Team:KU Leuven/Practices/Education
Education
School visits
We introduced children in three primary schools (10 to 11 years old) to synthetic biology. We started the lessons by giving a brief introduction into biology and synthetic biology. We continued with asking the children to play a game built around the DNA codon table. The goal was to introduce the children to DNA translation and introducing mutations in a playful manner.
Figure 1
The codon table used during school visits. Click to enlarge
Figure 2
The Sticker code table for the game used during school visits. Click to enlarge
The game consists of two parts.
During the first part, the children were given the so called "Professor Robben" sequence.
Using the DNA codon table shown in figure 1, the children translated the DNA.
Colored wooden blocks symbolizing the amino acids had to be arranged into the correct
protein sequence. The blocks where made in the KU Leuven's fab-lab
and painted by hand ourselves.
During the second stage of the game, the children continued by mutating the DNA sequence. The
players could obtain a new sticker if the DNA mutations matched the protein sequence on the sticker
table shown in figure 2.
A scientist does not regularly get the opportunity to share his/her passion for science with society, especially not with children. From one perspective, it is important to educate kids at young age about the importance of (synthetic) biology. Prejudice surrounding synthetic biology can slowly be dissolved and public opinion can be directed towards a more open-minded mindset by introducing children at a young age to these topics. On the other hand, it is amazing to see how enthusiastically children dive into the world of synthetic biology when challenged with a DNA-based puzzle game. The students filled the room with ‘ATACGATCATG’, ‘green, red, yellow’ and energetically tried to collect as many stickers as possible. Some groups even ‘codon-optimized’ the sequences by combining the wooden bricks with a correct sequence. It is heartwarming to experience the eagerness with which they perform their task. Even more so when the young pupils reveal that after this experience, they would like to become scientists.
Card game
This year we conducted a survey to study the knowledge of the general public about synthetic biology. This led to the conclusion that the general public knows very little of synthetic biology, or about bacteria in general.
We decided to do something about this and make people more acquainted with terms of synthetic biology. All the while we also wanted to introduce them to principles of our own project. A problem that often arises with this kind of goal, is that traditional methods are often too complicated or too boring. It is important to hold the people’s attention and to repeat the information so people will remember it. This is why we came up with the idea of introducing some general terms of synthetic biology in the form of a game.
The major advantage of using a game is that the content becomes less boring and people will be more excited to play it. Another advantage is the spacing effect. This is a term from the field of psychology. It means that humans are more eager to remember or learn items when they are repeated over a long time span, rather than studied in a short span of time (for example like students do the night for an exam). Researchers have found that spaced learning schedules promote both simple and complex generalization.[1] Playing a card game will have this effect and will thus, be more effective than traditional methods.
Thus, we designed a card game where every card is based on a biological principle and contains a line with information about it. Every card also contains the information about its role in the game. This decreases the complexity of the game, since players don’t need to memorise every rule.
The end result was the game “Strains”. In this game the players take the role of an E. coli bacterium in a petri dish. The bacteria need to make patterns, based on Plasmid cards. There are three sorts of plasmid cards: 3bars, 4bars and 5 bars which are worth 1,2 and 3 points. The more complex (longer) the pattern, the more points it is worth.
The players have to use fluorescent proteins to make the patterns. There are three fluorescent proteins: YFP, GFP and RFP.
The first player to get 10 points wins!
BUT WAIT THERE IS MORE!
There are also action cards which the bacterium can use in its own advantage or to sabotage the other bacteria.
But the bacteria can also protect themselves against action cards with the counter action cards:
BUT WAIT THERE IS EVEN MORE!
The bacteria also have to evade the ANTIBIOTIC CARDS
The only way to survive the antibiotic cards is with Resistance cards.
If you have no Resistance card, you die and you lose one of your dearly earned plasmid cards and all the cards in your hand.
There are also action other cards like LVA, Metabolic Stop, YAY and so on which add other small dynamics to the game.
We plan to turn this game into a Kickstarter project to distribute and print the game.
References
Contact
Address: Celestijnenlaan 200G room 00.08 - 3001 Heverlee
Telephone: +32(0)16 32 73 19
Email: igem@chem.kuleuven.be
