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<p>Synthetic Biology is still little known in Chile but its numerous applications and its rapid development at international scale make it relevant to teach in educational institutions. Moreover, pupils are the future professionals of the country, so it is necessary to broaden young minds introducing Synthetic Biology, how it works and its collaborative vision. This would help forming responsible citizens.</p> | <p>Synthetic Biology is still little known in Chile but its numerous applications and its rapid development at international scale make it relevant to teach in educational institutions. Moreover, pupils are the future professionals of the country, so it is necessary to broaden young minds introducing Synthetic Biology, how it works and its collaborative vision. This would help forming responsible citizens.</p> | ||
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<p>Since this kind of activity was new for the high schools the team worked with, teachers helped with internal diffusion and they also invited other teachers and authorities of the institution.</p> | <p>Since this kind of activity was new for the high schools the team worked with, teachers helped with internal diffusion and they also invited other teachers and authorities of the institution.</p> | ||
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In Chile, little is known about Synthetic Biology. There is only one Chilean start’up (web page) really related to this area, and universities only began to participate iGEM since in 2012 Team UC_Chile.
To answer these questions, we developed a diffusion plan of this
methodology based on three activities:
Synthetic Biology is still little known in Chile but its numerous applications and its rapid development at international scale make it relevant to teach in educational institutions. Moreover, pupils are the future professionals of the country, so it is necessary to broaden young minds introducing Synthetic Biology, how it works and its collaborative vision. This would help forming responsible citizens.
Since this kind of activity was new for the high schools the team worked with, teachers helped with internal diffusion and they also invited other teachers and authorities of the institution.
The introduction consisted in presenting what Synthetic Biology is, how it works, what the main engineering principles are and why the collaborative and open work is so important. To make sure all these concepts had been understood, the team organized a game in which the pupils had to find the word corresponding to the projected picture...and some sweets were given to the winners!
Right after this game the pupils were asked what they thought about the genetic modification of living beings...and the conversation reached the topic of Super Heroes and improved human beings!
The practical activity was based on analogies between the genetic parts of biological systems and the different standardized parts of the game, as it is shown in the picture below.
Pupils had to assemble promotors, RBS, coding sequences and terminators, represented by pieces of different colours and lengths, and make the modules interact between them with pieces of wool. This way, they could represent events like activation or inhibition of a promotor and production of a protein. Activation, inhibition and production were symbolized by green, red and white threads, respectively.
The goal was to make the pupils collaboratively find solutions to the exposed problems, which difficulty grade increased as the workshop progressed. The workshop can be downloaded here. The team also elaborated an electronic glossary to make sure that the concepts wouldn’t be forgotten after the activity.
As it was the first time that such an activity was implemented, the team asked for students and teachers feedback, in order to improve the pedagogical material for the next collaboration with an educational institution.
This great and valuable experience taught us that young generations are very creative, so they could contribute to Synthetic Biology as much as Synthetic Biology can contribute to their personal and professional development. We also demonstrated that the complex concepts of Synthetic Biology could be explained to people who don’t have any specific knowledge about this methodology, just by finding a pedagogical support that raises interest (here, the legos). Finally, we also believe this workshop can be used, re-used, scaled up and its grade of complexity can be adapted to the course; indeed, we realized this activity for publics from 12 to 40 people and from 15 to 18 years old pupils.
If you are interested in knowing more about how the activity was received, here you can read some comments and see a video recorded at the end of the last activity. If you want to see more photos, please visit our gallery.
We want to thank the two high schools we worked with, for the coordination of the activity and the opportunity they gave us to make the pupils discover this new method: Synthetic Biology. We particularly thank the diffusion of the activity on the website of the high schools. Here you can see the article written on the websites of Colegio Mariano de Schoenstatt, and Colegio La Maisonnette.
We also particularly want to thank the Chilean National Commission of Cooperation with UNESCO, which provided us its support to realize this activity through a letter (download here FALTA LINK)
Last year, for the first time, was implemented an optional course of Synthetic Biology in the Engineering Faculty, that everyone from the different Departments could take. As it was planned to open the course this year too, two members of the iGEM team decided to be part of the teaching staff, to re-design and improve the first version of the course, taking advantage of the experience gained with iGEM and including the open source philosophy.
As it was said in the introduction, the main difficulty consisted in making people know the existence of Synthetic Biology, which meant for the team making a large diffusion campaign that could reach the whole Faculty.
To do that, we used all the social networks we had and the institution diffusion channels, designing a poster and several short posts that showed the connection that synthetic biology has with Engineering. Moreover, the team organized an activity
opened to the entire Faculty, in which the teacher could talk about the course and answer the questions pupils had. The team made an introduction to Synthetic Biology with an activity very similar to the workshop realized in high schools. Even so, very few people registered the course. Twelve people came to the activity realized in the Faculty and 5 registered the course.
However we felt we were giving birth to something that could impact the Faculty, so the motivation to design the course is still intact.
Considering the different projects of OpenBio-UChile, it appeared they would have more impact if they came from an organization bigger than a Faculty Organized Group. That’s why we joined an initiative launched by a professor from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, aiming to gather people from different Chilean Universities and related to Synthetic Biology into a global organization which could be a Foundation or NGO.
At the date, the organization is composed of members from three universities, the majority coming from the University of Chile since many students are part of OpenBio-UChile. This initiative was born in March, 2015 and the members met every month to define what would be the objective of the organization, its activities and the ways we could diffuse them.
During these months, we defined the mission, the vision and the business model of the organization, which are described as follows:
We are a non-lucrative, collaborative and open source organiza- tion, pioneer in promoting Synthetic Biology development in Chile to establish a continuous diffusion and education and ge- nerate tools about this technic. Centralizing information about Synthetic Biology and diffusing it through a Web platform will enable us to reach a large spectrum of Chilean society.
To convert into the most relevant organization for the Open Access to knowledge about Synthetic Biology in Chile.
Generate, organize and distribute knowledge about Synthetic biology through public events related to science and technology and a web page in which:
OpenBioChile will communicate about its activities through several channels:
Since the organization aims to reach different kinds of customers, the relationship must be based on a close and careful listening of their necessities and the provided answers must be adequate to their preferences.
As the organization doesn’t dedicate its activity to the generation of a specific product, the income will mainly come from:
Since the organization wants to promote the development of such a new field in Chile like Synthetic Biology, its members have to obtain several key resources:
The most relevant costs associated to the organization’s activities are:
Connexion with the environment
In order to identify PLA users and people interested in this new methodology, we talked with several institutions and representatives. Since the idea of our project had born talking with the Fab Lab of the University of Chile, as mentioned in the project time line (hyperlink), we presented our project to the director of the Fab Lab, who wrote us a letter of inquiry (download here ****FALTA).
We also went to talk with Andres Briceño, co-founder of the Santiago Fab Lab, to make our project cross the frontier of the University and see if there was a real need or interest for biological PLA.
There, we discovered other ways to use PLA, since in this Fab Lab they combine PLA with other biodegradable materials such as wood to make composite materials and help the technology to reach the market. Indeed, if PLA is quite used to build prototypes, product designers don’t like working with it because plastic products are not as attractive as wood products, for instance. So the idea of mixing PLA with a more “esthetical” material such as wood allows a friendly design for many objects, which makes composite PLA a good candidate for new 3D-printed products. Moreover, composite PLA can have better mechanical properties than PLA according to the material it is mixed with, and can last more than 2 years without losing its biodegradable properties, which allows a wider range of uses.
When we presented our project, Andres Briceño agreed that although costs can vary a lot according to the country of origin, it is expensive to buy PLA. He added that if we could demonstrate our fabrication process is cheaper than the current ones, the project would turn very attractive for many digital fabrication laboratories, for he gave us his support at the end of the visit, signing us another letter of inquiry (download here).
In parallel, we tried to connect our project with the environmental problematic, looking for an institutional support to evaluate the potential of biological PLA. We reached the Government through the Ministry of the Environment, which manifested its interest through a letter of inquiry (download here), in which it recognizes the importance of “the fabrication of biodegradable materials which implies fewer possible impacts on the environment”.
In order to evaluate those impacts, the positive and negatives ones, we met with Claudia Mac Lean, in charge of the Sustainability Office of the Faculty. She offered us to present our project to her pupils in the context of a Sustainable Project Workshop and to help us with an analysis of impacts through the Life Cycle Assessment methodology. And here we are.