Team:HKUST-Hong Kong/human.html

Human Practice - Workshop

Overview

Synthetic Biology is an emerging field combining conventional Biology with engineering principles. Employing techniques rooted in genetic engineering, scientists attempt to introduce new biological functions to existing organisms, ranging from creating biosensors to detect viruses and bacteria, to those which can actively degrade pollutants in the environment. Since this is a relatively new field of area, our iGEM team members, should not only learn and enjoy from our research experience, but also try to promote synthetic biology to the general public so that more people will have a better understanding of this new area.

In order to achieve this goal, this year, our human practice group of iGEM 2011 HKUST Team held a Synthetic Biology Workshop for secondary school students on 17th, Sep.

Apart from the workshop, our human practice group also modified a Synthetic Biology Survey originally from Austria for the Hong Kong public. We want to collect data from this survey to get general public’s perception of synthetic biology, what influences their impression about it and their thought of the future development of synthetic biology.

2.iGEM 2011 HKUST Synthetic Biology Workshop

The iGEM 2011 HKUST Synthetic Biology Workshop aims at introducing some basic idea of synthetic biology and sharing knowledge of Synthetic Biology to the secondary school students at Grade 9 and 10.

Base on this goal, we design our workshop into 4 parts. The first part is a brief introduction to what Synthetic Biology is, and then we design two games aimed to enhance the students’ understanding of synthetic biology and also encourage their interaction with iGEM team members. There is also a tour to the laboratory where our iGEM team members work. At the end, a sharing session is held to provide chances for secondary students to share their opinions about this workshop and their understanding of Synthetic Biology.

Introduction of Synthetic biology One of our team advisors, Julie Lin, gave a brief introduction of what synthetic biology is at the beginning of the workshop. This introduction helps students have a basic idea and some knowledge of the synthetic biology. For example, we talk about what is gene and how to modify gene by introducing the basic knowledge of transcription, translation and PCR. Also we inspire the students to answer some questions during the introduction to help them understand synthetic biology more easily.

Activity 1 : The Life of E. coli

Our human practice group has designed a card game for secondary students in order to introduce the general principles of Synthetic Biology and the techniques employed in this field. In this card game, students play as an E. coli, a bacterial species often used in Synthetic Biology due to its fast growth rate, resilience to environmental stress and ease of cultivation. Throughout the game, students will attempt to evolve by constructing pathways (a promoter with a gene). By activating promoters and pathways, they will score points, which are tallied at the end, with the highest scorer declared the winner.

After playing this game, students can know the basic know ledge of pathway. For example, they will know promoters need to be activated to initiate gene transcription, different genes code for different proteins with different functions and also some technologies commonly used in constructing pathways such as PCR.

Human Practice - Workshop

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.

Human Practice - Workshop

Reflection

We design a feedback form for all the secondary students to fill in. From all the feedback forms, they all think the whole workshop is interesting and helpful. They come into the workshop without so much knowledge about Synthetic Biology at first but after this workshop, they all get some basic idea of what synthetic biology is. Below are some feedback given by secondary students:

"The workshop is very interesting and informative. You explained it in a way that I can understand and take in the knowledge easily."

"Thank you to everyone involved in this workshop which all of us greatly enjoyed. All the activities were interesting and well organized and all of the iGEM Team members encourage all students to participate in the workshop actively. "

"I thought the card game was very out thought out and was very useful as well as interesting."

"I really liked this workshop! It used creative ways to introduce a very new topic and it was extremely successful!"

"This was a very inspiring workshop-not only was it fun, but it was also very informative. Thank you!"

Here comes the reflection of our iGEM Team members.

Claire, WU Yunmin:
“Synthesis”, instead of cheers, the student shouted with a big smile when we took the big photo at last. As a helper, I was pretty sure that they had spent a happy morning with us, and more importantly captured the fundamental concepts of what synthetic biology does and how it basically works.

The workshop was my first time to introduce synthetic biology as well as our project to someone outside the campus and someone I have ever met. It was not until this workshop when I proudly talking about our project that I realized that how much I had devoted to the project and how deep I was in love with it. Besides, it taught me that teamwork matters a lot. In the process, we argued, we fought, but nothing prevented us from working for the same goal. The dispute didn’t split us but made the bonding between us even stronger. I really appreciated having a wonderful team like this and I will be working towards such kind of team in future projects.

Steven, Deng Yisong:
We did make efforts in the preparation process and those students' smiling face make me believe that all the time and energy involved is not wasted. I am pretty glad to know that most of them got to know something about synthetic biology and they will tell others what they have learnt in our workshop.

Michael, LU Yang:
As a member of the Human Practice group of iGEM 2011 HKUST Team, I am amazed and satisfied by what we have done in the past few months. The task was not easy, and we sacrificed much time designing the whole progress, discussing every detail of the activities, preparing the materials, having rehearsals while working on wet lab day after day as well. However, we achieved our goal perfectly. The secondary school students felt excited in our workshop and enjoyed their time, which is the best reward for the whole human practice group. The new area of synthetic biology is also better known by those young students and the workshop aroused their interest in this area. I feel so proud of our achievements.

Shirley, XU Jiajing:
During the workshop, I was strongly impressed by the creativity and enthusiasm of the secondary school students we invited to our workshop. To be honest, they contributed a lot to the overall success of our workshop. Of course, helpers' and organizers' hardworking also has played an important role. As an organizer and helper, I should say it is true that the preparing work for such a novel synthetic biology workshop is tiring. You should start from the every simple point and organize a whole picture by yourselves. However, once you saw people actually enjoyed a lot in it, you would feel all was rewarding.

Human Practice - Workshop

Game Rules

Dice Types
There are three dices types in the game, a “move” dice for steps; a “card” dice for drawing cards; an “activation” dice for activating promoter.

• “Card” dices have three colors: green for promoter, blue for gene, and yellow for function.
• “Activation” dices have faces representing the respective activated promoter. They include T7, pLac, pBad and one blank face (no activation).

Playing the Game
Each turn is divided into 6 steps:
1) Roll the dice: The player rolls three dices: “move” dice, “card” dice, and “activation” dice.
2) Activate the promoter: Determined by the “activation” dice, activate all corresponding promoters on the table for each player. Calculate the new score.
3) Draw step: Draw a card according to the “card” dice.
4) Move step: The number of steps you move forward is determined by the “move” dice. Panel bonuses and penalties apply at the end of this step.
5) Play step: You may play up to 3 cards from your hand during this step.
6) Trading: You may trade 2 promoters in for 1 gene, or 2 genes for 1 promoter before you end your turn.

Constructing Pathways
To score points, you must first construct a completed pathway by pairing a promoter with a gene, and then place them on the table. You may construct any number of pathways, but once they are on the table, they cannot be returned to your hand.

Scoring
You earn points by following the criteria below:
1) You start with 100 points. Whenever a promoter is activated, the score on the gene is added to your total score.
2) Promoters are activated either by the “activation” dice, or corresponding function cards.
3) No promoters are activated during the first round and your promoters will no longer activate after the turn you pass the finish line.
4) Speed Bonus: The first player who finished the game will gain a bonus of 500 points while the second player will gain 200 points.
5) Card Bonus: After the game is finished, all the unused cards in your hand and function cards placed on the table will earn you 50 points each. All the completed pathways will count as 200 points each.Back

Human Practice - Workshop

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