Team:RHIT/Practices
Human Practices
Overview
Rose-Hulman hosted the ExxonMobil Bernard Harris Summer Science Camp for middle-school aged students. These students were exposed to a variety of science and engineering fields over the course of two weeks. The RHIT iGEM team had a chance to work with two groups of 22 students in three separate sessions to provide them with a foundation in genetics, genetic engineering, and synthetic biology.
Session 1
During the first session, the students were introduced to the concept of information flow. They were introduced to the concept of genes, how genes are responsible for various characteristics, and how they are created in cells. The students were taught how DNA is formed and the structure of DNA in cells. Once the basics of nucleotides and DNA were understood, the students also learned about how nucleotides are decoded into amino acids.
The activities during the day included the students making beaded keychains with different colors representing different nucleotides (A-red, T-yellow, C-orange, G-blue). Each strand was to start at the 5’ end (green or pink glow-in-the-dark bead), and end at the 3’ end (purple or yellow glow-in-the-dark bead). The students were taught that DNA should be read 5’ to 3’. It was useful to show them an analogy by writing a word on the whiteboard such as “board” and showing that the word makes sense when read from left to right, but from right to left it spells “draob” which is nonsense.