Team:Macquarie Australia/Education

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High School

To educate and excite high school students about synthetic biology we planned a 55 min workshop to take to different schools. As part of this workshop we performed a basic DNA extraction from strawberries to make the class more interactive and engaging to the students. We also gave a short introduction talk to introduce the field of synthetic biology to them and a codon optimization challenge to begin to introduce some challenges faced in the lab. Finally we finished with a group discussion where the students were we asked what they would like to design/ make using synthetic biology and then to consider any ethic or legal issues that might be faced with this. They were also given this time to any questions they might have regarding to anything covered during the class.

On the 6th September a team consisting of Kirsten, Chris, Rijata and Diana visited Davison High School to present this workshop to the Year 11 Chemistry class. The following week on the 13th September the same team visited Loreto Kirribilli to present to a Year 10 science class. On both these days we also gave each student a short survey both before and after the workshop, the results of which can be seen below. In total these workshops were attended by 44 students.



Although before the workshop a total of 11 students had heard of synthetic biology before a majority of students had never heard of it or thought it sounded familiar. After the workshop only one student still believed they did not know what synthetic biology was, however this was also followed by a comment saying they did learn more about it then they previously knew.




As would be expected, most students were not sure whether synthetic biology should be regulated or not, as most had not heard of the field. However it was interesting to see that after the workshop at total of 7 students believe there would be no ethical concerns or risks with synthetic biology and 2 students thought it would not need to be regulated.



Once again, unsurprisingly, a majority of students did not don’t know whether this field would be part of the future as they had not heard of it, however it was nice to see every student did think synthetic would be a part of the future of science.

Further it was interesting to see of the total 44 students in attendance at both workshops 6 students did believe that ordinary tomatoes do not have genes but genetically modified tomatoes do, however the other 38 students did not believe this. Further after by the end of the workshop all 44 students did believe their understanding of synthetic biology had improved.

University

To introduce the field of synthetic biology to science students both Kirsten and Diana presented a 15 min lecture in a Molecular Biology course, CBMS224 which most of the team had previously studied. During this talk we introduced the basic principles of synthetic biology linking it to the concepts of genetic engineering, a process they were currently doing in their practical classes. Further we discussed some of the techniques we use in synthetic biology and for our project personally, these included the concept of BioBricks, Gibson Assembly and how each of these work. Before our talk started we gave out a question to each student to assess their previous knowledge of synthetic biology, some of the most interesting answers can be seen below. Further, after the lecture we asked a multiple choice question about the definition of synthetic biology to see whether their understanding had improved.

This lecture was attended by 24 students and before the lecture, when asked “What is synthetic biology? in 1-2 sentences”. The answers received followed four different themes, either the student did not know or heard of synthetic biology, they made a guess at what it might be from the name however were on the wrong track or they were close to a correct meaning however were slightly off or they knew what synthetic biology was before the talk.



Some of the most interesting responses received to the question asked included:

“Synthesising different substances in a lab setting e.g. drug”

“The process in synthetically engineering the DNA code and to create and manipulate the base pair sequence and get the wanted proteins expressed”

“Synthesis of various materials/ microorganisms to produce a product of benefit”

“Replicating biological systems with non-biological components”

Finally after the lecture when asked “Now, what is synthetic biology?” and give the answers

a) The direct manipulation of an organism’s genome or the insertion of DNA into a host after first being isolated and copied from an organism

b) A mechanical or virtual agent, usually an electro-mechanical machine that is guided by a computer program or electronic circuitry

c) The design and construction of new biological parts, devices and systems and the re-design of existing natural biological systems for useful purposes

All students answered correctly with the answer c).

Further we also were able to put a question in the mid-semester exam of this course. When asked:

Gibson Assembly is?

a) A DNA hybridisation method

b) Recombination of homologous DNA

c) A method for jointing overlapping DNA fragments

d) A stage in Polymerase Chain Reaction in DNA amplification

e) A step in production of Gibson guitars

A total of … students answered correct c) of the total … students enrolled in the unit.

Video - Introductory lecture about synthetic biology to 2nd year molecular biology students

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