How the framework works
Plato’s prisoners sit in a cave and take the shadows on the wall for the whole world. Those shadows are the incomplete, often fearful stories people already hold about living things and modern biology. Our programme does not try to replace that picture in one talk. It walks a learner through four moves: turn toward a real object, meet the hard ideas in a gentler form, use the ideas to design something, then carry them back to other people.
We file an activity by the move, not by the calendar.
- Stage 1, if the learner meets a molecule for the first time. Constructivism and experiential learning (Piaget, Kolb), with support set just ahead of what they can do alone (Vygotsky).
- Stage 2, if the idea would still be too much head-on. A game, a keychain, a comic, or a short booth conversation. Gamification, flow, and scaffolding.
- Stage 3, if the learner has to analyse, design, write, or judge. Higher-order thinking, project-based learning, and critical reflection.
- Stage 4, if the learner teaches someone outside the class. Service learning and destigmatisation. This is the only stage whose job is public education on psoriasis.
| Stage | Scene in the allegory | What we actually run | Psoriasis |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | Chained, facing the wall | The beliefs people arrive with. No event of its own. | No |
| 1 | Freed inside the cave, sees the fire | Banana DNA workshop, fish DNA / PCR workshop, MedGene laboratory practical | No |
| 2 | Outside, eyes adjusting by looking at reflections | Biopet, Plasmid Race, online games, codon keychain, comic and souvenirs, fairs and campus booths | No |
| 3 | Looking at the sky, reading the larger order | Hackathon, bioethics workshop, scientific writing, CHAMP training and MIND leaflets, curriculum comparison, PGDE question workshop | No |
| 4 | Returns to the cave with a light | Psoriasis leaflet, CHAMP community outreach, Stephen Tsui talk, patient FAQ site, CUBE articles | Yes |
Stage 0 · Background 洞穴
People take distorted shadows — fearful, incomplete stories about modern science — for reality.
At the start of the allegory the prisoners have been chained since childhood. They see only shadows on the wall, and they treat those shadows as the world.
We do not run a Stage 0 event. Stage 0 is the condition the later stages are built against: biology as a rumour, a medicine made of bacteria as something to fear, and, later, psoriasis as something contagious. Stages 1–3 build a truer picture of the science. Stage 4 is where that picture is taken to the people the psoriasis myth actually harms.
Stage 1 · Initial enlightenment 初步啟蒙
The prisoner turns, sees the fire that was casting the shadows, and walks toward it.
He is still inside the cave. The light is weak. It is the first real thing he has seen, and he is no longer facing only the wall.
Constructivism and experiential learning. Knowledge is built when a learner touches something real. The aim is curiosity, and a molecule that can be seen.
In the classroom this is first contact with DNA. We do not pitch PSORATES here.
Banana DNA extraction
Students heard what a genetically modified product is, and where biotechnology should stop. They folded DNA origami so the double helix was an object in the hand. They then broke up banana tissue and precipitated the DNA until the strands were visible. A survey was taken before and after the workshop.
Materials: workshop proposal and protocol.
DNA Detectives
A full-day lab aligned with the elective syllabus. In the morning, a short lecture on synthetic biology and micropipetting. In the afternoon, DNA extraction from fish, PCR of the COI gene, an absorbance check of the extract, and an agarose gel to confirm the amplification. The day closed with BLASTn. A survey was taken before and after.
Materials: proposal, protocol, teaching slides.
Laboratory practical
Students transformed bacteria, seeded plates, and streaked yakult plates. On the dry-lab side they designed a plasmid and looked at a protein with AlphaFold. These sessions are Stage 1 because the point is to handle the tools. The design challenge and the ethics workshop from the same two days are Stage 3.
Stage 2 · Stepping into the light 踏入光明
Outside the cave the sun is too bright, so the prisoner first studies reflections in the water until his eyes adjust.
He cannot look straight at the objects yet. The reflection is the same object, in a form he can stand.
Gamification, flow, and scaffolded learning. Challenge and skill stay close enough that a player keeps going. Each tool removes one layer of support as the idea gets clearer.
The deliverables come first. The fairs are where those deliverables meet an audience.
Tools
Biopet × Odyssey
A player raises a biopet, in the style of a Tamagotchi, while moving through a journey modelled on Odysseus going home. Each task is a piece of synthetic biology, so the story and the syllabus are the same path. The idea started at Con-Con, where a pop-culture crowd made a classroom lecture the wrong shape of teaching.
Plasmid Race
Each player builds a plasmid from five cards: vector, restriction enzyme, promoter, gene, terminator. Calling “Verify!” scores the plasmid. The game is recombinant DNA and a little experimental design, played as resource management. An online version sits with the physical deck.
Online games
Each game isolates one mechanism. The audience line is the youngest group it is written for.
ATCG Race
Write the complementary strand before the clock runs out. The skill is base pairing that still holds under speed.
Code of Life
Walk the central dogma in order: engineered DNA in a bacterium, packaging, mRNA, protein, cell, organism. Information flow, one layer at a time.
BIO-TYPE: Tactical Lab
A tactical game. Players field three organisms, spend ATP and MAT, and chain scientist roles. The lesson is that an intervention changes a result only if you can say how.
ELISA Crime Lab
A sandwich ELISA, played as a case: capture antibody, detection antibody, enzyme readout, controls. False positives are part of the scoring, so a pretty well is not automatically a true one.
AdipoLab
A competitive lab sim of GPER signalling and adipocyte differentiation. Players have to decide what the assay is actually measuring.
ATGC: DNA Architecture Suite
Assemble DNA under a fixed budget, then design forward and reverse primers that satisfy pairing and thermodynamics. Molecular design as a constraint problem.
Transcriptome Tactics 轉錄策略
Complete three proteins under transcription rules. Opponents can break a chain. Finishing and blocking are both legal moves, so timing is part of the biology.
Ploidy: The Great Divide 倍性分裂
A new eukaryotic cell, played in cards. Spend ATP, replicate the genome, build the cytoskeleton, choose asexual or sexual division, and absorb the cost of getting the division wrong.
MBTI × codon keychain
A learner looks their MBTI type up on the standard codon table and builds the triplet as a keychain. The object is the translation step: three bases, one amino acid. The craft form came out of the Hong Kong Illustration and Creative Show, in partnership with Tadaland’s 16 Tadamates.
Also on the table
- Mirror and the science comic — the same ideas, readable without a lecture.
- Tote bag — a synthetic-biology line people actually carry.
- 3D-printed plasmid — the card-game parts as a physical model.
- Instagram — short reels for people who will not stop at a booth. @igem.cuhksbs.
Where the tools were used
Hong Kong’s large public science exhibition
Live Plasmid Race, the online games, the comic, and souvenirs, running across the week. The multilingual psoriasis leaflet was on the table too; what that leaflet is for is written up in Stage 4.
Arts audience
Comics, the creative pieces, and the 3D-printed plasmid, in a setting where most visitors did not come for a biology talk.
iGBA High School Seminar
A half-day on how iGEM is structured and how a team prepares, with iGEM ambassadors, Thermo Fisher, and iGEM HQ. Idea exchange, not a project pitch.
Student science project competition
An interactive booth for younger students. This was the first public outing of the games and the comic.
Con-Con
The comic led the booth at an Asia-wide pop-culture convention. The audience is the reason Biopet exists: a Tamagotchi-like pet will be picked up where a methods talk will not.
Hong Kong Illustration and Creative Show 文創展
Science shown as something you can make. The handcraft line of activities, including the codon keychain with Tadaland, started from this room.
Our own faculty
Homecoming for faculty and alumni. In August, a small session for newly admitted Biomedical Sciences students on subject planning. In September, the start-of-year gathering. Same tools, an audience that will meet synthetic biology in lectures a few weeks later.
CU CHAMPION YMMP
Career routes in biotechnology and healthcare, plus the stress of choosing subjects. Stage 2 because the task is orientation: a first clear look, not a design project.
APiC
We brought the games, the evaluation methods, and this four-stage framework to an Asia-Pacific iGEM education workshop, and took other teams’ tools home.
Stage 3 · Looking at the sky 仰望天空
The eyes have adjusted. The learner can study the order of the sky: systems, design, and the responsibility that comes with being able to build.
Isolated objects are no longer the whole picture. The question becomes how the parts fit, and what one ought to do with them.
Higher-order thinking, project-based learning, and critical reflection. Learners analyse, evaluate, and create, and they write the safety case as part of the work.
MedGene × SynBio Hackathon
A 1.5-day project, not a lecture about projects. Half the briefs are medical genetics, half are synthetic biology. Each team gives a five-minute talk and takes two minutes of questions. Finalists speak longer.
The scaffold is fixed, so a team that has never designed a circuit can still finish: background, one simple design, a diagram, a parts list, three measurements they would actually take, and a short safety and ethics paragraph. That is one pass of Design–Build–Test–Learn, and it asks for application, analysis, evaluation, and creation in that order.
Medical genetics briefs: CRISPR-based ideas for Lyme disease control; prenatal screening for Down’s syndrome; diagnosis and counselling in osteogenesis imperfecta; approaches to facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy that do not use CRISPR.
Synthetic biology briefs: an engineered probiotic for obesity; a topical live biotherapeutic for psoriasis; a gut–brain-axis approach to dementia; a rapid diagnostic or countermeasure for antibiotic resistance. The psoriasis brief is a design problem. Public teaching about psoriasis stigma is Stage 4.
Feedback from the two days described gains in knowledge, in working as a group, in ethics, and in the sense that research is something a secondary student can do.
From Treatment to Gene Editing
A discussion workshop, not a lecture. Cases get heavier in steps: ordinary illness and a new technology, then cancer treatment, then a rare genetic disease, then a reproductive decision that lands on the next generation. Groups argue risk, benefit, consent, cost, and who gets a scarce treatment. “Best interest” is asked from the patient, the family, the clinician, and the scientist, who do not weight it the same way. One question is left open on purpose: how a person living with a genetic condition may feel about a project to edit that condition away.
How to write a scientific article
IMRaD, and the habits that make a paper readable: clarity, concision, precision, and the usual ways synbio writing fails. Groups then marked up published passages, stronger and weaker, and said what they would change. Prof. Anna Blocki led the session.
CU CHAMPION training and the MIND competition
Primary healthcare, working across professions, communication, and basic handling of medical devices. Synthetic biology entered as Plasmid Race plus a Design–Build–Test–Learn cycle with a real product at the end: a leaflet or poster on live biotherapeutics, psoriasis, or brain health. Students researched, designed, and revised. Using the leaflet with the public is Stage 4. Designing it is this stage.
What secondary curricula actually teach
A provisional framework for whether a secondary biology course leaves a student able to start a synthetic-biology project. Six domains:
- Molecular biology foundations
- Core biotechnology tools
- Synthetic biology concepts
- Design–Build–Test–Learn
- Data, modelling, and research literacy
- Bioethics, biosafety, and society
The comparison looks at three things side by side: what the official syllabus asks, what the public exam rewards, and what a student still cannot do. The written recommendations for curriculum designers are the next draft, not a finished policy.
Paper-setting workshop
Pre-service teachers. We separated biotechnology from synthetic biology, then set HKDSE next to iAL, Gaokao, and the Japanese curriculum and said where Hong Kong could ask for more. Teachers then rewrote authentic HKDSE-style items so a synthetic-biology idea was examined properly. A shared question bank from the session is still being compiled.
Stage 4 · The return 返回
The person who has seen the sky goes back into the cave and asks others to turn around.
He does not go back to instruct from above. He goes back because the shadows are still on the wall for everyone who stayed.
Service learning, culturally responsive teaching, and destigmatisation. Understanding is used for someone else. In this programme, that someone else is often a person living with the stigma of psoriasis.
This is the only stage that teaches psoriasis to the public.
Psoriasis and synthetic biology leaflet
The leaflet states two things plainly. Psoriasis is a chronic autoimmune disease, and it is not contagious. It also explains what microbes do on skin, and what probiotics and live microbial therapies are being tested as add-on care. Patient perspectives sit next to the medical text, so the reader meets a person, not only a mechanism.
We printed it in Chinese, English, Tagalog, Indonesian, and Khmer. Each translation was proofread by members of that community. Distribution was face to face: street interviews, and Sunday campaigns with domestic workers, in Mong Kok and Causeway Bay. The same leaflet travelled with the JSSE booth in Stage 2; the conversations that use it to answer stigma belong here.
Community outreach
The leaflets designed in the MIND competition were explained in person, to elderly participants, alongside checks and short teaching on cardiovascular health, brain health, psoriasis, and live biotherapeutics. Students answered the misconceptions themselves. The hours below include training, not only the visits.
- 12outreach sessions and health talks
- 347elderly participants
- ~300health checks
- ~155drug consultations
- 10alumni and healthcare professionals
- 2,320student service hours, including training
Stephen Tsui on live biotherapeutics
A talk on why a live biotherapeutic is being studied for psoriasis, and what its safety case looks like. The audience was patients and the public. The point was to replace a fear of “engineered bacteria as medicine” with the actual rationale.
Hong Kong Psoriasis Society FAQ and Smart Q&A
A community site: a patient forum, a news board that a moderator has to approve, and a chat that searches existing posts and approved news before it answers. Answers cite the source they came from and carry a medical disclaimer. The site covers topical treatment, oral drugs, biologics, oral small molecules, care across Hong Kong and Shenzhen, complications, severity, and research directions such as engineered probiotics aimed at IL-23/IL-17. It is written to sit beside a doctor’s advice, not to replace it.
CUBE articles and podcast
The Lived Realities of Psoriasis in Hong Kong records what patients described: pain, itch, bleeding, distress, isolation, strain at home, gaps in access to treatment, and thoughts of suicide. Navigating the Ethical Labyrinth: Bioethical Tensions in Synthetic Biology sets out dual-use risk, environmental release, justice, autonomy, and why governance of this field has to stay open to the people it affects. A podcast accompanies the two articles.