Introduction

Our iGEM Club is a continuation of last year’s program. As students who benefited a lot from the club previously, we decided to build on that foundation and carefully design this year’s curriculum. (For more details, please refer to our last two years’ iGEM team_ULC, 2024 , ULC,2023) Drawing on last year’s experience, we focused more on synthetic biology, molecular biology, and practical laboratory skills, while also expanding into new areas such as pathology.

Olivia, our iGEM team leader, is responsible for running our iGEM Club, which meets once a week. The club’s activities focus mainly on sharing knowledge about synthetic biology and genetic engineering with students at our school, attracting an average of 20 to 30 participants each session. The club leader usually leads the lectures, but sometimes invites members to take the lead and share their own topics. Our very first session was held on September 9, 2024, and to date, we have successfully organized around fifteen activities. In addition to weekly sessions, our iGEM Club actively takes part in various school events, such as the Club Fair and the Oriental Week Assembly.

Table 1 our iGEM club teaching schedule

Detailed Course Highlights

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2024.10.14 - DNA Structure and DNA Replication

Considering that many of our club members may not be very familiar with molecular biology, we decided to start with the basics. Therefore, in this session, we introduced a fundamental cellular process: DNA replication. We explained this process in detail, placing particular emphasis on the roles of key enzymes involved, such as DNA polymerase and topoisomerase.

The feedback was positive. Some participants said they found it fascinating to learn about enzymes like topoisomerase, which are not typically covered in textbooks.

2024.11.4 - A Step Towards Immortality — Telomeres and Telomerase

We chose this topic because we have always been fascinated by this unique structure within the genome and curious about the delicate balance between telomerase activity and controlled cell division. We explored the topic by first introducing the “end replication problem,” then explained the structure and function of telomeres and telomerase. Afterwards, we shifted to an evolutionary perspective, discussing why telomerase activity is inhibited in most somatic cells, and concluded with an open-ended question: Is there a win-win situation where we could achieve longer lifespans without increasing cancer risk?

Our members were highly interested. Several expressed a desire to learn more about aging and the factors that influence it.

2024.11.18 – 2024.12.1 - The Hallmarks of Aging (Series)

Since many members wanted to learn more about aging, we decided to go deeper and introduce more factors associated with it. We launched a series of sessions on aging, all based on a paper published in Cell titled “The Hallmarks of Aging”. During these sessions, we analyzed the paper and explained how various aspects interact to drive the aging process, and discussed how human longevity might be increased by targeting these factors.

Our members were intrigued by the new concepts. However, some mentioned that the lectures were a bit theoretical and expressed interest in doing hands-on experiments.

2025.3.8 - Gram Staining Experiment

Responding to our members ’ wish to gain practical experience, this time we organized a supervised experiment in the school laboratory. Participants incubated bacteria collected from their own hands on Petri dishes. Once the bacteria had grown, they learned how to distinguish between Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria using the Gram staining technique, and we explained the reasons behind the differences in staining outcomes.

Participants were excited to conduct their own experiments, even though some were not completely successful.

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Learning Support & Teaching Materials

All of our lecture slides were designed by iGEM members. The visual design matches the aesthetics and language style of teenagers, making the content approachable and engaging.

• PPTs are distributed before each session to allow for preview.
• New post-class exercises and quizzes (optional) were introduced to help consolidate knowledge.
• Answer keys are released every Sunday, and key problems are explained during class.

In addition to the courses detailed above, our curriculum also includes the following teaching materials:

Club Fair

During the past academic year, we participated in the Club Fair twice to attract more students interested in biology. At these events, our booth drew strong attention at these events, and we successfully recruited 26 new members.

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Evaluation & Recognition

• Club members consistently rate our sessions as well-prepared and engaging.
• The Student Union’s Club Management Department regularly evaluates clubs, and the iGEM Club has consistently achieved excellent scores.
• Member feedback is actively collected via WeChat groups and surveys, ensuring iterative improvement.

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Summary

Participants consistently provide positive feedback about our club. Many members have said that they find each session well-prepared and engaging. We enjoy every opportunity to learn together and genuinely appreciate our members' enthusiasm. In the weekly evaluations conducted by the Student Union’s Club Management Department, the iGEM Club has consistently received excellent scores. Looking ahead, we are eager to improve the quality and impact of our activities, ensuring that our club continues to grow and inspire more students.

Introduction

Although our club primarily targets high school students, we also aim to reach a more diverse group of people in society. To this end, we have organized activities in the community for children and their parents.

Since little has the public realized what exactly biology studies are, we chose a topic that was strongly associated with our research program. We conducted an education project aiming for a better understanding of the essence of lipids and raising the public’s awareness of health. Instead of giving education directly to adults, we especially focused our gaze on children from 5~10 years old, as a fully integrated intellectual system has not yet formed, but there has been a sound basis. Undoubtedly, when their family participated in the project as well, their knowledge will be enriched or corrected by osmosis. Accordingly, we hosted educational events for QianHe party and mass service centre. We have designed a series of interactive activities for kids to learn through playing, including lab experiments, basic knowledge of lipids, the role of lipids in body, coloring games, and correct aesthetic appreciation.

process 

Our team held a 1-hour course on introduction of lipids and healthy lifestyle on 25th July 2025 for children of age 5 to 10, living in Shanghai Xuhui District Qianhe Community. The course provided children with easy-to-understand knowledge about lipids, fats and their relationship with human body. During preparation, we simplified deep and complex knowledge by using metaphors and pictures in our slides. Firstly, we prepared an experiment to detect fat by emulsification. We first added oil to a cup, then we let the children add ethanol and water to the cup by themselves. After a short time of stirring, a white flocculent was produced. By experimenting on their own, they visualized lipids directly. Then, we let them watch a video introducing the basic knowledge of lipids. The video explains in great detail the role of fat and the relationship between humans and fat in a humorous and graphic way. As a supplement, we also introduced different types of fat depending on where it is distributed on the body, for instance, subcutaneous fat and intramuscular fat. During the process, we asked the children to sense the presence of fat by touching their arms and thighs and moving their joints. After that, we gave them black and white cartoon drawings about fat and also water color pens to fill in the colors they wanted. Following that, we continued on teaching them the functions of lipids. Fat plays a crucial role in our body. It not only acts as an energy source for activities like running, but also keeps us warm, protects internal organs as a "safety cushion".

On top of that, we also discussed what a correct aesthetic appreciation is. In today’s society, we embrace diversity. We value different shapes and sizes of bodies, as personal charging is more vital than appearance. As long as one is healthy and flexible, it is a good state. We believe that it is a rather clear and direct way to first plant a seed of aesthetic in their heart.

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Reflection&refinement 

Our participation at Qianhe Community Centre, while valuable, revealed critical areas for improvement, primarily concerning audience engagement and session timing. Firstly, audience turnout fell below projections, likely due to ineffective pre-event publicity. Consequently, the potential community impact was diminished. Secondly, the scheduled presentation slot proved suboptimal. This might due to lack of experience of public education and understanding of children. To address these shortcomings, several strategic adjustments are essential. Publicity must be intensified and targeted, leveraging community bulletin boards, resident WeChat groups managed by centre staff, and strategic flyer distribution well in advance. Moreover, Scheduling requires careful realignment; gaining basic information of participants is essential. Furthermore, session structure should be adapted according to the current situation.This experience underscores the necessity of deeply integrating outreach logistics with the specific temporal and social patterns of the host community. Implementing these targeted strategies promises substantially greater resonance and effectiveness for future initiatives.

Introduction

We discovered online that another team, Synso, has a research direction very similar to ours. To reach a wider audience, we contacted them and collaborated to design an online course for the general public, as both projects focus on blood sugar regulation.
The theme of our lecture was “Not yet in senior high, but already has three highs (hypertension, hyperglycemia, and hyperlipidemia).”

Process

We first introduced blood sugar, then explained our method and their method to regulate blood sugar, and analyzed the corresponding populations of the two methods. In the end, we concluded that when two methods are combined, fat will be reduced from the source. Thus, blood sugar regulation and fat reduction will be more effective and easier to persist.

For their part, they shared details about their efforts: how they explored their research methods, the interviews they conducted, the questionnaires they distributed, and the educational activities they organized.

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Problem&Refinement

However, this activity encountered a significant problem — low attendance. We learned from those who signed up but did not attend that the issue was the unreasonable timing—we scheduled it from 6 pm to 7 pm, which is usually when people are commuting or having dinner. In our future activities, we need to consider more on our time arrangements. Moving forward, we plan to re-record this course as a video and publish it online to expand its reach and impact.

Our city, Shanghai, is home to many of China’s top universities. Over the course of organizing nearly 20 iGEM Club events, we gradually realized that we needed higher-level guidance and more diverse perspectives. Motivated by this, we proactively reached out online to Fudan University in Shanghai, expressing our interest in academic exchange. After maintaining communication for a while, what began as a small idea for simple collaboration eventually grew into a large-scale event spanning across multiple regions of China: East China (Fudan University), South China (South China Agricultural University, Shenzhen University, Southern University of Science and Technology), and Central China (Central South University).

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Our team hosted a collaborative lecture in our school auditorium, together with the five university iGEM teams: SUSTechOCEAN, Fudan, SZU-China, CSU-CHINA, SCAU Guangzhou. We first communicated and brainstormed with them about the lecture theme and finally determined to introduce our respective research projects.

Considering the problems we met in the previous events, such as the inappropriate time, lack of feedback, lack of publicity, we made improvements in this events.

We made posters with other five teams in advance, publicized this lecture in multiple means and set up a Dingtalk and a WeChat group for notifications. About 50 students from our school finally attended this event. At the entrance, we distributed postcards, badges, stickers and keychains designed by our team members, which were very well received. During the event, some of our team members were present on-site, while the university teams joined us online via Tencent Meeting.

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We began by introducing the iGEM competition and the basics of synthetic biology, after which each participating team presented their own projects. Members from Fudan University also prepared an online Q&A game, where students could scan a QR code to join and interact in real time.

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We received a lot of feedback through questionnaire. Most feedback are positive— many students said they gained a lot from the lectures. As a high school team, we especially valued the opportunity to collaborate with university iGEM teams. Their projects were more advanced and complex, and through this activity we were able to learn many new and innovative ideas. This activity not only expanded our scientific horizon but also inspired younger students to get involved in synthetic biology.

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Introduction

In order to enhance students' basic understanding of biology and disseminate the research content of our subject, we planned and organized a publicizing activity that can be participated in at any time in the school—the NFC interactive activity, located at the display boards in the school corridors. Approximately 100 people participated in this event. We promoted and introduced our research topic through texts and pictures, and elaborated on several key biological concepts involved in the topic.

Preparation&process

We wrote texts to explain those biology concepts relevant to our subject and accompanying paintings which were created by our team members.

These contents are then packed and uploaded to the website, and then integrated into the NFC stickers. Students can use their mobile phones to touch those stickers, then a pop-up will appear and direct them to our content.

We attached these stickers to posters and designed a "Treasure Hunt Map." Students can find our posters in various locations.

Additionally, we prepared hand-drawn stickers as incentives at each location to encourage more students to participate.

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Feedback&Reflection

Participants mentioned that the activity was innovative and highly engaging; everyone liked the small stickers we made. The content of our research topic also achieved good dissemination through this activity. Students who weren't familiar with biology said that our explanations were simple and easy to understand.

However, there was one issue with the activity: the amount of feedback was relatively limited. Next time, we will add feedback methods such as questionnaires and ratings to help us acquire more feedback.

Here is the overall view of our website:

On our Xiaohongshu account, we post a variety of information about our teams, biology, and experiment-related knowledge. We spread the knowledge mainly through interesting and vivid approaches--such as stories and posters--to make the process of learning feel relaxed rather than overwhelming. For example, when spreading experimental precautions, we turned them into scenarios and recorded as videos, which are more attractive and accessible.

Our Xiaohongshu account has been continuously updated for over six months, with at least one post per month. We have independently created a large amount of original content, including popular science articles and introductions to experimental procedures.

Within the first six months, we attracted 113 followers. As independent creators who have not paid for promotion, we are very proud and pleased with this outcome.

One of our posts went particularly viral, receiving up to 955 likes, 252 saves, and 32 comments, with many users engaging with us in the comment section. Across all our posts, we have accumulated a total of 1,675 likes and saves.

For instance, a follower pointed out that kiwis have severely reduced wings rather than no wings, and continued to engage with us in discussion. We are very grateful for such exchanges. In fact, the main invasive species in New Zealand are free-roaming cats and dogs, as well as other mammals such as stoats. Due to the country’s historical estate culture, cats and dogs are often allowed to roam without leashes.

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The contents on the stickers and keychains are related to biology and our research topic, and they will be given to participants as small gifts during offline activities.

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We made a picture book with the aim of letting children have a correct aesthetic sense for different body figures instead of blindly pursuing extreme figures.

We made a series of WeChat emojis to promote our team in an interesting way.

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