For our public engagement poll, we made the poll on Google Forms in both Korean and English to effectively reach both our public environment and other iGEM teams. 

 

We created an online survey composed of six questions related to therapeutic antibodies. The questions included: 

• What is your preliminary knowledge on antibodies?

• If you know what antigens and antibodies are, what is the difference between them?

• Have you heard of therapeutic antibodies before?

• Have you had any experience with using medicinal antibodies in the past?

• How comfortable would you be with using artificial antibodies in the future?

• Do you think there is a severe side effect by using artificial antibodies in medical treatment?

 

To hear the public opinion from diverse perspectives, we created two versions of the survey, one in English and the other in Korean. We distributed the links and QR codes of both versions to our schools, families, friends, and other iGEM teams we have contacted (Team SIS_Korea, KOREA) to complete the survey. 

 

We began distributing our survey to our peers on June 29th and continued to get responses from other sources until around early August, which we closed after receiving 100 responses. We learned that from the people we surveyed, most of them have heard about antibodies and few had a vague understanding of their mechanisms. Although they may not know exactly what effects the antibodies have, the majority of respondents were fairly comfortable with using antibodies in therapeutic environments. They were supportive of the use of antibodies and positive about the benefits of them in the medical field. Based on the optimism of responses, we can be fairly certain that the utilization of antibodies for therapeutic purposes will be well received by the public if our research and efforts to spread public awareness are successful. 

Since the online survey responses were mostly from people near us, our team wanted to gain further voices from the public regarding therapeutic antibodies. Thus, we decided to conduct a live survey. On a large poster board, we created a sticker survey in Korean with questions based on the online survey. We had the campaign on August 4th and were able to gain over 20 responses.

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By doing these projects, we learned that nearly everyone was aware of what antibodies were, but had different opinions of its medical uses. There were still many people who said they didn’t know or only had a vague idea about what antibodies are. We reasoned that their unfamiliarity with the terminologies used in biology was why they didn’t have a thorough understanding of antibodies. With the advice from the Cornell team that we should make people understand what we are trying to say rather than just asking them to participate in a survey, we thought of integrating it by making pamphlets to spread awareness. Also, since we weren’t able to take into consideration that not everyone was familiar with technical terms, we worked to explain our project in easier terms for our non-expert respondents.

Over the course of two weeks, Dyanne taught a group of 15 elementary students (4th-5th grade) at Yongsan International School of Seoul regarding general biology and genetics. On September 5th, she taught students about the scientific method and lab equipment using various properties of water experiments regarding dissolution and capillary action. Dyanne placed 100g of sugar, table salt, talcum powder (baby powder), and colored sand each in a separate 200mL beaker and allowed students to establish their hypotheses on which solutes will dissolve in water. After the students poured 10g of each solute in 50mL of water and observed the results, Dyanne explained how certain substances are soluble and some are insoluble due to their polar nature. After the dissolution experiment, the students created their own capillary action lab using celery placed in water with different concentrations of food coloring. Once again, the students developed their own hypotheses and analyzed their results. They learned that as the concentration of the food coloring increased (by decreasing water or increasing the amount of food coloring), the color at the tip of the celery stalk will be more apparent. Through this session, the students not only learned about the properties of water and how to conduct their own experiment using the scientific method but also learned how to use lab equipment such as a beaker, graduated cylinder, scoopula, weigh boat, scale, and serological pipet.

 

On September 19th, Dyanne organized a strawberry DNA extraction experiment from the National Human Genome Research Institute for the students. Before starting the lab, she explained the concept of DNA and how it coded for our body and other organisms. Through this lab, the students were able to visually observe the DNA and simulate a simplified version of the DNA extraction process. Following the lab, Dyanne explained the process of genetic engineering and our iGEM project regarding the design of hyperstable intracellular antibody. This two-week education program was a highly meaningful opportunity for both Team Korea_HS and elementary students. It enabled us to prepare our content for the presentation at the giant jamboree, and we instilled upon the elementary students their potential to become scientists like us in the future.