Team:NJU China/Human Practice

Ethical issue has always been a concern in the field of biological research. Especially for synthetic biology, we are modifying life from nature through this. Although synthetic biology brings many benefits to our lives, as far as some people concerned, we are not god and we don’t have the rights to modify natural organisms. Apart from ethical issues, safety is another problem that the public is worrying about.

To clarify these issues and get synthetic biology known to general public, we organized a free debate concerning whether synthetic biology can really benefit our lives and whether we should keep developing this. We invited 20 young students from Jingling High School and we gave them some background about synthetic biology first. Then we divided them into 2 groups, one group supports the idea that synthetic biology does benefit our lives and we should develop this while another group is against this. In the first 2 minutes, one student from each group proposed the standpoint on behalf of the whole group. In the next 40 minutes, each group had 20 minutes to defend their own standpoint.

The debate was fierce and the students were actively involved in, putting forward many wonderful arguments. For example, the positive side said that synthetic biology is just like nuclear energy, though its misuse will cause damage, if we use it in a controllable way, we can definitely benefit from it just like we can use nuclear energy to generate electricity. Those against synthetic biology didn’t resign easily, saying that we are not god and we shouldn’t interfere with nature by genetically engineer the organisms. Moreover, some people might use the techniques developed by synthetic biology to create biological weapons such as super virus, which might pose danger to our lives. Through the 40 minutes’ debate, both sides realized some facts that they ignored before and had a new understanding about synthetic biology. To some extent, they reached a consensus that we should develop synthetic biology, but it should under intensive supervision of the government to avoid misuse.

By means of free debate, the students are not passively receiving the idea that synthetic biology is all good and beneficial. They are actively thinking themselves and come to a conclusion by their own. We believe that free debate is a good option for human practice and worth popularizing. Via free debate, the public can not only know that synthetic biology is beneficial, but also will they understand that why it is good and how should we use it.

Young people are the future of the synthetic biology. To get more students motivated in this field, we organized a synthetic biology workshop for 20 students from Jinling High School.

It began at 9: 00 in the morning and our instructor, Prof. Chen Xi, gave a lecture about synthetic biology at the beginning of the workshop. He introduced those students with the idea about iGEM, and showed them how synthetic biology worked by using several interesting examples. He also encouraged them to participate in it themselves. At the end of his lecture, there was a Q&A part between him and the high school students and that was quite impressive. Though those students didn’t have much background about biology, they were quite innovative and put forward many novel ideas. For example, they were even thinking that maybe we can make crops movable to escape hazards by genetic modification. Through the lecture about synthetic biology, they are embraced by a whole new world.

Apart from learning in the classroom, we hope that the students can be more motivated by doing some lab work themselves. Synthetic biology is about genetic manipulation, so we decided to teach them some basic molecular biology experiments. The first step the students were taught was to extract DNA from Arabidopsis. It was the first time these high school students saw what DNA is like and they were very excited to get the DNA out from the organism. The next step was to PCR amplify two genes in the genome of Arabidopsis. After PCR amplification, the students were taught to load their PCR product into the agarose gel and ran it to see if they had done the second step successfully. When they saw the desired band appear in the gel, they were thrilled. From the lab work, they knew how to conduct basic biological experiment and had more concrete ideas about what synthetic biology was.

After the lecture and conducting experiments themselves, those high school students showed great interest in synthetic biology and strong desire to participate in the iGEM themselves.