While synthetic biology seems out of the realm of the possibilities for Junior High School students to understand, we decided to take our research and the basic ideas behind synthetic biology to the Center for Talent Development (CTD) Program at Northwestern University. This program is for talented students of all ages and we decided to hold a seminar for the biology class which had rising 6th and 7th graders.

In this seminar, we presented the basic ideas behind synthetic biology to the students about how there are limitless possibilities of what can be done with biology. One of our main examples was the green fluorescent pigs; a gene from jellyfish can be taken and inserted into the genome of pigs, leading to fluorescence within pigs. The students were extremely intrigued at the possibilities. Then when we explained our project to the students they were interested at how this system could be used in their mouth to fight cavities. Some kids even asked about how drinking orange juice or lemonade would affect the dual state, and whether it would activate the pH-inducible promoter or not.

At the end of the presentation we split the students into 3 different groups at which point we acted as advisors, allowing them to come up with their own ideas of iGEM-like projects. One of the best ideas was using a cell to fix CO2 to make energy.

After the presentation, the CTD professor was very impressed at how quickly the students were able to pick up the information and offered us to hold a second seminar for another group of students later that evening. That too was equally successful and we received many comments from students who wanted to enter the Center for Talent Development Program next year hoping to maybe take a course on synthetic biology.