Team:British Columbia/HP

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Mentoring Young Scientists - (Outreach at Science World on September 20, 2011)

The UBC iGEM 2011 team collaborated with Science World and Future Leaders in Science to deliver a synthetic biology workshop to select high school students and potentially foster the creation of a high school British Columbia iGEM team!

We are thankful to Dr. Catherine Anderson, Program Manager of Future Science Leaders for the opportunity to take part in this innovative program!

We introduced synthetic biology and iGEM to the high school students and guided them through a plasmid activity aimed at solving a real world problem by creating a plasmid with appropriate parts. Our workshop outline can be found at the wiki for iGEM outreach.

Check out our short clip of a day in the lab and lab safety:

Raising Awareness of iGEM and Synthetic Biology - (UBC Orientation on September 6, 2011)

Imagine UBC is the University's orientation and transition program for undergraduate students. 5,000 first-year students, along with upper-year students, and the greater UBC community, are invited to The Main Event, a showcase of campus life with over 200 informative resource booths! We gave strawberry DNA extraction demos and asked students what they thought synthetic biology meant!

A DIY quick protocol: mash up strawberries, mix thoroughly with salt and soap water, filter through a coffee filter or cheesecloth and aliquot the liquid filtrate into microcentrifuge tubes. Carefully add ethanol on top of the water layer, rotate gently and see the DNA precipitate out into the ethanol layer (the shimmery bubbly stuff). I think I see a double helix!

What IS synthetic biology?

To help convey what iGEM and synthetic biology is to the community, our team has started an iGEM Dictionary on the outreach wiki. We will be organizing an activity at the Americas Regional Jamboree to fill up this dictionary with the help of all attending iGEM teams! So please keep an eye out for us and visit our poster!

In addition, we have created a list of synthetic biology quick links found here.

One of the UBC iGEM team's goals is to probe public understanding of synthetic biology and in particular see if it changes over the years. Is the presence of your iGEM team changing public knowledge and perception of synthetic biology?

In 2010, we asked hundreds of students for their definition of synthetic biology and produced this word cloud based on the frequency of keywords:

In 2011, we again asked hundreds of students for their definition of synthetic biology and produced a second word cloud:

It looks like the same keywords keep popping up: Biology, Making, Creating, Man-Made, Synthetic, Fake, Artificial, DNA, life. But it makes you wonder what these terms mean to the individual. What does making and creating man-made synthetic fake artificial DNA biology life mean personally, socially, ethically, environmentally, politically and economically?

Check out this xtranormal video inspired by the answers we got from hundreds of undergraduates!

Human Practices Reflections and Future Directions