Team:Alma/Public Engagement
Education & Engagement
Telling and teaching others about the exciting field of synthetic biology is critical to having this field reach its true potential. We set about doing this in a number of ways – initially by spreading the word about iGEM on campus through a club and campus-wide symposium. As we learned from our discussion with Mr. Jeremy Hendges at the Michigan Office of Talent and Economic Development, the most important way to address this task is to reach out to primary education students -– high school and younger.
We sought to do this in two different ways -– the first involved campus organized by Alma College, Research Week (high school students) and ASPIRE (incoming first year students). This program brings students to our campus, and we signed up to design and run a synthetic biology and iGEM-centered camp. We also worked with some local high school teachers, so that we can bring synthetic biology to students in their school. This involved designing activities to introduce topics related to synthetic biology, and making arrangements to help deliver that content during the school year.
iGEM Symposium
Once we had formed a project idea and refined it with some expert feedback, we wanted to showcase the plan for the campus community, friends, family, and others in the city of Alma. We also saw this as an opportunity to explain to a general audience the importance of our project and the science behind the field of synthetic biology.
We held the symposium on May 23rd, in which we gave a presentation, talked about our experience, and fielded a lot of questions. Many of those in the audience left both better educated and more excited about synthetic biology.
Research Week & ASPIRE
One way to immerse students in synthetic biology is to bring them to the lab. While we gave informal tours of the lab to some friends and family, we were fortunate that there already existed an avenue to do this in a more structured way. The CORE program at Alma helps to support research activities of students over the summer – in fact, it help provided compensation and housing to some of the members of the team. In addition, there are extra programs associated with CORE, such as Research Week and ASPIRE. Research Week brings groups of high school students that signup to participate in a variety of camps for a week – ASPIRE is similar, but with incoming first year students.
We designed a research week camp – the instructions for which are available for download. The idea behind this camp was to get the students aware of synthetic biology and familiar with modular approach to DNA assembly. We hoped that using fun BioBricks such as fluorescent reporters and scents would grab the attention of the students.
The high school students were able to carry out all the steps of the experiment, ran a gel, and even got to transform some bacteria and observe colonies. They all prepared a presentation in which they shared what they learnt to their friends and family. The feedback we got from them was very positive, and we hope they will continue to develop their interest in synthetic biology as well as spread awareness to others around them.
The best evidence of how this camp impacted the students is probably the presentation that they crafted – available as a PowerPoint file. The ASPIRE student we had working with us, Jacob Wilburn, carried out a similar set of experiments, and also gave a presentation at the end of the week-long experience. He ran and troubleshoot more reactions and instead of cloning "fun" BioBricks, was focused on using Golden Gate assembly to create the pH sensors and safety-switches that were part of our project.
Teachers CORE
The other way to immerse students in synthetic biology is to bring the lab to them. We worked with two teachers from the local high school, Mr. Steven Lord and Mrs. Julie Dellamorretta, in developing exercises and modules that can bring awareness of synthetic biology to an entire classroom. We found that it was necessary to significantly modify the experience we designed for the research week and ASPIRE camp – not only did the high school not have access to the same equipment, but their time constraints were totally different.
Steven and Julie were not only working with us during this time, but also with Dr. Brian Hancock, a professor in the education department at Alma. From talking with both teachers and Dr. Hancock, we learnt some of the other considerations that go into making an effective educational exercise. In particular, Dr. Hancock stressed the notion that we should try to make an exercise with both observable and unobservable phenomenon, and get students to tie in theoretical knowledge. We tried to strip synthetic biology down to its most essential elements and try to use only one of these as a hook to get other students aware of the field: the practice of transforming bacteria with foreign DNA.
There are different teaching kits for transformation exercises already available – our idea involved two twists. First, we would use a BioBrick as our foreign DNA, isolated directly from a donor strain. The BioBrick we used was the well-known BBa_J04450, which produced a nice, visually appealing red color. Second, to help tie in some lessons about DNA in general, we suggested that the experiment be setup in a way similar to the famous Avery-MacLeod-McCarty experiment – the foreign DNA isolate would be mixed with either DNAse or Proteinase K to show that it was the DNA, and not the observable RFP, that was the transforming principal.
One big issue with the experimental design we had was that it required a centrifuge, which was unavailable at the high school. Luckily, we found that low-cost designs for DIY centrifuges existed. Together with Mr. Lord, we tested a few designs and even 3D printed some. We found that scaling up a published design worked best for a hand-powered centrifuge, and that ultimately the most effective version was the dremel-fuge design. In either case, we had gotten enough power to effectively pellet bacterial debris and create the foreign DNA isolate.