Team:UANL Mty-Mexico/Synthetic Rally

Objectives

Promote the importance and impact of Synthetic Biology, inform about the interesting applications through a funny, entertaining, educative and original activity. This would allow the students learn and enjoy the experience of Synthetic Biology in a very “Silence” way, playing thematic games which can help them understand 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”.

Aware 200 junior high students about Synthetic Biology. Show them the applications, benefits, risks, and how they could improve the world by modifying characteristics to make a better place while protecting the environment.

Activities:

In order to explain completely what iGEM and Synthetic Biology is several activities were done:

1. First an introduction about Synthetic Biology was given to all the students who were divided in 2 groups.

2. Before going out to the rally, all the students were arranged in 20 small teams composed of 10 students. This is an important part of the activity as iGEM is about team work, so teams had to be very united and try to understand each other to achieve the goals in each activity.

3. 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. 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 opposite 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.

4. 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 staff 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.

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

6. This activity concluded with a very little award ceremony, where we thanked them for their big effort, attention and dedication to the activity and gave the “Great BioBrick” to the winner. We compared out loud all the circuits built by the whole school, so everybody could listen the different ideas and applications they developed.

7. 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. Polls results were included in Jr. High School Surveys Results

General Topics of the Rally

1. DNA and genetic code

2. Genes and proteins

3. Genetic Engineering, sequences and biocomputing

4. iGEM and synthetic biology

5. BioBricks and Biologic Machines

6. Final Purpose of synthetic biology- iGEM Projects

Synthetic Rally STOPS Back to top

Stop #1: Plasmid Conjugation!

Objective: Understand the plasmid conjugations in bacteria as a mechanism of natural DNA transference between organisms.

Activity: Each team will hold their hands forming a big circle and passing the “plasmid” (a hula hoop) through the complete team circle. The teams will compete with each other; and the faster team wins.

Materials: 2 hula-hoops and 1 chronometer.

Stop #2: Building with BioBricks

Objective: Understand that most of BioBricks constructions increase their difficulty as they increase their size.

Activity: The teams will compete to build the highest inverse tower of cans they can. The highest tower built and during 15 seconds is the winner.

Materials: Approximately 60 cans and 2 chronometers.

Stop #3: Blind Transcription

Objective: Simulate the transcription of DNA in order to form messengers of RNA as a mechanism in genetic expression.

Activity: A labyrinth was drawn over the floor where certain promoters and transcription terminators were lying on the floor. One team member with his eyes blindfolded will crawl acr