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Team:SKLBC-China/Project
From 2014hs.igem.org
Synthetic biology has been developing so quickly recently. It's a burgeoning field and has tremendous prospects for development, which benefits the society a lot and will change people's life greatly. However, people don't know much about it. They may know some words like recombinant DNA technologies, but actually they don't really understand it. They even think negative about it and avoid it.
Meanwhile, it's an era of intelligence. We need a more beautiful and convenient way to deal with about 20000 Biobricks,especially on mobile terminals. To satisfied these needs, we come across an idea: make a brand new searchi engine, which can both make searching much easier and can popularize synthetic biology. It's no longer a searching engine, we, SKLBC-China team, are designers, named it WeiGem+.
WeChat is the largest social system network in China. It's like WhatsApp, but with more functions and is compatible for iOS, Android system and PC. It would be our pleasure if you could install the application on http://www.wechat.com/en/download.html and follow us to have a taste of our work by scan our QR code.
Our work is consisted of two parts: the advanced search engine, and the push service platform,WEiGEM+.
For the first part, we provide the services of Biobricks searching in the of catalog searching and keyword searching.
Nowadays, there have been more than 20,000 Biobricks, but there hasn't a very convenient way to search for the Biobricks for mobile terminals, which has been a big problem.
According to this situation, we made a searching engine, with the Biobricks data from iGEM official organization.
We provide the services of Biobricks searching in the ways of catalog searching and keywords searching.
We didn't put this searching engine into a separated app, but made it link with the Wechat platform. WeChat is a Chinese app that has more functions than WhatsApp, and it can run on iOS, Android and PC.
All the data are storage on our server, so there's not huge data on user's device. Besides, there is an answering robot, when users input the keywords, the robot will give the feedback of searching results to the users.
After user begin a talk with the subscription account, the robot will launch a guiding massage, and the user can choose to use catalog searching (for Biobricks), keywords searching (for Biobricks), or article searching. Input "C", there will be a catalog, divide the Biobricks into different groups of types, such as DNA or Terminators. Moreover, user can type keywords to find the Biobricks linked to it, for instance, typing "purple", you will get 3 results:" M33355"," K1033906"," K1033919".
Next is push service of science articles. They can be harshly divided into 3 parts: iGEM projects, Recommendations and Focus Issues.
iGEM projects: in this part, we write introductions to the best researches in a simple and understandable way, both in Chinese and English. The teams' wikis are affiliated and recommended by them. In this way, iGEM as well as Synthetic Biology is understandable, more straightforwardly.
Recommendations: this is where we push excellent and fascinating science books, movies and speeches etc. All kinds of interesting resources can be found here, some of which are closely connected to articles in other two parts. The most compelling member would be GAMES. PLAY AND SAVE THE WORLD HERE! Thus, our followers can get more background knowledge and further understanding.
Focus Issues: this part is about popular controversies, like Genetic Modified Food and health rumors. We present both for and against sides of the issues. In crowds of brainwash, we provide objective views. Hopefully, followers' critical thinking and elaborative faculties will be developed.
We also build a search engine for theses articles. Enter "'#'+Keywords" to search Related Papers about a specific topic (Eg: #water)
Q: Why we chose WeChat instead of developing an application or a website?
A: We actually thought about them, but since Social Network System (SNS) has become a part of everyone's life nowadays, we regarded SNS as a better choice for its great convenience, sharing and propelling functions. In addition, WeChat, with over 600,000,000 users, is proved to amplify our influence. Now we have more than 500 followers and 300 selected articles only after 2 months work. With our effort, the number and influence will surely continue to explode in the future.
Q: How do we spread our WEiGEM+?
A: We have held lots of activities in schools, using our most compelling part-GAMES.
Pictures: map of Guangzhou with our flags.
Furthermore, we make close communications with other teams. We hosted a meet-up on 1st June, 2014, inviting teams in China.
Needless to say, people who is impressed by our job would share WEiGEM+.
You are unusual and have other special problems or insights, right? Feel free to contact us by sending an e-mail: JamesRNA(AT)gmail.com
DO NOT hesitate to try our POWERFUL SEARCH ENGINE and WEiGEM+!!
