Educational Outreach

Sometimes, the opinions about synthetic biology can be very critical and have a negative connotation. We thought of projects to emphasize the positive impact of synthetic biology and draw the public's attention to its useful applications.
How did we integrate human practices in our synthetic biology project? We believe that music can give the needed positive twist on synthetic biology for the public. We practiced a song with rewritten lyrics about synthetic biology and iGEM with a church choir. We also recorded it with a high quality sound system. Have a look at our video! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgMNFmUtP4Y)
Additionally, we want to tell high school students more about synthetic biology, but on the other hand also learn about their previous knowledge and opinion on this field. To add some practical experience to the theory, we went to schools and besides giving lectures organized a practical course for the high school students.

Two schools were invited to participate in our Human Practices project: Twickel college and Montessorri College Twente in Hengelo. We went twice to each school: one day to give a lecture and show the students a movie about synthetic biology with a survey and the second day to give a practicum lesson where the students isolate DNA themselves from a kiwi. The DNA will be dried and weighted and the students with most grams of DNA will receive a prize!

We started with a lecture where we explain the basics of biology, gene cloning and the relevance in synthetic biology. Afterwards, a short film about synthetic biology, made by a Dutch TV broadcasting company, will be shown. There is also a short fragment of iGEM in this film!
In this film, there is also a discussion about the safety of synthetic biology and there is even a little test by the broadcasting company itself to check whether the companies selling synthesized DNA are checking their costumers and the DNA what was ordered by the costumer. Also the patent issue will be discussed in this film.