Team:HKUST-Hong Kong/human.html

Human
Practice

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 Ecoli

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.

Continue with Workshop's report

Human
Practice

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.

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