Team:HKUST-Hong Kong/human2.html

From 2011.igem.org

Human
Practice


You can see the detailed information of the card game through this link:

Rules and Card Samples of Card Game






Lab Tour

In order to help the secondary school students understand synthetic biology in more detail, we held a lab tour for them to visit HKUST MBMS (Molecular Biomedical Science) Lab where our iGEM Team works for the iGEM project. With the help of our program assistant, Dr. Jessica Ce Mun Tang, these students learn of what can be done in a synthetic biology lab for research purpose. For example, they learn how to use pipetman and how to run gel to check the DNA digestion products. Students all show a great interest in doing synthetic biology research lab after visiting the lab.


Activity 2 : Be a Plasmid Engineer

Isaac Newton discovered the laws of motion because of an apple falling from tree, Friedrich August Kekulé discovered the structure of benzene after having dreamt of a snake eating its tail…History has repeatedly showed us that many a ground-shaking discovery originated from leaps of creativity and imagination.


Synthetic Biology is no different. Like a sand box, it houses a staggering amount of possibilities, limited only by people’s imagination, and by what people perceive as possible. In this activity, secondary students have a chance to show everyone what they think Synthetic Biology can do after getting some basic idea of synthetic biology through all the activities! We inspire them to think out of the box, and design their own Synthetic Biology project! We ask secondary students to construct a plasmid that carries characteristics from one or more species, and specify which host species they wish to introduce the plasmid into. Following are some interesting examples designed by these students.


1. Extract the starfish DNA and put them into human embryo to create a human body which is able to change colors.

2. Extract the photosynthesis genes from plants and put them into fish. In this way, fish can absorb sunlight and synthesize O2 by themselves.

3. Extract GFP gene from jellyfish, extract jumping DNA from kangaroo, extract running DNA from cheetah and extract wing DNA from bird. Put all these genes into human embryo to create a man who can have a pair of fluorescent wings to fly, run as fast as cheetah and jump as fast as kangaroo.


Actually from all the design we have collected, most of them want to improve human body’s gene by putting some other animals’ gene or combine different genes together.

After they all finish their design, we encourage them to think about whether their designs will be a danger to human society and even the whole earth and also whether their designs will cause any ethical problems.

By this activity, students learn more deeply about how a plasmid works and know Synthetic Biology is a tool that can lead to great advances in science and technology in general, but is not without ethical concerns.


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