Public Outreach
Academic research can often seem esoteric and irrelevant to the non-scientific community, sometimes due to the exclusive manner in which it is communicated. Therefore we aimed to bridge that gap using simple, clear science communication strategies.
As part of National Science Week 2015, we teamed up with the Australian Research Council Centres of Excellence for Translational Photosynthesis and Plant Energy Biology to run stalls at events aimed at promoting science and science engagement to the general public. We also ran a stall at ANU Open Day to show the work being done by ANU undergraduates to current and prospective students.
The aim of our activities was to have a simple, interactive demonstration of the basic concepts of our project (and synthetic biology in general). We used memory wire to demonstrate how light could change the shape of proteins and simple polystyrene ball and pipe cleaner models to represent protein interactions and modularity.
“Conveying the aspects of genetic engineering to understand the principles of optogenetics is a difficult task when the recipient may have limited scientific knowledge. I quickly realised it was not possible to take a long educational path from the structure to DNA to genes then proteins and their interactions. Instead, beginning with a demonstration of the conformational change induced in Nitinol wire, it was simple to capture attention and move towards the structure function relationship in biochemistry while using the Nitinol wire as an analogy to the CRY2 protein in the presence of blue light. I believe this strategy delivered the core ideas of our project well and was met by most as a completely novel concept. Feedback was very positive and many people were intrigued as to ask further questions, mainly relating to the lab methods. I really enjoyed the challenge of refining my knowledge of the project to a form that was appropriate for a general audience and found it rewarding when this sparked a genuine interest in the iGEM team.” (Henry)
