very interested in the content of our project this year, but have some doubts about the technical route. Through our team members' detailed and easy-to-understand explanations, they gained a better understanding of our project.
At the same time, considering that one of our treatment methods involves swallowing drugs containing engineered bacteria, they all focused on the biosafety issue of this part of our content and put forward opinions and suggestions. We have also recognized the significance of this issue. While answering their questions, we have also reflected on the shortcomings of our work in biosecurity. Combining the relevant suggestions they gave, we have strengthened the guarantee in biosecurity to make our drugs safer and more conducive to subsequent promotion and application.
What thrilled us even more was that during our discussions, after hearing our presentations and insights, they not only gained deeper knowledge about synthetic biology but also developed new research interests in other areas of the field. They felt this conference exchange ignited their passion, making them eager to explore the vast landscape of synthetic biology.
Figure 4. Communicating with a team of high school students
College Students: Discussion and Communication
Interdisciplinary Forums and Team Exchanges
On September 28, 2025, the iGEM team of Tsinghua-M of Tsinghua University's Tanwei Academy hosted an interdisciplinary forum with the theme of "From Molecules to Ethics: Future Dialogue in Synthetic Biology". At the forum, we engaged in open discussions with other iGEM teams, sharing and showcasing our project content while also witnessing the creativity and highlights of other teams. During the Guest Circle Forum session, the guests engaged in discussions on the ethics and safety of synthetic biology, with a particular emphasis on safety issues in application. In the subsequent Youth roundtable forum, representatives from each team also continued the topic of ethics and safety, all mentioning their thoughts on the safety and ethical aspects of their respective project technologies. This forum has provided valuable guidance for our project. We have been inspired to place greater emphasis on the safety and ethical aspects of the project and to refine it accordingly.
In addition, we also had exchanges with the iGEM teams from four universities, namely Tsinghua University, Peking University, Yan'an University and Jilin University. We shared details of each other's projects, discussing aspects such as project background, technical approaches, and expected outcomes. During the discussion, they also offered valuable suggestions for our project, enabling us to further refine it. This has been highly beneficial for improving our project. Through such activities, we have witnessed the ideas of different iGEM teams. Everyone is striving to apply the knowledge of synthetic biology to solve the existing problems, which makes us very happy. At the same time, we have learned a great deal from their projects. In short, this exchange has provided us with an opportunity to learn from each other and progress together.
Public: Draw Public Attention
Produce Video Push Notifications
During the implementation of our project, in order to enable the public to understand our project, see our new ideas in the treatment of colorectal cancer, and at the same time achieve the goal of popularizing the application of synthetic biology to the public, we briefly introduced the two treatment methods of our project in plain and understandable language: oral medication and microneedle administration. At the same time, we carefully produced a video, presenting our treatment methods to the public more intuitively through rich visuals and explanations, and posted them on our team's official account.
We enhance our project's impact through this approach, enabling the public to easily understand our methods for treating colorectal cancer. We sincerely hope that as more people learn about our project, they will share their feedback, allowing us to refine our project and ensure it genuinely meets the needs of a broader audience. At the same time, we never forget the overall goal of our educational practice - to ignite the public's enthusiasm for exploring synthetic biology, enabling the public to understand synthetic biology, learn related knowledge, and see the huge potential of synthetic biology in practical applications. It is hoped that they will bring new possibilities to the development of the field of synthetic biology in the future.
To our great surprise, there were indeed people leaving comments in the comment section. They expressed great interest in the content of our project and looked forward to our technology bringing new possibilities to the treatment of colorectal cancer, which greatly encouraged us.
Figure 5. Official account push
Science and Technology Workers: Communication with iGEMers
CCiC-Synbiopunk 2025
Our team participated in the CCiC-Synbiopunk 2025 from August 6th to 8th, 2025. At the conference, we saw various iGEM teams. Although their research topics were different, their goal was the same - to make the world a better place. At this conference, we met many like-minded friends and exchanged insights about our respective projects. More importantly, we gained valuable feedback from experts in the biotechnology industry, which helped refine our project and make it more robust. Here, ideas collide and sparks of inspiration fly. Each of us is energized by this atmosphere, which motivates us to continue our research in synthetic biology and medicine.
Figure 6. Participating in the CCiC-Synbiopunk 2025
Conclusion
In this year's educational practice, guided by the goal of "not only imparting professional knowledge but also considering stimulating the enthusiasm for exploration", we have carried out a variety of rich and colorful activities. We explain synthetic biology knowledge to high school students and communicate with high school teams. We participate in interdisciplinary forums and exchange ideas with university teams. We create public account push notifications to let the public know about our project. We participated in the CCiC-Synbiopunk 2025 and received advice from experts in the industry.
We march forward relentlessly, step by step, steadfastly advancing toward our goals. We hope our activities will help more people understand our project and synthetic biology. More importantly, we hope that our efforts can truly ignite the fire of exploring synthetic biology in people's hearts, inspiring more people to conduct in-depth research in the field of synthetic biology. We hope that in the future, they can bring new ideas and possibilities to the synthetic biology industry. It is hoped that with the efforts of more and more people, synthetic biology will make the world a better place.