Educational

When we think about the diverse features presented by a Policy & Practices activity and its effects on society, an aspect to be considered is our team’s influence in education. We’ve organized three different activities with the main goal to reach various educational levels in our city. Each one of these activities will be described in the topics shown below.

First Part:

The proposal of developing a class about Synthetic Biology in high schools encountered problems and challenges that made it impossible to be accomplished.

Reaching high schools with the theme “Synthetic biology and its applications” was an attempt to talk to the students and highlight the advances in research on the DNA molecule and its relation with the realms of engineering science, showing what kind of novelties this knowledge can bring to our contemporary world. It could be as well an opportunity for the students to acknowledge that the contents learned during high school are important for great iGEM projects to happen; to demonstrate the significance of multidisciplinary knowledge and how it can permeate through different fields. Our project, the development of the repellent by understanding the metabolic pathway of limonene synthase and how it could be engineered, would be mentioned as an example of this multidisciplinarity.

Our objective was to present a 45-minute class which we would approach from the origins of synthetic biology, through the basic skills to work in a science lab, to the development of iGEM and its expansion across the globe. After that, we intended to start a discussion about the themes presented with the students and verify whether the Brazilian educational system is able to prepare high school students to think about synthetic biology and to allow the participation of these students in iGEM. The applications of this subject would be brought into discussion, especially about the public’s acceptance on using such products, equipment and, in our case, the Bug-shoo; how safe the students would believe to be a product made by synthetic biology techniques. Would the projects generated by iGEM teams be fully accepted by society?

These are the discussions to be had with high school students: to present the alternatives offered by universities and to attempt bringing them closer to the high schools. The problems caused by dengue fever in our city in 2015 would also be debated at schools, with the development of a record on the disease’s rate between the students.

However, the school’s approach about the possibility of this activity wasn’t very receptive, offering little time for its execution, with little participation from the students. Hence this fact, since the activity wouldn’t happen as idealized, the team decided to put it aside and invest the time in other promising activities. We’ve sought to promote synthetic biology and the bug-shoo in congresses and workshops, with wide participation of students from diverse educational levels.

This intervention gave us a happy opportunity to unite members of our Team. Seeing the smiling faces of the children and their curiosity for our bacteria costumes really inspired UFSCar-Brasil!

Seminar Cycles

For an extended period in the first and second semester of 2015, our team offered weekly seminar cycles to the academic community, which aimed to increase the participants’ knowledge about the iGEM competition and synthetic biology as a whole. With this activity we sought to instruct the essential characteristics of Synthetic biology. This activity is the basis of the project’s development, and also enables the public to know more about the team and the competition’s organization, giving it more public visibility and increasing interest in future participations.

The lectures’ themes were published weekly on our Facebook page, in a way that many people could see and, depending on their interest, attend the lectures. There was a lot of interest from biotecnology students, especially freshmen, showing the biggest interest in new knowledge areas like Synthetic biology.

In the first lecture, entitled "drawing life - Building the next biological revolution", we sought to introduce the main concepts of molecular biology applied to synthetic biology projects and also a simple comparison between electric circuits and biological ones that influenced the developing of synthetic DNA manipulation technic.

In another moment, we discussed the topic, "research and innovation - The power of Syntethic Biology", which presented the history, methods and research that have already been developed and also the immense and innovative potentiality of synthetic biology.

The lecture "Biobrick standard and Assembly method", as its name suggests, showed the characteristics behind the biobrick concepts and the applications of Assembly methods.

The objective being to increase the perceptions of the application of synthetic biology, we prepared the lecture "Resuscitation of ancestral genes - Applications of syntethic biology", where we explained molecular evolution, techniques involved in ancestral genes discovery, motivation behind that kind of research and how synthetic organism manipulation machinery is used like a tool for new research and discoveries in that area.

Furthermore, the development and application of synthetic biology biosecurity aspects were also addressed in a lecture "Biosecurity and Syntethic Biology: risks and challenges", and the modelling tool was emphasized in the lectures ", “Less is more – Coco Chanel” and “Mathematics – A biological tool”.

In addition to characteristics of synthetic DNA manipulation techniques, we also sought to explain our own project, which was in development, in the lecture “2015 project” and “BUG-SHOO: From lab to society – Results and Perspectives”. In the lecture “iGEM: The competition”, we Included an overview about its history, participating countries in the competition, the Brazilian participation, the objectives and covered areas, tips to start a new project, teams related to iGEM and also all the requests to reach every medal.

To highlight the human practices aspect and the significance of social and educational application required by the competition, we presented the lecture "Improving the education and human practices with Syntethic Biology", which exposed how synthetic biology, the iGEM competition and science itself are linked to societal problems.

SBPC Jovem

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