Team:UChile-OpenBio/Practices


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Human practices Human practices overview Awarness Diffusion Synthetic Biology Platform Difussion SB Connection FabLab UChile Fablab Santiago
Human practices

In Chile, little is known about Synthetic Biology. There is only one Chilean start’up really related to this area, and universities only began to participate in iGEM in 2012.

Synthetic Biology is not taught in educational institutions, particularly in high schools, and few people know what it is even in the Engineering Faculty of the University of Chile, the most prestigious public University of the country. So how can we talk about the applications of Synthetic Biology if nobody knows what it is? How can we raise awareness with our project if people got stuck in their minds that genetically modified organisms are dangerous? How can we make people know about Synthetic Biology and trust in its technology?
To answer these questions, we developed a diffusion plan of this methodology based on three activities:
A pedagogical workshop in high schools, diffusion and participation in the design of a Synthetic Biology course in the Engineering Faculty of the University of Chile and the development of a Synthetic Biology Platform in which participate members of several universities.

Difusion about
syntethic biology

Awareness-raising activity in high schools

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.

The Goal

This goal, aligned with the main principles of OpenBio-UChile, drove the team to realize activities centred on Synthetic Biology in high schools, contributing at the same time to the knowledge spreading about Synthetic Biology and to strengthening the group cohesion by empowering its members.
The pedagogic activity consisted in an introduction to Synthetic Biology, a short debate about the use of genetically modified microorganisms and a workshop based on legos to applicate the concepts and principles of Synthetic Biology described during the introduction. The whole activity lasted 1h30 and all the pupils aged from 15 to 18 could participate.

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 introductive activity

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!

The introductive activity

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 Legos workshop

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.

The Legos workshop

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 Legos workshop

The Goal

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.

The Goal

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.

The Goal

Acknowledgments

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.

Acknowledgments

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)

Acknowledgments UNESCO

Diffusion of a Synthetic Biology course in the Engineering Faculty

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.

Diffusion of a Synthetic Biology course in the Engineering Faculty
Diffusion of a Synthetic Biology course in the Engineering Faculty
Diffusion of a Synthetic Biology course in the Engineering Faculty
More photos of the students,working on solving the exposed challenges with legos.
Diffusion of a Synthetic Biology course in the Engineering Faculty
Diffusion of a Synthetic Biology course in the Engineering Faculty
Students listening to the explications of the teacher Alvaro Olivera, about the Synthetic