Team:CIDEB-UANL Mexico/HumanPractices/Rally

iGEM-CIDEB 2012 High School team from Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León, with the collaboration of iGEM-UANL 2012 team, organized this synthetic rally in order to spread the term “synthetic biology” and “iGEM” in 200 junior high students through a thematic activity. Its main objective is to inform the local community about advantages and applications of synthetic biology and iGEM in a funny, entertaining and stress-free way.

To promote the importance and impact synthetic biology has actually, and inform about the interesting applications through a funny, entertaining, educative and original activity: the “Synthetic rally”. This would help the students learn and enjoy the experience of synthetic biology in a very “silence” way playing thematic games which helped them understand really easy some difficult concepts such as “DNA”, “Plasmids”, “BioBrick”, etc. .

-The purpose of the final activity is to simulate an iGEM competition, in which they would apply their knowledge to build an original circuit and win the “Great BioBrick”.

-To generate in 200 junior high students a “good feeling” about synthetic biology. Show them the applications, benefits, risks, and how they could improve the world by modifying something to make a better place, since medicines to advances for protecting the environment.

Activities:

In order to explain completely what iGEM and synthetic biology several activities were done

-First a small introduction about synthetic biology was given to the students in groups of 2. This was distributed among the students by 2 iGEMers per group. After our iGEM-UANL collaborators gave a brief introduction of what synthetic biology is, some definitions, origins and what does it imply. Then CIDEB iGEMers explained the whole activity and the objective of the activity. This was to create in the students’ mind preparation for what they´d learn.

- Before go out to the rally, for every student to participate and understand the team-collaboration experience, they were arranged in teams of 10 students. They were a total of 200 junior high students. This is an important part of the activity as iGEM is about team work, so they had to be very united and try to understand each other to achieve something, just as iGEM-CIDE, iGEM-UANL and now the rally´s teams.

--The thematic rally was done introducing different concepts and knowledge in every station. This was done in the playground of the school “Colegio Americano Anáhuac”. The participants were junior high students from 7th, 8th and 9th grade. They formed 20 teams of 10 integers each team. For all the teams to experience every stop they followed different roles. For example, in the stop #1 2 teams started, team 1 and team 2. When the time was over they took different paths. Team 1 followed to the right and team 2 followed to the left. This allowed them to go in a circular way until completing every station and against different teams. The logistic was applied to every team in the really.

-This rally was about 10 different stations, each with a different game according to the topic we wanted the students to learn. There were 2 persons in each station, one from iGEM-UANL and one from iGEM-CIDEB. This was the arrangement for a better dynamic explaining the concept of the game and the game itself.

-Once the rally was over, they built a circuit using the BioBricks they won in every station. They had to be very creative in order to apply them to the real life and win the final price.

-This activity concluded with a very little award ceremony where we thanked them for their very big effort, attention and dedication to the activity and gave the “Golden BioBrick” to the winner. We said out loud all the circuits for the whole school to listen the different ideas and applications this may have.

-Finally a second poll was applied to compare it with the first one. This is a very good marker to evaluate our advance in the students´ knowledge and comprehension about synthetic biology..

General Topics of the Rally *DNA and genetic code * Genes and proteins * Genetic Engineering, secuences and biocomputing * iGEM and synthetic biology * BioBricks and Biologic Machines * Final Purpose of synthetic biology- iGEM Projects

STOPS

Objective: To simulate an iGEM competition, in which a biological dispositive that contributes to solve a problem of any kind of nature using BioBricks parts obtained through the rally will be designed. (Not necessary to use all the parts.)

Explanation: A brief explanation will be given of how BioBricks works. The list of BioBricks contains two types of genes: regulatory and functional. All work requires energy, and if it imposes a new function to an organism, then it will require more energy.

The deviation of the use of energy of the new function can seriously alter its metabolism and affects its growth. To reduce that effect, we can make use of regulatory genes. These allow turning on or turning off a gene in response to an environmental stimulus, saving energy for the body.

An example will be provided with both types of genes to clarify its role as well as the objective of the exercise:

Problem: Air pollution with carbon dioxide (CO2).

Identify what is required to approach the problem: 1. To arrive to the atmosphere 2. To remove CO2 3. To take into account the energy expenditure DRAW LARRY WITH THE FOLLOWING GENES: CO2A, CO2R, GVP, OZ, UVR DRAW A FLOW CHART: FLY [GVP] -> to detect CO2 [CO2R] -> To remove CO2 [CO2A] -> To detect holes in the ozone layer [UVR] -> To produce Ozone [OZ].

Proposal: Larry will be able to remove CO2 (CO2A) and activate that function only in presence of the contaminant (CO2R), saving energy. Also produce gas (GVP), which will allow it to ascend and reach the contaminated areas of the atmosphere. Finally (as an additional feature), our bacteria will may produce ozone (OZ) when it detects high levels of UV radiation (UVR), since it will be an indicative of a hole in the ozone layer.

Dynamic:

1. Ask 3 problems that students will try to solve with a focus similar to the one used in the previous example. 2. Each team must design at least one biological device to try to solve one of the problems presented or from their own creativity. Let them know that they can solve other problems that are not listed. 3. They will be have 10 minutes to draw their biological device and to make a flow chart of the operation of the set of genes implemented. 4. A representative from each team will present their proposal briefly.

At the end of the 10 minutes, all the teams will tell to an iGEM member their proposal and the amount of BioBricks used in it. Then, all iGEM members will discuss which deserves the prize of the rally based in the logic of the proposal, the amount of BioBricks used, and the utility of the proposal in the modern world.

The team selected will present their idea to the rest of the teams, they will have to describe their project, the BioBricks used and why they used those BioBricks.

The prize will be “the big BioBrick”, a Lego brick shape boxed lined with foil containing “gansitos”. “Gansitos” is a Mexican snack cake, similar to Twinkies, with the exception of strawberry jelly along with the creamy filling and that is covered in chocolate with chocolate sprinkle topping.

Through this activity many objectives were achieved, from the promotion of iGEM and synthetic biology until the fact of 200 hundred junior high students understanding the whole concept. And not only that, but they actually understood things further that the basis, we introduced terms as DNA, proteins, osmosis, plasmid, BioBricks, transcription, translation, Parts Registry, electrophoresis, bacteria, extraction, purification, etc. Generally these concepts, are very difficult to understand, aver all in junior high students, but through this activity, in which they actually experienced the concept itself, it was much more easy, funny and important. We decided to implement this synthetic rally to spread the concept, but more than knowing what synthetic biology is, we achieved to develop a geed feeling about it in the students.

During the activity some students talked to us and commented that this activity was really funny. It was of course because of the games, but taking advantage of the fun of the activities, introduce these complicate concepts was the interesting part. It was of course difficult to us as well to adapt each concept to a game that helps students understand it. At the time of the logistic, as they were a lot of students, we used a megaphone in order to pay attention to the coordinator, whom announced the time to change to another stop. In general, as they were relatively a few students per stop, it was pretty easy to explain them the biologic concept and the development of the activity.

At the end the final project was the most important part of the activity, because they actually simulated to be in an iGEM competition. They invented a new organism with the BioBricks they recollected through the rally. It was very interesting and fascinating watch students applying their knowledge and creating new “organisms”. Our effort to make them understand synthetic biology was very satisfactory and productive. Actually generating an interest in the junior high students in IGEM was our best result. They even asked for the whole competition and how to participate. They were really interested and fascinated. Us, like a team, were very proud of our team work for a good cause, and of course because we don´t know, maybe one of them someday will create an organism that cures cancer or AIDS. Our conclusion of the activity is that sweat, effort, tiredness, creativity, and team work gave excellent results and satisfaction for the students and for us, plus a very good time of fun and knowledge acquirement.

This activity had a significant importance as the students learned and enjoyed the experience of synthetic biology in a very “silence” way playing thematic games which helped them understand really easy some difficult concepts such as “DNA”, “Plasmids”, “BioBrick”, etc. In every station 2 teams competed to win “BioBrick” pieces. The absolute winner got 1 piece and the other team got only 1.

At the end of the activity, in which they recollected “BioBricks”, they had a time to build a circuit. Every team made a different one with a very innovative use. As the BioBricks were different, the final circuits were very original. At the end the best construction won the “Golden BioBrick”, which was a box wrapped with golden paper filled with some snacks which they enjoyed a lot.