Human Practice

We carried out two activities, the first one ‘Ethics’ and second one ‘Safety, Security and Environment’ as our Human Practice’s activities. ‘Ethics’ is the introduction of synthetic biology through our team’s experiment priority. ‘Safety, Security and Environment’ are research of the environmental influences on the aquatic life of Lake Biwa when Agrobacterium gets into the water.

Ethics

The knowledge regarding synthetic biology and iGEM within the people of Japan is very low. So we want to increase the number of people with interests in synthetic biology and iGEM by introducing them to the people. By introducing synthetic biology in the national conference of Japan, we think that many problems relating to the lack of natural resources can resolved through development of synthetic biology. And, in iGEM2013, we performed two activities.

Introduction　for outside teachers

On the 15th of June 2013 team Biwako Nagahama organized an open conference for the high school teachers introducing and explaining about the iGEM. The main objective behind the program was to introduce the high school teachers about synthetic biology and spread the information to the respective schools about iGEM and its programs expecting the participation of Japanese High school participation in the High School Category & tried to find out the cause for the lack knowledge and information about the High School competition. We can expect great many things from the high school students if they could participate and experience the international competition from the high school level.

原口のスライム

We can simply feel that Japan is starting to get isolated in the development of science and technology. So we think that we have to close up the distance between other countries in the development on science and technology to broaden the concept of synthetic biology.

For the introduction of science and technology from the local level we felt the need of introduction and increase the interest from childhood itself. So we organized Waku-waku Town Fiesta at the Nagahama North Elementary School. The main objective of the Fiesta was to provide a chance to the children from lower level to get

intact with science from the early stage. The children had experienced the production of lime mixing detergent, colored water and adding Aqueous Borax solution to it. All the children who had theoretically learnt about the slime preparation in their class actively took part and enjoyed the program. We also had a brief session introducing about the synthetic biology but we felt that either it was too earlier to teach the children about the synthetic biology or our explaining methodology was too difficult for the elementary school to understand. So we have decided to organize more similar programs with more simple but interesting experiments which can be enjoyed by the children as well as increase their interest towards science and synthetic biology.

Enviroment

There is Lake Biwa which is the greatest lake in Japan close by our school. The water of Lake Biwa is used in the range wide as city-water. If bacteria should leak, it may be caused by an environmental problem. So, we make sure of bacteria measure in round environment when Agrobacterium tumefaciens leak out of labo. And, in order for us to know synthetic biology more, we do not transform by operating a plasmid but the simple method by UV irradiation. Then, we thought that it was easy to deepen an understanding. In this experiment, there must be few problems, even if bacteria escape. However,we thought that Agrobacterium which is soil bacteria, when it escapes in soil. Before that happens, we should take care of management of bacteria.

櫛本

井上