Team:HKU-Hong Kong/Human Practice

Hong Kong is generally regarded as a city for business and banking; science appeals less well to the general public despite the presence of internationally well-regarded tertiary institution. Elsewhere, biotechnology in HK remains in its infancy and synthetic biology has barely been heard of.

Under this context we decided to organize two initiatives – a HKU iGEM Open Day and a school workshop, with the following objectives:

1. Introduce synthetic biology to secondary school students.

2. Introduce the iGEM competition and the HKU iGEM team to secondary school students.

3. Provide lab sessions for the participants so they can have first-hand experience on some common molecular biology lab techniques

4. Raise participants’ interest in the biosciences

5. Provide a platform for participants to know more about undergraduate science in HKU

The HKU 2011 iGEM Open Day was held on 24th September, 2011 with help and support from the HKU School of Biological Sciences. The Open Day was a whole day event coordinated and led by members of the iGEM team. We were able to invite a total of 34 Form 5 – 6 secondary school students from three schools to participate.

There were two parts to the Open Day.

First, we gave a presentation. The presentation covered iGEM, our Super-Silencer project, biobricks and a brief overview of synthetic biology. Also, we dedicated a portion of the presentation to review the basics of molecular biology since a number of participants have not learnt about them yet in school. Towards the end, we also introduced the background and necessity of two lab techniques: plasmid extraction and agarose gel electrophoresis, to which students are required to carry out in the consequent lab session.

The second part were two lab sessions: plasmid extraction and agarose gel electrophoresis. Students were split into groups of five/six, and each group was required to extract two plasmids from cell cultures provided by us: (i) the pEGFP plasmid, which houses the GFP gene that is essential to quantitative analysis in our project; and (ii), the pROT plasmid, which contains the fusion protein H-NS::tetR gene.

After a ‘live’ demonstration by George, students were assigned time to practice using pipettes before carrying out the extraction based on lab protocols provided to them. Of course, each group were monitored by an iGEM member who further explained the rationale behind each step.

The extracted plasmids were then visualized using agarose gel electrophoresis. Due to time concerns, we prepared the gel beforehand. Students however, were asked to mix the sample with loader dye before unloading it into the wells. As gel electrophoresis was being carried out, students were given a chance to observe pEGFP E.coli under a UV transilluminator. Finally, each group got back the gel photo and we explained to them how to interpret the results. Although some groups were unable to extract plasmid DNA well, we felt the students still learnt a lot since none of them has ever come across these lab techniques throughout their high school years.

After a day of work (and laughter) we concluded the Open Day by presenting students with certificates, souvenirs and photo-taking. Based on the feedback forms, it is fair to say that the Open Day was a relative success and achieved most of its objectives (see above). Most of the students showed good initiative to learn and had fun in doing the labs in particular.

Participants feedback: