Team:KULeuven/Workshop

WORKSHOP DNA- synthetic biology for kids

The team has organized a workshop for children aged 9-11 years old on the 17th of August in Oud-Heverlee. They have explained synthetic biology in a playful way and afterwards the children drew their own visions on synthetic biology and what they would like to create with synthetic biology.

1. MEDIA

The workshop was filmed by ROB TV and this report was recently broadcasted on their network .

2. Protocol to isolate DNA from a tomato

What do we need?

• Tomato
• Salt
• Water
• Detergent
• Ethanol (or whiskey/vodka)
• 3 bowls
• Knife (plastic for the kids)
• A whisk
• Microliter pipet and pipet tips
• Eppendorf tubes
• Filters (coffee filters)
• Funnel

How to isolate DNA?

• Cut a tomato into pieces and put it into a bowl.
• Make a solution of ... (in another bowl)
  • 5 ml Detergent
  • 1 teaspoon of salt
  • 45 ml water
• Add the solution to the pieces of tomato.
• Use the whisk to mix the solution with the pieces of tomato.
• Put the filter in the funnel and pour the tomato - solution mix in the funnel. The filtrate contains DNA.
• To make the DNA visible:
  • Pipet 0,5 ml of the filtrate in an Eppendorf tube
  • Add 1 ml of Ethanol
  • Close the Eppendorf tube
  • Turn the Eppendorf tube with a gentle movement up and down.
• The red color pellet (looks like snot) is DNA.

3. Synthetic biology: what would you create?

4. Personal experience of 'our teachers'

Alice

I was surprised that the children knew a lot about DNA. Due to TV show like CSI, NCIS,… they could already say that with DNA you can identify people. They were pretty excited about science and we had a lot of fun. Doing the experiment was the thing they enjoyed the most and when we asked them to draw what they would create… wauw! It is clear that they even have more fantasy than us. Most of the things they wanted to create were funny, but there were also a few kids who wanted to create something practical e.g. an organism that does their homework and cleans up their room.
This workshop wasn’t only to educate the children. It was also about educating us on how to communicate: Explaining science in an understandable way for people without a background in science is not the easiest thing to do, though it is really important. This was one of our biggest challenges for this workshop, but giving the way the children and their animators responded, we did a good job!